It's my unintentional M.O. to get down to the wire on a big project and then have some freak problem that sets me so far back that I lose my enthusiasm and either put the project on the back burner for a while (since it causes me too much aggravation) or abandon it all together.
The backing to my Storm at Sea quilt was supposed to just be rows of waves deepening in darker hues toward the bottom. However, now that I'm close to finishing the bottom, I discovered that I cut the last few rows two-feet too short. At first I thought, "No problem. I'll just sew on two more feet of each fabric."
However, upon surveying my stash, I discovered that I didn't have any more of these fabrics. I would have to use something different. I then came up with the creative idea of making an island with a lagoon way out in the ocean and tack those fabrics onto the missing two feet of ocean.
I didn't want to shape the island and lagoon like a real island and lagoon would look, but I wanted to keep it abstract like the rest of the quilt. I decided to install it in blocks instead of curves. Unfortunately, I put the second section of the island on the opposite end of the row from where it should have been and had to correct it by cutting off the existing seam and resewing it on the other side. That resulted in the island's seam not lining up with the lagoon's seam, so now this island is going to turn out even more abstract than I had planned...
I'm at a point where I don't care anymore. I just want a nice, new warm quilt for my bed this winter. Since this is the back of the quilt, we probably won't look at it much anyway.
Sometimes you just have to take a deep breath and say, "Oh well."
I finished piecing together the backing to my Storm at Sea king-sized bed quilt, and was able to finally put the ironing board away. No more freezer paper! Whoopie!
I laid it over my bed and was a bit shocked by it's length and width. I added a few inches when I took my measurements last year, because I wanted to fold the edges over and use the backing for the border to speed things up. 
However, my measurements of the top must have been way off, because when I laid the Storm at Sea top over the wave backing, the backing was way wider than the top. The length is workable, but I'm going to have to make 16 more Storm at Sea blocks to get a better match in size. Of course, I could just cut the excess off the back, but that would make my scrap stash unmanageable and I actually would like the quilt to be wider and drape over the edges of the bed.
So, I doubt I will meet my goal of getting this quilt done before this winter. I may have to give myself another year. If I didn't have two jobs, I wouldn't need an entire year, but spare time is something that comes around so rarely for me. The only reason why I was able to finish the backing this week is because I'm on vacation.
