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!
