It seems like I have been puttering around on the latest wedding quilt forever. In reality, it is only a little over two months, which is not unreasonable. The pattern is from a wall hanging, and I made four of them, planning to sew them together to form the quilt.
The blocks were scary, as I had to do applique and some other things that I have rarely done. I only started making fancy quilts nine years ago. It was something to do to help pass the time after my farmer husband passed away.
Even at that, there are many quilt things that I have never attempted, or only done with others who were instructing. I enjoyed doing the paper piecing when our quilt group did that, but now it has been so long, I have forgotten the process.
However, making those blocks was the easy part, as I kept reading and following directions. With the blocks done, I thought adding the strips would be a cinch. They would have been, had I kept reading the directions. Instead, I sewed, read, and un-sewed, then re-sewed.
When the four quarters of the quilt were done, putting them together should have been easy. However, to offset them I put intersecting strips in between and across the quilt, but the two strips going up and down did not match up.
My quilting friends say, “Can you live with it?” I thought about it for a half a day, and then knew I couldn’t. So, I got out my seam ripper and ripped out the threads all the way across the quilt. Then I pinned it even better, so they would match up.
They matched; it should be good, but it wasn’t. I still didn’t like it. I agonized over it for two days. I had draped the quilt top over my couch so I saw it every time I walked through the living room. The strips matched, but that wasn’t what was bothering me. It was the fact that the middle of the quilt was kind of blah. It needed something more, like a strip of flying geese.
The maple leaf blocks were already going to get a strip of flying geese along the top and bottom, and now I decided that a third one should fly across the middle.
The other day, when I made that decision, I laughed at what my quilting friends might think of me. Here I was, laying the middle part on a cutting board, and picking up my rotary cutter to slice off a couple of inches. I fear they would all cringe, and yell, “Stop!” If a tape measure was applied to the quilt, perhaps not everything would be even. That doesn’t bother me though, as I quilt for fun.
I am at finishing up the flying geese stripes, so they haven’t been sewn on as yet. I may not like it, but I know one thing — I will not take it apart again. Twice is OK, but three times and you are out, just like in baseball. Besides, I know my granddaughter and her future husband will love it as a wedding gift.
My goal is to have the quilt to the quilters by the time you read this column. Right now, none of my other grandchildren have wedding plans, so perhaps can take a little time off the rest of the year.
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