This month’s article deals with quilting disasters. You’ve all heard
them before. Maybe you were a little bit too ambitious and tried a project that was over
your head a little bit and the quilt top turned out all wrong. Or your blocks weren’t
all evenly sized and you had to really adjust to get them to fit. Or maybe you cut out all
your pieces only to discover that you didn’t read the instructions clearly and cut
them all the wrong size. Or maybe you had a bad quilting experience. Hopefully, the
stories I will share will let you know that even the most experienced quilter has had a
bad experience of one kind or another and we all persevere through our trials and
tribulations on the road to making that perfect quilt. I’m not using any names or
locations in order to preserve the privacy of either those who shared or the persons who
contributed to the following stories. I also am quoting almost verbatim from the
women’s stories. I’d like to thank those of you who bravely came forward with
your tales of quilting woe so that all of us can benefit from these stories.
The first story is called "Always Listen to your Intuition". A
receptionist tells this story. When she and her husband were married several years ago,
her Grandmother gave them a DWR quilt ‘top’ made of feed sacks. Many years later
his Mother, who knew nothing of quilts or their value, said that she knew of someone who
would ‘hand quilt’ the top for them. Against her better judgment, the younger
woman let her Mother-In-Law take the quilt top. Several months later her Mother-In-Law
said the quilt was back. When the Daughter-in-Law asked how much she owed for the
quilting, the Mother-In-Law said $50.00. Right away warning bells went off and the dread
set in. When the Daughter-in-Law picked up the lovely DWR antique, hand pieced quilt you
can imagine her horror when she saw what had happened to it. First of all the quilter had
‘hand quilted’ on her own machine, but worst of all, the Mother-in-Law had told
the quilter to ‘square the quilt top up’ and then told the quilter to CUT ALL OF
THE SCALLOPS OFF THE EDGES!!!!
No comment needed here right?
This next story is called (by the woman who made the quilt) "When Hell
Freezes Over". "One year not all that long ago, I made a quilt for my
Sister-in-Law and her husband for their king sized bed. It was in the colors she wanted,
not the colors I prefer but then it wasn’t for me. It was harder for me to work on
this quilt as it wasn’t in my comfort zone and I put many hours into the planning and
the making of this quilt. That Christmas there were so many ‘ooohhs and aahhs’
that I knew it had been just the right present. About three months later I was in her home
and she was taking a break with me over a drink. She casually remarked that she was
redecorating. As the conversation went on she said that the quilt no longer
‘worked’ and she knew that rather than sending it to the trash or something,
that I would have rather she used it. So she cut it up and made dolly blankets for my
niece and her little friends for my niece’s upcoming birthday party. But then she
informs me that I need to finish the edges because the threads were shaggy after she put
the dolly blankets in the wash!!! I suppose I should have been grateful. After all, she
had TRIED to make the quilt that no longer worked useful by cutting it up instead of
putting in the trash. Needless to say, I did not bind the ‘dolly blankets’ as
I’m still a little bit miffed. She has asked me to make her another quilt to go in
her newly redecorated bedroom. I told her that she needed to go and pick out the colors
and fabrics and design and I would think about doing it when I have the time. Is it
freezing in hell yet? I didn’t think so."
Again, when the author so succinctly finishes her story, no comment by me is
necessary.
The next story is called "Charity begins at home". "Our quilt
guild makes many baby quilts each year to give to the local Women’s Shelter, since
many of the women who end up there have children. We always include a nice label on the
back of the quilts so they know that the quilts were from our guild members. Last year one
of the members of our guild attended a rummage sale that was put on by the Women’s
shelter and came across about a dozen of our quilts on a table. The price? One dollar
($1.00) for each quilt!!! Needless to say we are not donating quilts there again,
we’ll just send a check."
