A Tale of Two Quilts: Just Quilt It!

This Tuesday I began quilting two quilts. Placing a quilt sandwich under the needle for the first time is always nerve wreaking for me. So many fears fly through my head: Is my quilting plan going to work? Is my backing stretched enough to prevent puckering? Will the thread and sewing machine cooperate? It’s enough to stall a quilter without enough gumption. The fears and doubts have gotten to me a time or two. This time was no exception, I’ve put off starting these two for several weeks.

Scrappy Wedding Ring Quilt

Take my scrappy wedding ring quilt: I have been working on this quilt for almost seven years! I started it just after I got married. When I first started cutting and piecing, I didn’t realize what I was getting myself into. Then life got in the way a time or two (moves, pets, kids… you know) and I worked on it here and there, without any clear intention of actually finishing it to be total honest. It felt as if it were way out of my league. Finally, in my new quest to de-clutter my stash and finish my projects, scrappy wedding ring quilt was pulled out. A little determination and I soon had the top finished. Oh… it was glorious! It is more beautiful than I had ever imagined it to be. (Stay tuned for pictures of the finished quilt!)

Of course, in my opinion, a quilt is never finished until the last stitch of the binding, so I have a long way to go. My goal is to enter it into the state fair… so I have to do my best machine quilting to date and finish by July 25th!!! The pressure is on… so the fears are almost as strong as the desire to start! Well I finally did it, I placed the first stitch… and, as a true quilter should be, so excited to get the next several thousand more in place!

Starting the scrappy wedding ring quilt

A Friend’s Memory Quilt

The second quilt sandwich I started quilting today is a friend’s I offered to finish for her. She recently lost her husband and chose to take some of his T-shirts and button-up shirts and create a memory quilt for herself. She did a wonderful job but was unable to finish it. This quilt presents an interesting challenge. The fabrics are not the typical quilters cotton and the back of the quilt is pieced as well. While she didn’t have any special plans for the quilting of it, I do want to ensure the stitching looks good on both sides of the quilt. While the quilting plan was fairly simple my fears swirled around the fabric and how the machine would handle it…What kind of monster would my machine create with this fabric combination? Would the stitches even look presentable?

Well, I said to myself, I’m giving it an hour today; what I get done is what I get done, end of story. Amazingly, that hour got me all of the walking foot work done! All I have left now is the free motion quilting. And all those fears and questions… I should trust myself better than that! I had no reason to be concerned. It all worked out perfectly!

So the moral of the story is: Just do it! Don’t let the fears, concerns, questions, whatever they are to stop you from sitting down at your machine and doing what you know how to do. Sometimes just starting is the hard part.

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