Is there such a thing as the perfect quilt?  Do you drive yourself nuts trying to make sure all your seams match?  Do you feel like the Quilt Police are looking disapprovingly over your shoulder as you work?  If so, you should read  “Perfection” from The House of Krom.

I have to say that the author hits the nail on the head.  I’ve spent so much time obsessing over trying to make all my quilts perfect.  But the truth is, that no matter how carefully I cut and sew and press, I STILL can’t get all my seams to match!  I actually stopped quilting for a while, out of frustration.  The joy was gone.

Now I’m approaching my quilting differently.  I want to enjoy the process, not drive myself crazy.  I guess that’s what liberated quilting is all about!  It’s not just about the wonky stars and creative piecing, as fun as all that is.  It’s really a mindshift.

Look closely, and you'll see that the seams on the patchwork are offset by a quarter inch!

Take a good look at the picture on the right.  Click on it to make it bigger, and you’ll see that the seams on the patchwork are offset by at least a good quarter-inch.  I suspect this has something to do with the fact that I cut the patchwork squares in half, and then sewed them to the brown triangles.

No matter what I did, these seams were NEVER going to match!

A year ago, I would have given up in total dismay.  But now?  Well, if they don’t line up, they don’t line up.  And you know what?  From a distance, you can’t even tell.

The quilting police better not look too closely! Not all the seams in the border match.

You can see that not every seam in my border matches either!  And I didn’t spend a lot of time pinning the daylights out of it, trying to make those seams line up.  All I did was to press the seams going one way on one pieced strip, and going the opposite way on the other one.  I put my walking foot on, lined everything up as best I could, and had at it.  Some seams match, some don’t.  And guess what?  From a distance, you can’t tell!

Molly is excited about the Hopes and Dreams Quilt Challenge! She has carefully inspected this quilt, and says it meets with her approval!

And my quilt has found a home.  When it’s done, I’m going to donate it to the Hopes and Dreams Quilt Challenge for ALS.  This challenge is open to any quilter who wants to donate a quilt.  The quilt should be at least 35 by 44 inches, and bed-sized quilts are even better.  The quilts will be given to people with ALS, and some will be auctioned, raffled off, or displayed to raise money for ALS research.  The challenge is open until July 31, 2010.

Anyone who donate a quilt will be entered into a drawing to win prizes provided by a wide range of sponsors.

This sounds like a win-win situation to me!  You can donate as many quilts as you want.  I already have another one about halfway pieced using Bonnie Hunter’s leaders and enders technique.  I’ll donate that one, too.  I love to make quilts, but you can only use so many of them, so it’s nice to find another place that can use them.

And it’s even nicer to use up all that fabric that has been sitting around here for years!  As Clare at Dordogne Quilter says, “Finished is better than perfect!”  I love it!

PS:  Brenda at Scraps and Strings has directions for making utility quilts to donate to the Mennonite Central Committee.  It’s pretty warm in Haiti, but I would guess those folks will need blankets at night.

Quilt pinned to batting and backing

Been busy working on my AAQI quilt.  I decided against fusing it.  I wanted to keep the frayed edges and the softness.  Another reason was that I would have had to disassemble it to iron the Wonder Under onto it!  I learned that if you want to fuse something, it’s a good idea to have the fabric fused ahead of time!

So this quilt top is not sewn together.   It’s being held together with the quilting, which is working surprisingly well.  The edges of the strips are fraying a little, which is the effect I was looking for.  (I suppose I should add a note saying that this quilt should not be washed in the washing machine!  It would probably be OK to hand wash it carefully, roll it in a towel to absorb excess moisture, and let it air dry on a flat surface.)

Pieced backing

I probably spent too much time worrying about the backing, but I finally hit on this combo, using leftover fabric from the front.  Now I just need to come up with the binding!

My collection of "darning silk"

I have a big bag of embroidery floss that I ran across recently, but do you think I can find it now?  I need to tear apart my closet to locate it.  In the meantime, I ran across a bunch of darning silk thread that I’ve had for years.  I probably got it in a box of stuff from one of the many farm auctions in South Dakota I used to go to when I lived there.

Darning silk?  It’s probably from the days when women used to take the time to darn wool socks.  The thread is probably at least thirty years old, but it’s still strong and usable after all those years.  The colors are goofy in the photo; the blues are really gray.

I settled on a light tan to quilt the piece with.  The hand quilting is going well.  I haven’t done any hand quilting in years, and I forgot how relaxing it is.  I spent several hours quilting the piece yesterday, and should finish that today.

