Drumroll please....ta-da! I finally finished this baby quilt using my great-grandma's quilt blocks! It may have taken me months and months to get started , and I had to let go of my perfectionism, and I had to teach myself how to hand-quilt, but it's finally finished!
I love, love, love this quilt. I love the fabrics and the fabric choices Great-grandma made, and how different they are from ones I would normally choose. It's not a matchy-matchy quilt. I was even able to find a large piece of fabric in her stash, which I used for the backing and binding.
I love how the hand-quilting looks great with these blocks, it really makes this quilt and helps create a vintage scrap-quilt look. I decided that this quilt was already busy enough without complicated quilting (and, I admit, this was only my second quilt doing hand-quilting, so I didn't want to try anything too ambitious). I just did simple outline stitching about 1/4" from all the seams.
So far, BT loves it, too ;)
-Lily
I refer to this as my "Mistake Quilt." I didn't make a tiny, almost-invisible mistake. I make plenty of those on all my quilts, that's part of their handmade charm. No, for this quilt I made mistake after mistake, compounding the problems at each step. And did I stop at any point? No, I kept forging ahead, thinking that somehow willpower and stubbornness would fix it.
My dear husband says it still looks nice but I suspect he's just being a super-nice husband Or maybe he just does not have my refined sense of quilt style, ha!
Here's a partial list of the problems with this quilt:
1. Using minky fabric in piecing. I hadn't used minky much before this project, and it was so hard to cut and piece accurately. Plus, I forgot that I wouldn't be able to iron the seams flat. Inside this quilt is a mess of disordered seams, yike!
2. Not using fabrics I loved. Some of the fabric was super-cheap clearance, and others were ones I had in my stash, and then there's the minky...looking back, I think, why, why, why??
3. Making my own pattern. Now, this isn't always a mistake. I love making up my own patterns, and usually it works. But, when trying new things, you win some, you lose some. On top of the other problems with this quilt, this pattern wasn't a keeper.
4. Not listening to myself. After I put together a few blocks, I was really iffy about this quilt coming together. I should have cut my losses and started a project I loved.
5. Letting it sit in the closet for three years. After finishing the top, I thought it was the ugliest quilt I'd ever made. Rather than just donating it and forgetting all about it, I put it in my closet. Then, every time I searched through my stash I let it gnaw at me how ugly it was and how I should really finish this project. (I hate stacks of unfinished quilts hanging around).
6. Not basting. I've been practicing my hand-quilting skills because I want to hand-quilt two quilts I'm making with my great grandma's quilt blocks. Digging through the closet one day, I ran into this quilt (again) and thought it would be a great practice quilt. I wanted to get straight to quilting, so of course I didn't have time to baste properly. But, now I've had so many problems with the backing bunching up while I'm trying to quilt. Note to self: don't skip vital steps!
7. Hand-quilting minky fabric. That dratted minky, coming back to bite me again! Apparently it's awful trying to hand-quilt through minky, I don't recommend it.
The good news is, I only have a few more lines of quilting to add, and then I'll be finished with this quilt! The bad news is, what am I going to do with it?? I don't want to keep it, it's just a reminder of all the problems I've had with it. I think I'll donate it, and a baby girl can enjoy it regardless of how many mistakes I made :)
-Lily
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