framed

So I have a sad story about this quilt, but at least it has a happy ending. Looking back, this quilt had a rocky start – I set out to make something else and even cut up a bunch of my treasured Carolyn Friedlander fabrics, only to find that I didn’t even like my design. Happily I was able to turn it into something I did like (photos of the quilt top here, last March).

In fact, I liked it quite a lot, and as with quilt tops I like a lot, I hung it in the closet, afraid to ruin it during quilting. Recently I got the urge to get these quilts finished, so sandwiched a few of them, including this one. I started quilting and immediately knew there was a problem. You know how you can just tell it’s not basted well enough? Well, I knew, but continued on with a few more quilting lines just in case it would work itself out. Nope. And now I had even more quilting to rip out!

I resandwiched it and pressed on, quilting all the horitonzal lines I’d need. It was ok, but I could see that it wasn’t stretched tightly enough. I suppose it might have been ok if I had just continued on with horizontal lines, but I had already picked a design from Jacquie’s book, and wanted to see it on this quilt. There was no way I was ripping all that quilting out though, so I kept on, and it kept getting worse.

Adding all these quilting lines between the horizontal lines I had already quilted made the issue that much more obvious (it looks ok in some of these photos, but in person you can see how there’s lots of excess fabric, even folded over some of the quilting lines). I was pretty bummed about it, and thought I might not even show you this one, but then Hazel walked by and was so excited about the quilt and immediately asked if she could have it for her bed.

She, of course, didn’t even notice all the bad spots I was focusing on, and instead just loves it for what it is – a quilt made up of colors she likes that will keep her warm at night. I shall try to embrace it in the same way (though I still reserve the right to be bummed that it didn’t turn out as nicely as I had hoped!).