10.19.2011

Citrus Sails Quilt


Front of Citrus Sails Quilt
Back of Citrus Sails Quilt

As part of the do.good.stitches charity bee, I've been quilting the top from my month. This entire project has been somewhat of a nightmare to be honest and I was about ready to throw in the towel on multiple occasions. Nevertheless, I persevered and I learned quite a few lessons along the way.

Lesson 1: Being a perfectionist isn't always perfect.  My design involved many half square triangles and lining up the points gave me a headache. I spent hours sewing and unpicking blocks together in an attempt to get them to line up perfectly. Luckily, my husband intervened. He told me that the Native Americans intentionally put a mistake in any handmade thing they make to show that it is created with human hands and humans are imperfect -- acknowledging that only God is perfect. I thought that was a rather interesting way to look at things. So I decided to embrace my inner imperfections and sew together the blocks to the best of my ability.

The front of the quilt - you can't even tell that some of the points don't line up perfectly!

Lesson 2: Sometimes simple is better. When I went to quilt it, I had a complex plan in my head and ended up with some (okay a lot) of puckers on the back. I couldn't for the life of me quiet the perfectionist side of my brain and I spent the better half of a day unpicking the quilting. Then I redid it in much simpler way and I like it much better.

The quilting - diagonal straight lines.

Lesson 3: Machine binding a quilt isn't the worst thing. I've always been opposed to machine binding (mainly because I couldn't get it to look the way I wanted) and have spent hours hand sewing my bindings. But because I was so behind on the deadline for this quilt, I bit the bullet and bound it by machine. And ya know, it doesn't look half bad.




What lessons have you learned while quilting?

12 comments:

Unknown said...

Patience! I find if I try to rush a project, that I end up taking twice as long getting it done for all the mistakes I make.

Carol said...

There are no mistakes only lessons learned when it comes to sewing. Seam ripping is part of the learning process and I've done LOTS of learning:)

Your quilt colors are lovely!!!

Ellen said...

I think it looks great - its a fresh color combo & I love the back too! I have learned that washing a quilt once can camouflage some bumps in the quilting road. ;) "Perfect" is setting the bar too high, I think. "Nicely done with alot of love in it" is my goal.

Tiffany said...

I've learned that sewing-while-tired, late at night, often leads to mistakes! And it really is a bad idea to sew over pins (how many needles and pins must I break before this will sink in?!)

I think your do. good stitches quilt is amazing and admirable.

I bind all my quilts by machine, because I just can't find the time to hand-stitch entire perimeters of quilts. I think machine binding looks great. Just recently I tried a 2.25 inch (rather than 2.5 inch) double fold binding and found it gave me the skinnier look I've been wanting to achieve. Do I dare try trimming that down to 2 inch?

Maureen T. said...

Love your quilt! The color combo and your triangle points look great from here!! Your photo is brilliant!
The triangles mimic the autumn leaves and the background, the mountains in the background!

Lisa said...

Wow, that's beautiful! I love blues, and the brights look awesome with it. Great job!

Miranda said...

Wow! That is beautiful! I've learned to not work on things after 9 pm, because they never go right!

twelfthzodiac said...

The background in those first photos looks like a paint by number, gorgeous!
All those HST's make me dizzy! Congrats on the finish!

I have learned to not even bother to try & be creative while the sun is still up. Honestly, I just stall & do busy work until it's dark & the real action happens. I'm a night owl!

Mrsblocko said...

I love the contrast on this quilt. and the strips of 9 patch triangle thingies. (See I know all the technical terms don't I?)

I just finished my first full sized quilt and my mantra was "finished is better than perfect."

Only you are gonna notice that the quilt isn't lined up exactly perfect.

Heather said...

I know how hard it is not to be self-critical. We are our own worst critics, for sure! I'm glad you were able to let go of perfectionism on this one. It couldn't be a more beautiful quilt! :o)

Amanda Jean said...

this is such a fabulous quilt! i love the bright colors paired with the gray. and the simplicity of the HST's is just lovely! congratulation on a beautiful finish!

i've learned to not look too closely at one specific area of my machine quilting. (sometimes i think my stippling looks sloppy and gross!) BUT if i look at the quilt as a whole, i'm much happier. :) which leads me to my second lesson i've learned...if it's handmade it's not going to be perfect. and my third lesson...if i even THINK about ripping something out, 9 times out of 10 I won't be happy until i do.

thanks for linking up to finish it up Friday!

Stephanie Hughes said...

Found this on Pinterest and just love it!