Word Challenge: Balance

Victoria over at 15 Minutes Play issued a challenge early in January--choose a word for the year and make a small quilt with that word on it. It's been fun seeing what everyone has chosen and how they've made their projects! You can see them all here.

I'm not much for picking a word for the year, or for New Year's resolutions, for that matter, but the opportunity to made a word quilt sounded like a lot of fun. 

I chose "balance" for my word because I'm always striving to keep the various aspects of my life--my kids and husband, my job, my family and friends, my sewing time, etc.--balanced. Not necessarily succeeding, but striving! :) Having a visual reminder of this will be nice--helping me to make sure that sewing gets enough time in my life (All to often it gets pushed to "tomorrow," much like exercise. Funny how I can always find time for a bowl of ice cream, though!)

I have a box full of leftover strips and random pieces conveniently located under my sewing table, so I pulled exclusively (and pretty blindly!) from that. I wanted to create a busy, uneven stripe look. I tried hard not to care about what colors went next to each other. 

I went from here: 

Where it sat on my design wall for a week--should I add a border? What color? Should it be pieced? Did I have time to play around with borders? Was that a crash and a cry from the kids' room, and should I check it out, or stay in my studio and assume everything is fine? Did my email just ping? Ten more work emails to deal with before we leave on vacation tomorrow. (Are you starting to see why I chose the word I did?!)

This morning, with the end of the month deadline looming, I jumped in. Cheery gold letters, because I want balance to be a happy thing, not a threat. Tilted stacked letters, because it adds humor to the idea of achieving balance. Gold thread straight quilting lines because I do love straight line quilting, and I'm often too chicken to use bright colors on bigger quilts--perfect to try it here. 

And the binding and flange? Proof that I'm learning balance. I participated in the Challenge, found my 15 minutes to play on several days to make it happen, but didn't make myself crazy by trying to figure out a border. At the same time, I couldn't just leave it with no border and only binding, so I added in the flange. Hooray for compromise! (With 5 year old and 2.5 year old boys at home who seem to constantly bicker, perhaps that should be my word next year...)