It started out fairly well, except for the length of my stitches, which varied no matter how hard I tried to keep them even. And then, suddenly, things began to go awry. My fabric bunched up in a couple of places and I realized the quilt wasn't looking the way I had wanted it. But I would not give up! I would persevere! I finished quilting the thing.
Finally it was done. I took it off the machine and laid it out. I realized something had gone terribly wrong. There was the bunching, but it was more than that. The lines were too simple on an already simple quilt top, and the soft natural cotton fabric I decided to use for the sashing and back needed something sweeter and looser. The straight lines were almost too harsh for it. They made it look not just shoddy, but really drab, too. It was all wrong.
An hour later, I was ripping it all out.
Three days later, and I still have a third of the quilting seams to rip out. I have quilted around and inside the blocks in orange, green, yellow and blue perle cotton as I go, so that I don't go crazy with my seam ripper and poke my own eyes out; the hand quilting keeps me sane.
We had terrible wet weather this weekend. My husband built me a fire in the fireplace and I spent a few hours a day on the couch with my nine square quilt. It is so nice and cozy, even if it is still unfinished, and on Saturday, my five-year-old climbed in under it with me. He wasn't tired! He just wanted to help by ripping out a couple of stitches, and then he rested his head on my shoulder and promptly fell asleep.
If I'd been feeling at all discouraged, this would have cured me of it.
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