This next story is called "An Artist in the Making". "My son was
the disaster zone around quilts. I was making a Puff the Magic Dragon quilt for my nephew
when my son was about 2 ½ years old. I guess I left my finger nail polish close the end
of the counter, because my son got a hold of it and decided that the Dragon needed some
pretty pink polish. I was only half way done with the quilting, but still rushed it right
away to the dry cleaners and they were able to get all the polish off, thankfully. It
smelled like banana oil until I finished the quilting and I was able to wash the quilt.
Then I was quilting an ecru colored whole cloth quilt using chocolate brown thread. One
Sunday afternoon we had both laid down for a nap and when I awoke my son was standing next
to me by the quilt with an ink pen in his hand. He had been standing there scribbling on
the quilt the entire time I slept. His scribbling was right in the center of this quilt.
Well, I tried everything I could think of to get the ink out, including hair spray. My son
was 2 ½ years old at the time of this disaster. He is now 24 years old and still
breathing!"
The author of this tale doesn’t say whether or not she was able to get the
ink out of that quilt and I’m surprised that he is still breathing!
This next group is all short little vignettes of mistakes made by the
quilter’s themselves.
"My closest brush with disaster would be when I was making my first ever
quilt which was a baby quilt for a friend of mine. I had sewn all the blocks together and
then squared it off to add the borders. Once I added the border, I realized that I had cut
all the points off the blocks (they were on point). Lesson learned? Add ¼ inch to your
measurements before you square off."
"My daughter made a wall hanging of Elvis using fabric of Elvis which was
no longer in print. She brought it to me to machine quilt on my new big quilting machine
which I had not learned how to use yet. The top stitches looked okay but underneath looked
like spaghetti. We could not rip out the stitches due to the fact that some stitches were
very tiny and would tear the fabric. I felt really bad about it but couldn’t do much
about it."
"A quilting disaster. The very first quilt I made, my Santa quilt, was
attacked by candle wax and now has wax stains on it. Though I tried many remedies, I am
unable to get the wax off. For a while it was consigned to the cupboard, but now I get it
out and use it frequently. After all it is my favorite quilt. How did candle wax attack
it? Well, as I jumped up to answer the telephone, I knocked over a candle. Fortunately the
wax did not get on me or the carpet…. just my quilt."
Another quilter writes that she hasn’t been quilting long enough to have
any real disasters except that she lost her Grandmother’s quilt that had been quilted
and pieced entirely by hand many many years ago, before she was even born, in one of their
many moves. It has never re-appeared and she’s still paying homage to the family for
that!
"I was making a quilt and pieced a couple of blocks incorrectly and
didn’t catch it until the top was all together. By then I did not feel like taking it
apart to correct the mistake so I left them in the quilt. The only sad thing that has
happened is that I was living in a very small community and had asked a woman if she could
teach me to quilt. She more or less said that she was too busy. Then I asked her if she
ever gave classes and she said yes. So I asked her if she would let me know the next time
she gave one so I could sign up for it. Six months later a neighbor was telling me about
this quilting class in our community center taught by this very same woman. Of course,
there was only one more class in a series of six so I was too late to join."
These next two stories are my sad tales of woe. The first one is totally my
mistake and the second one…well, you’ll see.
I had gotten a quilt magazine in the mail that had a wonderful penny rug style
table runner on the cover. Well, I was inspired and decided that I had to make this
runner. It had been made using wonderful batik fabrics instead of the felted wool you
usually see (which ended up being unfortunate for me as you will see). So I went to the
quilt store and purchased a lot of beautiful bright batiks. Well, this pattern had many,
many, many small pieces and many blocks as well. It was to be buttonhole stitched so you
had to use fusible webbing. Well I started quilting by buttonhole stitching most of my
patterns but had been needle turn appliquéing for the last year or so, using the freezer
paper on top method. Well, it took me many hours of tracing and cutting to get all the
pieces traced and ready to fuse on to the fabric. I sat down one hot afternoon and started
fusing. I was about 90% done when I looked at the pieces and realized that I had fused
each and every single piece to the right side of the fabric!! (When using fusible web you
must fuse it to the wrong side of the fabric). I could not believe I had made such a
boneheaded error. I should have given up right then and there but was so humiliated at my
blunder that I painstakingly re-traced all the pieces, and went off to the fabric store to
buy more fabric and fused them properly this time. I only ended up finishing like 6 out of
15 blocks and they are still sitting there waiting for completion!
