Monday, November 22, 2010

A Tale of Two Quilts

Remember this quilt top?  I didn't give an explanation of it in my last post, so here it is...
We had an auction planned for Sunday Nov. 21st at church to benefit our Awana program. I usually just donate a haircut to this auction each year, but this is the first year that my husband and I are "Commanders" of this ministry.  When someone mentioned how cool it would be if I could donate a quilt for the auction, I thought, "that's a GREAT idea!"  Why not?  I have made a couple of quilts using this pattern and knew how easy and fast it comes together.  And how popular those quilts turned out to be, so why not?  I knew I wanted to just make a lap sized quilt and planned to make the top on tuesday and quilt and bind it on wednesday (my weekend)...plenty of time before the auction on sunday, right?  With this pattern, I like to wash it before giving it, so...
I love the crinkly, quilty softness of the raw edges on all those circles.  And then I looked closer...

Most of the blocks looked just like this.  But there were 2 blocks (same fabric) that looked like this...


In hind-sight, had I used a tighter stitch, I probably could have avoided this particular "disaster".  But it is easier to navigate those curves with a slightly longer stitch AND as I said before, I have made this pattern before...twice.  I felt safe washing it.  After the initial shock and devastation subsided a little, knowing the auction was only 3 days away, and I would be working all 3 of those days, I needed to figure out what to do.  Try to repair this one?  Give up the idea of an auction quilt all together?  Or start over?  I went through some of my favorite quilting blogs looking for inspiration (and comfort).  I found this tutorial at Cluck Cluck Sew.  It was one of those "someday" quilts.  I decided "someday" was today...well, tomorrow.  It was 1:00 am and I had to work the next day, so I decided to get some sleep and start fresh on thursday...ok, it was already thursday, but I needed sleep.
Morning came WAY too early.  I woke up at 4:50 am.  Unable to will myself back to sleep, I got up and started making new blocks.  By 8am, I had 22 out of 30 blocks completed. 
I had run out of the Kona white and knew a trip to the fabric store would be my lunch break.  I got home about 4:30 and went back to work.  By bedtime, I had it loaded on the frame and knew sleep would not be a problem this time.
I know I have mentioned before just how much I LOVE this frame, but when I got the quilting done on this quilt in just over an hour (my lunch break on friday), I fell in love all over again. 

No straight lines, just meandering all over.  The 1st quilt took about 2 1/2 hours to quilt without the frame...just rolling, re-rolling, and maneuvering it through the machine...what a pain! 
Sorry for the blurry pic. I forgot to bring my camera to the auction so I snapped this with my phone.

All in all, I'm glad I decided to make a new quilt.  It was a long week, but it was for a good cause.  And I will definitely be making more of these blocks.  I am so grateful for all you crafty quilty people out there who share your creativity and talent online.  Thank you!

5 comments:

  1. I love! I love your dedication to the cause as well. You could have just as easily threw in the towel after the "disaster" and said better luck next year. That is really great of you work whip up a whole new quilt. It turned out lovely. I have to say, I love the first quilt, too. Can you repair it? What will you do with it?

    I need to gain some more experience so I can do pretty patterns like this.

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  2. I'm sorry that happened! I hope you can still save the quilt because it looks great! I've made the quilt 8 times now and have never had that happen either.

    -Julie

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  3. Lindsey,
    Your dedication is admirable. You have a big heart for not just giving up when the disaster happened with the first quilt, but you knew in your heart, that you wanted donate a quilt for the auction. Good Job.

    You should enter this in my sewing challenge blog here at, Paula's Sewing Challenges, and you could win a little something, something.

    Hope to see you there soon.

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  4. Great looking quilts, job well done. I don't know if I could have gotten another quilt finished that quick, but, I sure would have done my best. I love the story behind both quilts, it's got a make you proud. Again, great job.

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  5. I'm glad you got the rings out and ready to start on bigger quilts. Sorry it never dawned on me before that it was those silly rings keeping your extentions from fitting. Better late than never.
    Now, I'm going to sit back and wait to see what quilt you come up with next.
    By the way, we didn't have any problen laughing Tuesday, that was way too fun, great job by all of you.

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