My Imperfect Quilt is Finished

It feels like a miracle, but my quilt Forest Floor is on the bed. I’ve had to tell myself repeatedly that this project wasn’t cursed, because I was afraid it would be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Certainly, this quilt has had more issues than many of the quilts I’ve made.

I’ve shared how the technique I thought was going to save the day (glue-basting) wasn’t as easy as I’d hoped. I’ve whined about how hard it was to free-motion quilt a king-sized quilt on a domestic sewing machine. I’ve even shared an embarrassing — and time-consuming — mistake.

Since that last post in September, I’ve plowed through the quilting. When I discovered I had wrinkles on the back, I had to stop, unpick stitches, and re-baste part of the quilt. This cost me several days. 

All my other issues were quilting mistakes. My clever choice of a border fabric that the quilting wouldn’t show on really worked. I couldn’t see where I had already sewn. I lost track of where I was and ran over my designs multiple times. I even repeated a corner motif in the border next to it. 

With every mistake I made, I said, “I don’t care!” and kept quilting. It’s my quilt and it’s meant for my bed. I have no intention of having it judged or critiqued. That’s not why I made it.

What matters to me is that it passes a test I learned from a knitter years ago. She told me that, if you can’t see it while riding by on a galloping horse, it’s not a mistake. So a third sleeve on a sweater is a problem, but purling where you should have knitted isn’t. There are plenty of mistakes in this quilt, but I couldn’t get them to show up in my photographs, so I can’t share them with you. I consider this a success.

I had to embrace imperfection to get this quilt done. I repeatedly told myself “finished is better than perfect” and kept sewing.

The quilt went on the bed on October 9^th, just in time to celebrate fall. I no longer think of it as cursed, but rather as an educational experience. I learned so much making this quilt. Even at the very end.

As I re-set my sewing machine so I could go back to straight stitching, I discovered that I had been quilting with the feed dogs (the part of the machine that moves the fabric as it stitches) engaged. I have a plate to add to the bed of my machine so the feed dogs don’t touch the quilt, but I forgot to use it. One more reason I was having so much trouble quilting Forest Floor.

Have you ever made a project that felt cursed?