Quilt Festival - Autumn 2010!

Thank you Amy for arranging this Festival; your energy must certainly be boundless!

I'd like to talk today about Love/Hate relationships that sometimes develop with our quilts.  I've had a few quilts turn on me midway through production; in fact, one is still in the "Box of Shame" awaiting a layout that will please.  Most of the time the quilting itself redeems the piece though - whew!

Case in point:
I won a mess of strings from Tara in a bloggy giveaway.  They were mostly light and sweet, not my usual cup of tea.  (I do not own a single piece of clothing in pink!)  I started researching string quilts, bouncing around for something that really caught my eye, and decided to use a white strip in each block, but to offset the white instead of bisecting the block with it.  I added some brights from my own scraps and that helped a bit.  When I got what felt like 12,000 6-inch blocks assembled it still felt too small so I put borders on the top and bottom.  And I hated it.  It was too light, every speck of dirt would show on it, and the borders looked dorky 'cause there were only two of them - what had I done?!?

Well, I had to travel on business so I took it with me.  Agonized over how to quilt it, figuring if nothing else it would be good practice.  I decided to emphasize those diamond shapes.  Luckily I had found a neat piece of fabric (a drape I think) at the Goodwill that seemed to suit perfectly.  I played for three nights at the hotel with the quilting, finishing up after I got home.  Here's the quilting:

And after the fact - I fell in love with it!  This was gifted to my oldest friend; we met in 1969 when she moved to my area from California.  She was the only girl in second grade with unbitten fingernails!  She had eaten turtle soup!  I thought she was so exotic.  We had a gap in there during our early-married-life years, and when we reconnected it was as if no time had passed at all: it simply doesn't matter what happens in the interim, we will always be good, good friends.  Today I don't think of her as exotic, but she's the girlfriend I want to grow old with.  Do you have a friend like that?  I sure hope so.