I recently ran across the concept of “slow cloth.”  This is a reaction to all the quilting shortcuts that are available today.  While I don’t have a problem with the shortcuts (they do make it possible to finish quilts in a short time), there is something to be said about taking your time with some pieces, to just enjoy the process.  This is something I want to explore further, in another blog post.  In the meantime, take a look at Considering at Judy’s Journal.  This is a thoughtful post on what quiltmaking is today, and what it could be.

So I haven’t been in a hurry to finish this piece.  This is a change for me.  I’m deliberately working at a slower pace, not rushing the process.  Because the piece is small, even though it’s taking longer than I expected, it’s OK, because it’s nearly done now anyway.  It’s interesting that I’m using the darning silk to quilt it.  It’s like the thread has come full circle, from an era when women took the time to darn socks, to taking the time to handquilt my challenge quilt.

On a different note:  I’ve joined two Yahoo groups.  The first one is the Liberated Quilters.  While they’re not affiliated with Gwen Marston, they follow her liberated quilting methods.  In the words of the group, “We just want to have fun and say boo! to the quilt police!”  I love it!

The second group is Studio Quilts–Goldilocks And Friends.  This group was started by Debbie Babin, “to offer learning opportunities and communicate on topics that relate to textile (fiber) arts and quilting.”  This group is a bit more serious-minded, which is good, also.  My goal this year is to find my voice, my own personal style, so this is a place where I can go to explore this aspect of my quilting.

I would also recommend visiting any of the blogs on my blogroll.  Seeing what other quilters are doing has two advantages.  Not only are my horizons being expanded, but I already have ideas for my next two AAQI Challenge Quilts!

Front of quilt. The spots are from snowflakes that melted on the camera lens.

Here they are!  Pictures of the finished baby quilt!  It was quite an adventure getting them.  I was all set to shovel a path to the clothesline when my wonderful husband, Andrew, said, “Why don’t you just put on your snowshoes to walk out there?”  Duh.  And he didn’t even laugh at me for not thinking of it myself.   His comment was, “I hate to see you shoveling all that snow for a path you’ll only use once.”  Now you know why I married him.  I wasn’t letting him get away!

Or course, it was dark and snowy and windy, so it’s not the best picture. I even managed to drop the quilt in the snow, too.  But if you click on the pictures, you can see somewhat bigger versions.  Click on the little icon on the picture, and it will get bigger yet.

Wish I could have shown more detail, but it was COLD out there!  It was also very windy, so I had to wait for the quilt to stop flapping in the refreshingly frigid breeze to take a picture!

I appreciate my warm gloves every time I have to do something bare-handed outdoors.  They were $60 gloves that I got at the end of the season for $15.  I would never have paid $60 for a pair of gloves, but these are definitely worth it.  My hands do NOT get cold when I wear them!

With this quilt, I started out to do the Crayon Box design from Quiltville.  If you’ve never been there, go visit right now, and check it out.  I’ll wait for you to come back.  This is a totally awesome site that I highly recommend.

I had bought a panel of Laurel Burch cat pictures a while back.  Each little picture is a portrait of a cat family.  I thought of Sarah right away when I bought it.  Of course, I forgot I had it, but I found it when I started digging through my scraps.  I cut the panel up into individual pictures, and used the Crayon Box idea to sew the quilt.  It was a fun quilt to make.

I emailed Sarah pictures as I was working on it, and she showed them to my grandsons.  The oldest one, Tal, said, “Granny sure does like cats, doesn’t she?”  He’s right!  Three out of the four baby quilts I’ve made for Sarah have a cat theme!  I didn’t even realize it til he mentioned it.

Back of quilt.

The back could almost stand on its own as a quilt.  It was an experimental piece that took off on its own.  The strips were an experiment with the Wave Runner tutorial from V at Bumble Beans.  I was intrigued when I read the tutorial and wanted to try it.  I couldn’t imagine getting wavy seams like that to lie flat, but it worked!  I will definitely be doing more with this technique.

The purple cat (who’ll you’ll recognize from my blog header) was my first experiment in liberated piecing.  I just sketched the kitty on a piece of paper, and pieced it without a pattern, or anything.  Now that was fun!  I was really tickled at how well it came out, and it was easy, too.

Between shoveling the driveway, running to the library and grocery store, and fixing lunch and cleaning up, I haven’t had a chance to work on my AAQI quilt yet today.  I might later on, but Andrew may go fishing this afternoon, and if he does, I’m going to go with him so I can go snowshoeing.  I’ll keep you posted on my progress with that project!