Shortly before someone dear was to be married two years ago, I started an heirloom quilt for he and his bride. Having it all pieced, ready for applique, I took one last look at it, and decided that it just didn't have the right shade of taupe in the mix, so I pieced a second one, with cooler tones. The quilt has a very large element of bias in it, but nothing particularly noteworthy in terms of construction..... just a very large queen size. Then the applique process began. Not really having a plan on paper, I attached the borders and began creating the applique. With many personal things going on in my life, I spent nearly 18 months on the appliqued borders, far too long for a project of this endearing nature..... and ultimately, the bride and groom parted ways, creating a less urgent desire to complete. So now it was just a matter of finishing up the tibble bit left of the applique and get on with the quilting (my favorite part).
I had been carting this project around to all of my Hen Days for a very long time, and I was beginning to get a rather unpleasant taste in my mouth about it. At one point, a doggie bag filled with Balsamic Vinaigrette dressinged salad had been dropped into my project bag, leaving the quilt top and the 500 yds of bias being used in the border, reeking like Greektown. In November, while the menfolk went north to deercamp, I hosted Hencamp at my home. Three days of sewing, eating, watching movies, eating, sewing, lots of inspiration. We do this from time to time, and actually accomplish quite a bit. One of the things we do is pin quilts, as I have a large unused PingPong table in the basement just for this purpose. We had pinned many quilts, and it was time to get the Wedding Quilt with Funk pinned. We layed it out, and it was a bit tedious to pin the initial sections as there was a bit of stretching out in the interior of the first half. When we moved the quilt to pin the second half, we discovered that the quilt was unsquare by a good 6". SIX INCHES!!! Now I have made over 180 quilts, and an inch is manageable when pinning, but there is absolutely no "it'll quilt out" when you are dealing with SIX INCHES. You have to understand that the Henz consist of not only my very best friends, but these women are among the finest quilters and quilting instructors that there are. We stepped back and looked at this travesty on the PingPong table. I gasped. They gasped. We looked again. They looked at me. All of these women had been students of mine at some point, and grew into quilting with my mantra 'don't take it apart, just work with it'. So.... we began to 'work with it'. We took out some of the multifaceted border on two corners, being absolutely sure that this would solve the problem. NOPE. We ripped out more. NOPE. We took ALL the borders off. NOPE. At this point (11:00pm), I had had enough, thinking that I needed to put the Henz out of their misery. So, after unpinning much of what we had backbreakingly pinned, with scissors in my hand, the Henz stepped back, and I chopped off one whole end, a section that was 20" x 85". I felt this maniacal thrill course through my veins as the Henz nearly had cardiac arrest and murmured solemn condolences. But, at last, she laid flat. At this point, with the quilt laying perfectly flat on the PingPong table, the Hens carefully quided the quilt through my quickly set up Featherweight, not wanting to disturb the raw bias edges that had been exposed during the lacerating. I carefully sewed a 3" strip down one long side, just to shore the whole thing up. At this point, I was thinking 'utility quilt' for those very cold Michigan winter nights. We stepped away from the quilt, breathed a sigh of relief, turned our backs and blinked, and could almost hear the beast begin it's slow and painful process of deforming again. We cringed. HOW COULD THIS BE! We laughed so hard, and we are women of 'that age', we had to make fast tracks to the bathroom. After what seemed like the longest binge of belly shaking laughter ever, we left the beast and opened the bottle of wine. After taking a good hard look at the quilt top several days later, I realized the problem was 'a perfect storm'. Many things attributed to the distortion of it, but the biggest problem was probably my toting a very large, bias-pieced quilt top around for 18 months, unlovingly shoving it in and out of a bag, so it just retaliated like the knees of my 1960's (and 1980's) stretch pants. I repinned it, sans borders, to the best of my ability and unfortunately did not render the help of my Henz, bless their hearts. I constructed the backing 20" larger on all sides with plenty of batting to allow me to add borders after it was quilted. Then I quilted the heck out of it, particularly the 'baggy kneed' center. There are a few spots that if you look closely, you may be able to see the distortion, but it's not too bad. I did all the straight stitching first, leaving the massive free-motion for last, filling in as much as needed to tame the beast. Now, it is quilted and I'm appliquing just one border for the poor edge that got lopped off. The four appliqued borders that we had taken off will be used for another quilt.... no way, am I going to waste those puppies. So, I am creating again as I go, appliquing vine to the one border, and anxious to get THE PERFECT STORM finished. Stay tuned for calmer waters. Finished "Blue Shoes" by Alexander McCall Smith. I do love Precious, and I know that she will be even more endearing on her diet! Now listening to "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini. If you haven't tried your library's collection of books on MP3, CD or cassette, you are really missing out. You can quilt and read at the same time. It's a great world, eh?
