Sometimes I can't sew (aka s***t happens)

I finished sewing the border on my belle quilt a few days ago, but I didn't actually spread it out and look at it until this afternoon. I cleared a space on the floor of the living room, spread the quilt down and started to smooth out the rumples. I smoothed, and smoothed, and smoothed some more, before I finally realized that it just wasn't working. My belle quilt is a bit of a disaster.


The borders are not attached correctly. I have hopeless ripples. I don't know whether that's a result of the diagonal rows or of lazy sewing; probably both. All I know is that its really unacceptable. I think this might be a "take me home to mom" quilt. I'll have her tell me how I messed up, then rip out all the seams and do it again. Tedious for sure, but worth it in the end. Especially since I think I'll really love the quilt once its done. The borders added a lot. I think the thin white border helps to integrate the white squares with the rest of the quilt, and the pink floral really pulls all the other fabrics together. I like the proportion too. The whole thing works together really well I think.

Oh well. I'll set that aside and fix it over winter break. In the mean time, I have a new project. I sometimes feel like my lack of scrap usage makes me a bit of a quilting failure. I often shove them in a plastic bag and ignore them, or give them to my mom. I decided though, that scraps are what separate the women from the girls (or the men from the boys, I shouldn't be sexist here). Its time to grow up. I am going to make a scrap quilt.

I had quite a bit leftover from the belle quilt (above) so I decided to stick with those for now. I'm going to make a scrappy baby quilt with (gasp) no pattern. I'm just kinda playing around with traditional blocks and giving them a new spin and seeing what results.


This is what I have so far. They aren't perfect by any stretch of the imagination (especially the split nine patch...that one is pretty messy) but I'm happy anyways. Its fun to just sorta go with the flow. Hopefully I'll have time to make a few more blocks this weekend before I leave for Thanksgiving!!!