I’m fairly certain that when Mary Lou Hallenbeck (from H. D. Designs) said, “Simple things like this can add so much to a quilt,” she didn’t expect it to become the focal point of her post for the DayZ Dozen Blog Hop. It was a reference to the 2-color borders and binding on her 4-Patch Stacked Posie quilt. See the blue and purple? It’s nice, and I especially like the way it looks from a distance.

Mary Lou is not the first person to note that simple things–details–can add So Much, and she certainly won’t be the last, but it bears repeating. For starters, it’s true. Seemingly insignificant minute details can make or break an experience. Maybe you have a table set for dinner. How does the experience change when you fold the napkins into hats rather than stick them under the forks or lay them on the plates? It’s just a napkin, and it will do the same job either way, but the experience is entirely different. A solid blue border would do the job on Mary Lou’s quilt, but the experience would be different.

Details are something that Mike and I like to pay attention to. We are always looking for that little something extra to make our designs special, whether others notice them or not. In THE TRAIL HOME, we had a good time sending the lead dog over the hill. It would have been easier to have the dogs in the same plane, but how much more real it feels to have one dropping over the edge.

There’s also the haiku on the pattern cover. I wonder how many people even read that. I love it! The syllable count is imperfect–one syllable from the last line is donated to the first line, so the overall count is correct, but the specific lines are not. But it follows the tradition of being about nature and giving a sense of a season. It never says “winter,” but dogs loping on the trail implies dogsledding, which implies winter. Then there’s the play on the word “trail”–lights trail above, dogs on the trail below. Details! How I love details!

Charles Dickens said something to the effect of “trifles are the sum of life.” Paying attention to the simple little details can make an ordinary experience or design special and fun.