Something Seems to be Missing!

I have a quilt I've been working on--on and off--for about eight years now. And when I decided I was going to finish 11 quilts in 2011, this was one that immediately came to mind. And now that I've finished my third quilt for 2011 and it's time to pick a fourth quilt, I settled on this one.

Despite working on this quilt for so many years, I haven't named it. For now, though, let's just call it my Thimbleberries applique quilt, okay? Because that's pretty much what it is. And the applique never seems to end. But that's okay--I LIKE applique.

Last time I pulled it out and put it up on my design wall, I decided I was going to add another "round" of fabric of some sort to make it larger, and whatever kind of piecing I chose would have to serve as an appropriate background for words--because I wrote a little poem or some such thing of four lines that I planned to applique into the borders.

First, though, I need to finish the applique in the last corner. Here's what it looks like:

The corner, that is--not the whole quilt. Just the three flowers with the ribbon.

And another thing. Some years back, when I first started this seemingly endless "heirloom" project, I picked out fabric to use for all the applique. So when I pulled the quilt off of my Waiting-to-be-Finished-Quilt-Rack, I went searching for the packet of applique fabric. I looked high and low, low and high. Behind and under. And you know what I found? (No, I mean BESIDES the dust!)

Blocks. Blocks that had been swapped over the years and never set. Several bags of them.

Fabric. Well, of course I did! No surprise there!

Kits. Who even knows what kits are there? They didn't look like my applique fabric packet, so I didn't look very closely. Denial. Besides, it's my retirement plan.

Finally, I found my applique fabric, high, high up on a shelf. And you know what? None of the freezer paper templates were with the fabric, nor were any prepared pieces or bias "stems." So where was that OTHER packet?

In looking, I found more stuff squirreled away. Orphan blocks. Weird give-away notions. Pieces of blocks. Cannibalized wallhangings. Bits of small projects begun but not finished. Two drawers full. But no templates or prepared applique pieces.

I spent the rest of the evening re-tracing the missing pieces from another corner of the quilt and cutting out the freezer paper templates. (In this photo, you can see I've placed the freezer paper pieces OVER the applique in the completed corner.)

Next I'll begin preparing the applique pieces for that corner. Then I'll put this seemingly never-ending project up on the design wall and show you what it looks like so far. And I'll look at it awhile--between bouts of belly button contemplation--and plan what I want to do for the next border "round"--the one with the appliqued words. And then I'll look for that scrap of paper with the sort-of poem comprised of four lines that I want to use.

And in looking for that sort-of poem, I'm sure I'll find even MORE stuff tucked away here and there, waiting to be found. And now that I've re-traced the templates, I might even find the ones I'd been using before.

So back to the title of this post--What do you think is missing? I bet you thought I was talking about the packet of templates and prepared applique pieces, right? No. What seems to be missing is my self-restraint. Or my stick-to-itivity. Or my focus. Or whatever it is that has somehow resulted in all this STUFF that hasn't been finished. Oh, I'm just a mess, aren't I?! I think I'm going to need to finish more than just 11 quilts in 2011. I'm already starting to think about 12 in 2012!

Is there therapy for this?