One of the struggles I had as a beginning quilter in using lots of different fabrics in a quilt, was the fear of getting a piece of fabric too close to another piece of the same fabric. I’m not sure why that is a struggle but I have talked to others who have had the same struggle. I have worked really hard on a couple of quilts to try and make sure that doesn’t happen and guess what when you close your eyes they migrate near each other and you don’t catch it until it’s quilted! Oh no! Then you laugh at yourself and realize the world didn’t come to an end and the quilt police never showed up! And actually the unplanned randomness of just picking up a piece of fabric and sewing is really liberating. The more I do it the more fun I have and actually isn’t that what this hobby is really supposed to be anyway? I am totally in love with the happy colors of this quilt.
But here comes the ugly truth of why this quilt took two years to complete - I was afraid to quilt it. There I said it. If you quilt at all you are probably familiar with the anxiety that comes with deciding how a quilt is going to be quilted. But add to that the years of belonging to a guild and going to quilt shows and seeing all the wonderful quilts that are out there and paralysis can quickly occur. So it sat. As I mentioned in the last post I purchased a long arm quilt machine & frame allowing me to get quilts finished more efficiently. So after considering a couple of other quilts I had finished I decided to do a simple meander and it is (in my opinion) wonderful! And better yet it is done! I’m not sure who to credit with this quote but ‘better done than perfect’ has become a favorite phrase. But I can’t honestly say that it would have made the quilt a better quilt if it had been quilted any other way. Here is a picture of it before it was quilted.
And a close up of the quilting and backing fabric.
Now I’m not sure if you can tell but the binding matches the border on the front and the backing on the back. The casual observer wouldn’t notice that. I love solving quilting challenges and when I realized that I didn’t have enough of the border fabric to make the binding, I had a decision to make. I didn’t really want to add the backing fabric to the color story on the front. Then I remembered I had a similar challenge a couple of years ago when someone asked me to make them a quilt. There was an article in a quilt magazine about doing a two sided binding. So I dug out the article I had saved and problem solved. Here are pictures from the quilt I made for the customer.
I will be presenting this technique at my local guild in April as a program for our monthly meeting.
It is nice to have tools in your tool belt to accomplish wonderful things.
I have noticed that my picture taking abilities need improving. I wish you could see this in person.
Quilt making is fun!
Tomorrow is the start of a new week. My favorite day of the week is Monday.
I know that is crazy. But I feel that Monday brings order after the weekend. I hope you all have a great day. My words of wisdom to my children when they were becoming teenagers and dealing with the choices of life is "You are the only thing holding you back". So this week don't let anything hold you back from being the best you that you can be.
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