My second quilting project was for my mom. I’m currently working on another one for her.
I grew up in a house on 3.5 acres. My mom had many flower beds. When she and my step-dad could no longer care for the property, they downsized to a 2-bedroom duplex, but they still had their flowered sofa and love seat, and a small porch for some planters. After the duplex, they went to “independent living” in a small 1-bedroom apartment. Due to the size, she was not even able to keep her flowered sofa or love seat.
I wanted my mom to have something with flowers. I decided to make her a quilt. It would be pretty and practical and not take up much space.
Once again, I headed off to Hunter’s. I had not gone there specifically looking for another kit, but that is what I ended up choosing. I saw the sample on display and thought it was just what I had in mind. It was throw size and the pattern did not involve cutting and sewing nearly as many pieces as my first quilt
My first quilt top that I made from a kit did not look like the shop sample simply because I arranged my fabric differently. This one did not turn out like the sample because I messed it up and had to figure out how to fix it.
I’m not sure why I did what I did. I had seen the sample at the shop. They even let me take a couple of pictures for reference. The pattern used was. “Polo” from Villa Rosa Designs. A charm pack was part of the quilt kit. The pattern called for sewing the 5” squares into large 4-patch blocks. I don’t know why I did it, maybe because I had been watching videos of sewing techniques on YouTube, but I started out making small, scrappy 4-patch blocks. Clearly I had forgotten all about liking the pattern for it’s larger pieces and reduced cutting and sewing.
Once I realized I was doing it wrong, there was no going back. I had to figure out what to do next. I figured that my options were to buy more charm pack squares and save my scrappy 4-patch blocks for another project OR figure out a way to make them the correct size to fit into the quilts. I chose the second option. I sewed the scrappy 4-patch blocks together to make scrappy 16-patch blocks. Of course, with the seam allowances, they still were not the correct size. My next step to make them the correct size was to add a border around each 16-patch block.
In the end, I was happy with the result and my mom loved it. (She didn’t know it wasn’t supposed to be the way it turned out. Even if she had, she wouldn’t have cared – she’s a mom.)
If you’ve messed up a quilting project, I love to hear about it. And about how you fixed it.
sew many distractions 