Quilty

Just in case you were curious, I didn't get fired.  I am a neurotic mess.  I know this about myself.

With the ridiculous amount of snow days that we've had in KC lately, I have had a lot of time to craft.  I've been working on a quilt that I've had on my to-do list for well over 6 months.  In fact, the baby for whom the quilt is intended is now 7 months old!  There was a design flaw, and finally the quilt became a "pot" quilt, which is my own term for something you either need to finish or scrap (sh*t or get off the pot?  Get it?  ... No?  That's ok).  After a little outsider input from Mom, I fixed the flaw, and finally got the top finished.  Then came the adventure with the back!

I have a lot of fabric.  I think I may have mentioned this before?  When you've been holding on to a project for a while, pieces of said project tend to migrate.  I had bought a backing for this quilt when I first started the project.  And then, it moved.  I searched all of my storage containers, and couldn't find the fabric I had bought!  Finally, admitting defeat, I bought more fabric just at the beginning of the latest snow storm.  Take it home, wash it, and it's the wrong color.  I was not happy.  Then, through a flash of inspiration, I remembered where I put the original fabric!  Well, when we fixed the design flaw, it added two inches of both width and length to the finished top.  The fabric I had bought was not wide enough.  Grr!!!  (Side note: Those of you who quilt will probably recognize that adding two inches to the fabric shouldn't have been as big of a deal.  You're supposed to leave yourself around 4 inches on all sides.  This is the problem with being frugal when you buy fabric.  Lesson learned, but probably not for the last time).  Finally, I ended up using a completely different color as the backing, and am now happily hand-quilting away!

I seem to go through a lot of backings when I make quilts.  Somehow, the tops always end up bigger than I expect, or originally design.  Sometimes, I can piece the backing, but a lot of the time, I just buy more fabric.  I'm starting to see a very distressing pattern emerge.

On the hand quilting.  I really kind of hate machine quilting.  This is probably because my machine is really poorly designed for it.  It used to have a plate that covered the feed dogs, because they don't drop, and because it's old and plastic pieces break, I had to replace the whole feed dog plate, and now the cover doesn't fit. I end up wrestling with a ton of fabric, it's a very stressful process, and I'm usually dissatisfied with the outcome.  Hand quilting, on the other hand (ha!), is a fun process for me.  I get to be much more improvisational, and I don't have to worry about the fabric bunching, or not having enough control.  It's almost a zen thing for me.  And not taking nearly as long as I remembered it taking the first time I did hand quilting.

It's a new month, so I'm renewing my resolutions.  My friend Heather is doing a 21 day fitness challenge because it supposedly takes 21 days to form a new habit.  Maybe I should try something like that.  Not for fitness, because I don't care as much about that, but for organization?  We shall see...