Hot Mess

My experiment with a self-selected challenge fabric has come to an end, and in the nick of time before my brain exploded.  

Which, one could argue, is what this looks like.  But the old thinker was smoking in a good way, a way that forced me to (gee, I hate this phrase but here I go using it) think outside the box.  Or employ the opposite, non-dominant hemisphere, or, like, whatever.

I do enjoy hacking things to pieces, though, ever since I cut up my mom's best girdle in an attempt to make a "cheerleader skirt" when I was yet a toddler.  Or so I'm told.  I have no specific recollection of that event, although I do remember giving myself a haircut just before a family vacation when I was three.

Ah, the good old days, before outlet covers and toilet locks, when sharp implements were accessible to all members of the household.  Remind me to tell you about the time I slipped a butcher knife into my mom's old purse and headed off to the neighbor's to terrorize their chickens.  Well, I may as well finish the story now that I've started it.  I got about halfway there when the noon whistle blew and the toy factory across the street let out for lunch.  With all those fine folks walking by and smiling at me, I had a pang of guilt about the steel I was packing, so I ran home and returned it to the drawer.  Suddenly, harvesting a chicken didn't seem like such a good idea anymore.

And in case you're wondering, I made it through childhood and adolescence relatively unscathed, with no guidance counseling involved and never having harmed a live chicken, unless eating KFC counts.

Where was I?  Oh yeah, cutting up.  I cut this piece down once or twice more since the last post.  It ended up 11 x 14 finished.

I pieced the back with one of the scraps.  I almost like the backside better than the front.

You can see the loopy quilting in variegated thread better on the back.

In these grayish, depth of winter days, a little splash of bright is a picker-upper.  And if anyone spills on this, it'll blend right in!