peachy baby

I have a finished quilt to show you today, as well as some thoughts about quilting. This quilt is finished, but to be honest, I kind of wish I could redo the quilting. Does this happen to you? I get my quilt top all finished and I love it, and then I think, “hey, I should do something fun with the quilting”. I start quilting, and boom!, suddenly I’m not so happy with the quilt.

Obviously quilting requires lots of practice, and over the course of the several years I’ve been quilting, I’ve been able to practice several quilting designs and I now feel quite comfortable with a variety of designs. Straight line? Yep. Free motion meandering? Yes, I’ve practiced that a lot. Dogwood flowers? check. But then I want to be creative and try something different, and suddenly I realize I haven’t had enough practice.

Take this design for instance. I quilted these fun starburst patterns in the mini quilt I showed recently. On that mini quilt I quilted it with straight lines and my walking foot, but it required a lot of turning and passing the quilt through the throat of the machine. That was ok on a small quilt, but I knew that on a larger quilt, to create the same kind of design, I’d have to do it as a free motion design. Now, a smarter person would say, practice, practice, practice! And I did do a quick practice on a mini quilt sandwich, but really, that’s not quite the same as quilting a larger quilt. And since my windows for quilting are short, I kind of hate the thought of using that time on a practice quilt. And hence my dilemma… practice on a quilt top I like, or stay safe and use a design I know I can quilt well?

I opted to just go for it on this quilt, and I’m afraid that I should have maybe opted to do a design I am more comfortable with instead. Though I suppose the question is, does it show just to me as I examine my work and see the wobbly lines and the uneven stitches? My mom loves it, but then again, she’s my mom. All that being said, this one certainly still functions as a quilt – it has a top, some batting, and a backing, all held together with some stitches. So maybe I just shouldn’t look so closely! And as such, I’ve listed it in the shop, hoping that someone will need a sweet little quilt for a little one.