A friend asked me to quilt this diamond quilt for her. It'll be a thank you gift for another friend who was with her every step of the way whilst she was in hospital for six weeks recently. I wanted to get it done before I went to retreat so I loaded it onto the frame and straight away I could see it wasn't going to sit right but sometimes all these types of quilts need is a stern word and a tug or a smooth here and there.
I got it set up and started making binding for my star quilt. All of a sudden I heard an horrific noise and came back to this mess! The foot had got caught inside the quilt top and ripped it apart! It's not my quilt! Panic!!!
I got the foot free and realised it had just pulled the seams apart so it was fixable. Phew!
Ta da!
I finished that row and while getting the next row set up I found this hole. And quickly realised what had happened on the previous row. The seams hadn't caught in places and my foot found the hole and it didn't go well. So I fixed that and inspected the rest of the quilt top and found seven more like it. I usually look for these mistakes before I sew but I didn't this time. They're much easier to repair when the quilt isn't stuck to the frame!
It all went ok until I started getting to the end of the quilt. I'd been using the points of the diamonds as my guide to keep things square so imagine my bewilderment when I noticed that one side of the quilt was 2 inches longer than the other! I can fudge 1/4 - 1/2 inch difference but not two whole inches.
I then noticed that the border wasn't sewn straight. The one side it's sewn kind of in the middle of the diamond...
And the other side it's almost at the bottom of the diamond. My first reaction was thank goodness it wasn't my fault and then I thought Yikes, how am I going to fix this???
I spoke to my friend who said "Funny you say that but when I was measuring I kept getting different measurements" Ha ha! I gave my friends two options...leave as is and you'll probably never notice or I could take the border off and reattach it correctly. We went for the second option and I have to admit I love a good challenge so it was a fun repair!
Again, this would have been a lot easier if it wasn't on the frame!
This is how I sewed it back on.
Doesn't it look great though?! If I didn't know how annoying diamond quilts are I'd be tempted to make one myself!
The quilting design is pansies from Urban Elementz.
I'm going to retreat tomorrow. I have lots of wine binding to do. I'm looking forward to it!
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