A Stitch in Time

Remember when Holly Anderson came to our guild and I made a vow to put a little more effort into my quilts?

Yeah, well. What a pain.

You might be wondering why you haven't had an update on Orange Crush recently. I mean, way back in January I had all of the steps done, and the top only lacked borders. What the heck is taking so long?

Truth be told, I put the skinny orange border on right away. Unfortunately (there's that word again!) I took the lazy way out and just cut long border strips, sewed them on, and whacked off the ends. Now, for some quilts that might work. For some quilts you'd never even notice. But for this quilt - this scrappy, triangle-y quilt - it was a disaster in the making. This is what it looked like:

So I went to the Wanna Bees and whined and cried and asked for help. They all agreed that my fatal flaw was failing to measure the quilt and the borders and pin it to death before connecting them. They all agreed that I would have to take the orange border off and start again. You know how I feel about ripping stitches.

Jodi said to iron the hell out of it. With starch. Ben wondered if blocking it would work. Lynn mentioned something about interfacing (I stopped listening after that word), and Lene said I needed to stitch around the edge of the quilt before trying to reattach the borders. Jackie confessed that she'd be tempted to do what I wanted to do - stick it in the UFO pile and forget about it.

But no! I remembered my vow to Holly. I carefully ripped out all of the orange border. I pressed the hell out of it. I stitched around the border. I measured the quilt in about 10 places and took the average and measured the binding and cut it carefully. I pinned it to death before starting to sew again. I whispered a little prayer and asked Rene to use the IDT to help me.

You know what? It worked! Even my fellow Wanna Bees were impressed with how flat the quilt lays and that there are no puckers. When I think of the time I could have saved if I had just taken the time to do it right the first time it is embarrassing, but what a lesson learned.

This is what the finished top looks like now:

I am so happy I took the time to fix it. What a feeling of accomplishment! Now I'm off to piece the back and, hopefully, give some of those orphan blocks a home there.

I wish you a sense of accomplishment today too!

Update: Apparently none of my orphan blocks are suitable even for the back of this wild quilt. The Wanna Bees gave them a resounding thumbs down. All of them. I guess they are orphans for a reason. Is there any point when you just throw them away?

Going to Guild - April

It's that time of the month again - guild night, that is!

This month was another one of those rare occasions when Gracie didn't have school the next day so she could join Mom and me for three generations of bonding. Unfortunately the topic was a little dry for an 8-year-old, but at least there was lots of chocolate.

First, last year's president, Sharon Bessom, showed off her finished President's Quilt. It is gorgeous and HUGE!

True confession: I am green with envy. Mine is unquilted in the UFO pile.For our program, Holly Anderson visited. Holly is an AQS certified judge and appraiser, the only one in Georgia. We are so lucky to have her just up the road. While Gracie wasn't exactly entranced, the rest of us were hanging on Holly's every word as she described how quilt show judges examine quilts, hold and release them, and what she does to keep her binding "full." She even generously answered questions about appraising quilts, although that was a topic for another night.
Below, Holly compares two quilts in the game "You Be the Judge." Does the quilt on the right look familiar? Yep. I fell in love with it and took a picture at the Bulloch Hall Show. Love those blues! Holly says the one on the left would win because the triangles are a higher level of difficulty. Just goes to show that I wouldn't make a good judge. In my opinion the blue wins hands down just for WOW factor.
Remind me to show you the great quilt from Show and Tell later. I started to put up a picture and tell you all about it before I remembered that it is a gift and a surprise. It is amazing, and I would hate for the recipient to accidentally stumble across it just because I showed it to you! I don't think that could happen, but I would feel awful if it did after hearing the lengths this person has gone to to keep it a secret. Trust me, it is breathtaking. I hope the quilter will create a class or pattern for it after the gift is given.

As always, guild night is incredibly inspirational and gets me in the mood to create all manner of new things. Holly's program also made me resolve to raise my standards. If I'm going to buy quality fabric and a fabulous new machine, put my time and effort and creativity into a piece, then I might as well do it right.

I hope you all have a great week!