So sink or swim, I'm diving in

My mother is an award winning hand quilter. I remember sitting on the floor of her quilting room studying or doing homework while she sat at the frame and stitched away. Yet, I've never been a quilter. The thought of getting all the piecing seams to meet perfectly in a point or to line up strikes terror in my OCD heart. Despite my fears, I let my mother talk me into piecing a valance for the children's bathroom. I've managed the first big step - sewing the vertical strips together.

 

Now comes the terrifying part - matching all those horizontal seam lines as I join the strips. (They are simply placed side by side in the above photo.)  And this isn't even a quilt. There's no batting or hand stitching to be done. It will be backed with simple white muslin and gathered onto a tension rod. Simple, really. And yet, I feel paralyzed and unable to take the next step.

So I am diving into this instead:

 

My friend with the embroidery machine stitched this awesome Eucharist motif for me. I am creating a table runner for our after celebration luncheon. I purposefully designed it so that no seams must be matched together. Simple strips, backed with muslin and bound with bias. I'll probably make the bias from the darkest purple and use the Heather Bailey tutorial to attach it. Wish me luck!