Quilting in the Wind - Again!

Quilt No. 62 Gets Some Much Needed Lovin'

As I've said before, most quilters are plagued by UFO's (UnFinished Objects).  It's one of the inexplicable tenets of life that starting a project is ever so much more fun than finishing it. There's that tsunami of enthusiasm, that unadulterated glee that accompanies a new enterprise. This applies not only to quilting, but to pretty much everything else - taking French lessons, teaching the dog to fetch your purse, encouraging the cat to flush the toilet, siding the house.

I like to think I've taken the UFO to a new place.  I now take quilts with FO status (Finished Objects) and demote them back into UFO's.  It's positively perverse.  It's the equivalent of Sisyphus finally getting that cantankerous stone to the top of the hill, being dissatisfied with the way he got it up there, and deciding to roll it down and start all over again.  At least in my case I only roll it half way down.

While I was reasonably satisfied that the design of Quilting in the Wind expressed the story I wanted to tell (see the 2008 blog post) I was never happy with it as a Finished Object.  It's been hanging in the closet since the day after it was finished in 2008.  So it was the first quilt I thought about when I started looking around for a quilt that I could revitalize with some machine quilting.  A practice piece.  Quilting in the Wind backslid into UFO status.

I removed the binding and all the hand quilting.  Yippee - none of the elements on the quilt needed to be replaced, unlike my previous adventure with My Escape.  Lacking a good idea of just exactly what shapes I should quilt into it, I spent hours gawking at it, doodling with my machine, and creeping other quilter's FO's on the internet.  All of that proved to be fruitless.  Ultimately, I just went for it and tried to add in quilted shapes that looked like wind.  Never having actually seen wind, this was tricky.  It called for lots of imagination and plenty of cups of coffee, and not necessarily in that order.

This quilt did prove to be a good learning experience, and my key take away was this.  If you don't know what to do...just jump in.   It actually will come to you.  (Warning: this is not good advice for non-swimmers or pilots who never showed up for their lessons.)

My Escape

The Rebuild of Quilt No. 26 from 2002!

Renovations.  Have you ever bought a new bath mat and had it end up costing you thousands of dollars as you upgraded its surroundings to live up to the nineteen dollar bath mat?  The same thing can happen with a quilt, but the expenditure will be measured in hours, not dollars.

Over ten years ago I was surfing the internet when I can across the logo for a medical conference in Hawaii.  It was very simple – two palm trees, plain beach, and a blue background to suggest sea and sky.  I took the liberty of using it as a starting point for a quilt.  My mistake was that I also used it as the end point for that quilt, and it looked kind of plain.  I somehow convinced myself that quilting a single line around the trees was “good enough” - having already moved on to the next far more interesting quilt.  I decided it was fine – a nice logo lookalike.  To prove how fine it was, I hung it behind a door at the cottage but I secretly cringed at its semi-finished state every time I came across it. 

Then, after enduring more than a decade cowering behind the door, the impossible happened. The quilt was wanted by a friend because it reminded her of Florida.  It would have a chance at real love.  Could I stand its way?  I looked at it and gritted my teeth.  It was basically unquilted.  The mismatched wobbly binding wasn’t nearly as charming as it had been when I was in a hurry to finish the project many years ago.  While I didn’t mind parting with the quilt, how could I send such an unfinished and unloved object out into the world?  It would be like sending your child out with a ball of wool stuffed under each arm in place of a fully knitted sweater!

I just couldn’t do it. 

But what I could do was to quilt it now.  There are no rules about these things, no statute of limitations that runs out and prohibits you from altering a quilt.  And, how long could it possibly take, if I just removed the binding and gave it a proper machine quilting?  A couple of hours?  A plan emerged.  I could toss out that old binding since, 65 quilts later, I had a much better fabric stash where there would surely be a piece that actually matched.  Also, I had somewhat improved my binding skills.  Then there was the issue of how much I hated the boring beige fabric that I’d used for the beach/island.  I could change that too!  In my mind this was all going to achieved PDQ.

I began by machine quilting the island.  It looked pretty good.  My confidence soared.  I machine quilted the sea and the sky.  It looked…not so good.  What you do in these circumstances is set the piece aside and look at it after a few days, or in a different light. You can hold it up to a mirror for a new perspective, or have a friend who would never tell you the awful truth come over and endorse it.  I tried most of those strategies, but reality could not be denied.  The sky looked wrinkled and crappy - even worse than the original unquilted version of it!  It was painful, but this was one of those situations where I just had to tear the Bandaid off the scab.  I ripped out the machine quilting in the sky, planning to do it over.  But now, the sky fabric had stretched and it could not be re-used. Don’t think I didn’t try.

I was getting in deeper and deeper.

There was only one possible avenue.  I got out the scissors and cut off the sky.  The sea part was okay, so I left that intact.  I dyed a new piece for the sky and liked it even better than the original.  I’d also learned a thing or two about dying fabric.  Next, I spent a whole whack of time doing test pieces with various battings until I was satisfied.  I re-assembled the top, batting, and backing, and (gulp!) machine quilted it once more.  The test pieces had been worth the effort – the end result was much better. 

One little problem remained. Now the palm tree fronds looked pretty much like Day One after the hurricane of the century.  All that manipulation of the quilt had pulled off most of the fragile pieces and frayed the few brave souls that were left behind.  Yep.  They too were given a date with Mr. Scissors. But now…despite a foolishly large collection of green fabric occupying my drawers, I could not find any that worked with the other colours in the quilt.  It was a great excuse to go to the fabric store and get some new stuff!  And, of course, some other stuff.

So, in essence, I completely rebuilt this quilt, much as one would the engine of a classic car, keeping just a few key parts and replacing all the rest.  There is enough of the original left to pretend it is still the same item.  The tree trunks and the sea from the original quilt are still there, but everything else had been completely replaced, even the batting and the binding.

Now when I look at My Escape, I'm happy with it, and I don’t feel it needs to play wall flower behind a door.  And like a child who has mastered his table manners, his temper, and his zipper, I’m willing to let it go out into the world on its own. 

It was completely worth the effort.

The original 2002 version of My Escape.