Tuesday, September 4, 2007

I am not a perfectionist, but...


I did it!. I finished quilting my king-size Trip-Around-the-World. I started
Friday night and finished on Sunday night. You can see the backing fabric
at the top of the picture. Don't you just love finding a piece of fabric and
knowing that it is perfect for something? That is how I felt when I saw this.
I didn't get the border fabric in the photo. That is a perfect border print that
I found the same way. I will take a pic of the whole quilt when I show it
at show-and-tell at guild after it is bound.

I started this quilt in a class at my LQS given by Norma Campbell. She
has very organized instructions for the piecing, and the pressing. Since
I am a pressing nut, I was very impressed. I wanted to make the whole
thing from my stash, but didn't know if I could find 24 half yard pieces that
would match. So I walked to the other side of the room, turned around, and
gazed at the shelves holding my stash. I was looking for the thickest folded
pieces that would indicate it had 1/2 yard or more on them. Well the pieces
that jumped out were blue and yellow prints. I filled them in with greens,
lighter blues, yellows and darker blues. The fun part came in deciding
the order of the fabrics.

Now here comes the perfectionist part. I had some sections left over from
cutting the borders and thought if I had enough I could use it for the binding.
I squeezed out enough, all 408" and sewed it on. As I was doing the hand
sewing on the back, I decided that I didn't like the way the print showed on
the front, so I ripped--literally ripped-- the binding off. It wasn't an anger
thing, but a practical thing. If I had to pick all the stitches out it would
have taken me days. So I just ripped it! It didn't hurt the quilt or the
binding. I re-ironed it and will sew it on tonight and start over. I am usually
very laid back when it comes to my quilting but this really bothered me
for some reason. I knew that every time I saw that quilt on my bed I would
zoom in on the binding. Now it will be perfect--I hope!

Until next time...
Susie

3 comments:

Mar said...

I bow to you! Congrations on a major accomplishment!

Floss said...

Sometines things have a way of working out. What a pretty quilt.

Alice I. said...

Susie, your Trip turned out beautifully! How wonderful that you were able to work from your stash and be able to find 24 fabs that work together. Norma is a great teacher! I'm taking a class with her on Monday night at my LQS (where I also happen to work) called "Baskets and Log Cabins. On the binding problem, I probably would have done what you did -- tear it out and start again. You have to happy with it, especially if you're going to use it on your bed! Hope you post a pic of the whole quilt. Thank you for sharing.