Back to Stitching on Goal

There is a line in an old Bill Cosby stand-up comedy routine that keeps playing in my head: "You have fooled around long enough!"  I hear his voice, almost god-like, admonishing me to get back to serious business and apply myself.

Okay, play time is over but I am still not quite ready to get back to my current full fledged and complicated BAP/WIP, the English Band Sampler.  I guess I am resisting external pressure.  The Fall issue of SANQ arrived four days ago, containing Part III of the English Band Sampler and I am still working on Part I.  I wish someone would explain to me how July, which I have always considered high Summer, suddenly qualifies as Fall.

 While I am avoiding the sampler, I have picked up one of the simpler projects from my July Goals List, The Japanese  Kogin Tea Cozy.   There is a reasonable hope that I'll be able to meet my goal of finishing this in the three remaining days of July.    When this is done it will be my third finish from the class projects list.  I had hoped to be further along at this point in the year.  So, I "have fooled around long enough."  Which is not to say there is no joy to be had in stitching the tea cozy project.  There is a great deal of pleasure in working this piece: it is not the usual sort of project I stitch so there is all the delight of novelty; I get to use a different stitch [straight] and a different fabric [Aida] and a different fiber [perle] than is usual for me; and the end project, a tea cosy, links in with another passion of mine, fine teas and all their accoutrements.  [Now, normally, I avoid Aida like the plague but for this project, it is the perfect fabric.]  It's just that I have moved on from the magpie glee of playing with shiny paper and fibers that has occupied my stitching time for the past several days.  It has been fun but one can't spend all one's time picking over glistening bits and bobs and other shiny distractions anymore than one can spend the entire school day at recess or an entire meal on the dessert course.  However tempting that might be in the short term, one does get sated eventually.  So, I am now back to working on something a little more practical, a little more straightforward, a little more conventional, a little more substantial.  When last seen, the Tea Cozy looked like the photo above.  The second photo shows yesterday's progress.  I have filled in the necessary shape with the dark blue stitching but still have all the lighter blue fill stitching to do.  The real challenge will be the finishing.  The directions are not quite as clear as I would like and it has been six years since I took the class and saw the stitched model. I have a vague recollection of a flat sandwich of soft flannel, quilt batting and the stitched piece with the edges bound with double fold binding tape ... some of which extended to make "ribbons" to tie the cozy around a teapot.  But I am getting ahead of myself.  I still have the stitching to complete.  Time enough to stress over the sewing finish when I get there.

The next class project piece I will pick up is the 2007 Mystic Stitcher's Hideaway packet which contains a stitcher's "purse", a scissor fob, a biscornu and a scissor case.  Since there will be multiple small finishes perhaps that will provide a sense of moving forward.  I knew working from the class project list would be time consuming but this snail's pace of mine is very disappointing.  I have to keep reminding myself that class pieces are by their very nature more complex and require a greater investment of time.