This next disaster story is to me one of Titanic proportions. I had gone into
one of my favorite quilt stores and there was a wonderful pieced quilt hanging behind the
counter. I drooled over this quilt for many months and finally asked the shop owner if she
thought I could make it. Well she said a resounding ‘yes’ and I said well,
I’ve never really pieced much before and she said the directions were very well
written and I should have no problem at all. So I bought all the fabric I needed and set
off to do my first pieced quilt with basically very little piecing experience. Well, it
was an extremely complicated quilt to piece and fortunately my first class had taught me
several helpful tips on piecing. But I just could not get a consistent ¼ inch seam no
matter what I did. So I finally gave up and put the quilt away until I could purchase my
new machine with a wonderful ¼’ foot. Finally, a year later, I purchased my new
machine and took out my pieces and started quilting. Well I worked what seemed like day
and night to finish it and finally I did, after many mistakes and ripping out to match
seams better, etc. Here’s where the disaster part starts. I was really proud of this
quilt because when it was finally put together it was obvious that this was a quilt an
experienced quilter should have pieced and I had done it and it looked pretty good. So I
pressed it, pieced the back and sent it off to a quilter that I didn’t know and
really had not seen any of her work. Well, she emailed me telling me what ideas she had
for quilting it and how soon it would be done. So I patiently waited and waited. I made a
matching runner for my nightstand and waited some more. Finally after about a month and a
half I emailed her asking her how it was coming and when she thought it would be done
since I wanted to put it in our local quilt show. She said that it was on the machine
right then and she’d have it done that week. Well, that week went by and another week
went by and no quilt. So I emailed her again and she apologized and said she had a lot
going on and said she’d have it done soon. So I waited some more and finally almost
three months after I sent it I got it back. Well, I sort of briefly looked at it and sewed
the binding on it so I could work on it during my group meeting that evening.
When I got there I proudly displayed my quilt and one of the ladies said
"who quilted this, did you?" and I said, "no, why?". At which point I
really examined the quilt. Well it was a true disaster. I mean horrible. It looked like
she had quilted it while intoxicated and in a huge hurry. She had done a feathered pattern
in the border, which would have been fine, but it looked like she started there and then
moved in towards the center. There were puckers everywhere on top! Not to mention the
bottom. The tension was so loose in places you could put your finger through it and so
tight in other places there were knots on top! Well, needless to say I almost cried. I
took it to some very well known quilter’s in our area hoping that it could be fixed
and asking what I could do about it. The consensus was "after crying and swearing, I
would either slap the binding on it and call it a lesson learned or rip it out."
Well, I folded it up and put it away for a while and pondered my dilemma. I finally
decided that I could not just put the binding on it and call it a lesson learned. I had
slaved over that thing. So I ripped it all out. I mean it took me over 3 months to do it
and I got tendonitis in my right arm from all the ripping and I ended up throwing away the
back (about $40.00 worth of fabric). I finally got it ripped out, removed the borders and
washed the quilt. Re-measured it, put the borders back on it, and took it to the
drycleaners to have it pressed and blocked and sent it off to another quilter in my city.
She did a wonderful job and it now resides proudly on my bed. The name of the quilt is the
Little Quilt that Could. Lesson learned? Never send a quilt off to an unknown quilter and
never do it in trade for services!!!
These stories are all that I have for you right now but I know there are
hundreds of thousands of them out there! This simply goes to show you that everybody has
had a disaster happen while quilting and we’ve all persevered and somehow it makes us
all feel better knowing that somewhere out there someone has a worse story to share and
we’ve all had to learn a lesson or two or three along the way.
Next month I’ll discuss choosing fabric for your quilt project.
