Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Do-Overs

There are not many times in life that you are allowed a do-over. I bet the guy who drove into the Chinese take-out parking lot a little too fast on a slippery night and cracked our bumper would like a do-over.
"North Wind" pattern.
I should probably name this quilt "Do-Over" because there are many things that I did and had to undo because the results were less than pleasing. (The first thing I did was machine quilted the top with nylon thread, but the results were wretched; I picked out every last stitch and hand quilted it.) These do-overs really make a project drag on and on.
The left "stripe" is the original fabric color that was hidden in the seam line.
I had just gotten to the point of hand quilting the border, when I realized that the fabric color had changed. At first, I thought the border was dusty. But a few shakes later, there was no dust; just major fading, in a few month's time. I did not keep the top in the sun or even where a lamp light touched it.  This caused the project to go to the bottom of the pile while I stewed over what to do.

I finally found better fabric for the border, added red cornerstones, and finished quilting it. Binding should be done in the next couple of weeks. Whew!

2 comments:

Exuberantcolor/Wanda S Hanson said...

It turned out nice in the end, if you could just forget its history. That reminds me of the blues from the early 1980s. They were always the first fabric to fade in a quilt, even when it never saw a direct ray of sunshine. I have heard blue isn't a good color to paint a house because it will fade so fast.

Jeanne said...

Your finished quilt turned out great, despite the set backs.