Friday 1 February 2013

a cheeky quilt


Some quilts, while just lovely on the outside, are secretly scheming on the inside to throw you off kilter. Take this one, for example. Made with just 8 prints, each 2.5" strips. I sewed them together with white strips, cut those, sewed those, (one day I will show you in pictures what I mean), counted, did the maths, kept sewing. When suddenly, all sewn together, I had one very long, but beautiful strip of colourful squares. It was more the shape of a wide table or bed runner, tha a baby quilt. But I would not be deterred. I chopped off the top, sewed extra wide strips on either side and ended up with this...


 I have to say, I was fairly chuffed with myself. I had even remembered to make sure the finished top was the same as the usual width of fabric so I ddn't have to piece the back. I used a beautiful Japanese linen/cotton blend for the back, basted and hand-quilted.
After several hours of hand-quilting (ie, several hours of the West Wing), while nonchalantly snipping pearl cotton threads, I snipped a small but sinister hole in the quilt top!
I have 'patched' this up with some zig-zag stitching and you can't tell when you look at the whole quilt. But I was still devastated!


Then, while merrily sewing the binding on (in the shop, listening to Slava Grigorian. Have you heard of him? Best sewing music ever), of course, a big fat seam landed right on the 3rd corner, making it almost impossible to bind neatly. I perhaps would have been more tempted to unpick the binding and start again had I not already cut a hole in it, and if I hadn't broken my quick unpick trying to get a hook off the wall (that's a story for another day!), but I pressed on. This cheeky quilt will just have to be proudly handmade, imperfections and all.


On a happier note, I did put my very last sewing machine needle right through this baby, only 30 minutes into my day. It would have been a sad tale if that had snapped too!



12 comments:

  1. Guess what? In a year, you will look at that quilt and have forgotten about all the little imperfections. It's beautiful ; )

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  2. Oh dear! I usually run my binding around the perimeter before sewing just to make sure that doesn't happen anymore because it literally happened on every quilt I made before I started to do a run through first. The quilt does look perfectly lovely!

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  3. I absolutely love this quilt, Jodi! Perfection!

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  4. Happy 1000th follower. I think if it was me you would have heard me weeping from your place but I have never finished a quilt let alone made as many as you have this year. I do think it is a beautiful quilt, love the way you just try something & see how it goes.

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  5. I love this quilt, it's absolutely beautiful, scars and all!

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  6. Funny how some projects do seem to be trying to derail us! No matter, because this is gorgeous!!

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  7. Sounds like this quilt was quite an adventure! The repair looks great, and no one but you will ever notice the binding on that corner.

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  8. I can completely understand how devestated you must have been when you snipped a whole in your beautiful quilt but some of my favourite quilts are those with the most imperfections. It's a completely gorgeous quilt!

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  9. What a sweet quilt!! I always fear in some weird way I will accidentally cut or clip the quilt top when I am working on it. So I could understand your frustration. But honestly you can't even tell it's there. It's lovely!!

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  10. ooooh... Naughty quilt! Sometimes it's a battle. I'm FMQ a dogwood pattern right now and Believe Me, it's a battle.

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  11. Geez la Wheeze! I would have quit right about the wrong size part! great job finishing!!

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  12. This is a gorgeous quilt! None of those annoying little things would notice if you didn't know they were there:)

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I so love your comments! I read all of them and reply when I can. If you don't hear back, I'm lost under a mound of scraps or outside jumping on the trampoline with the kids. Jodi. xx