Marion's Miscellaneous Musings

Penny's Fans, subtitled An Exercise in Frustration.

In 2008, I started this quilt.  

I hit the first snag when I looked at the top to make sure all the lace was tacked in properly.  I have used an on point layout before.  I have also used sashing and posts before.  I began to wonder why I had so many pieces left over.  Do you see that the tiny floral piece and one gold square is missing on the left?

So I took out 7 (of 14) setting triangles, all on the bias and put them all back in again.  Correctly, this time.

I had previously decided to put in a light green border, so I did.  It looked crappy.  So I took out some 280 inches of stitching.  THIS TIME I auditioned the border like a always do (now, anyway) and picked out two of the dark greens.  Plus I thought that lace on the border would look really cool, what with all the lace on the fans.

Now to quilt it.  I originally intended to hand quilt the fans, (there are only 32 of them!), so I really only wanted to machine quilt the sashing and setting triangles.  But what I did looked really crappy so I took it off the longarm and went home to take it all out.  During this process, I discovered that the batting had folded over on itself.  Got everything taken out and went to pin it again (realizing I can do this part on the sewing machine) and discovered that something is all stretched out and the quilt is no longer rectangular.  Everything (except the setting triangles) are all on the bias, so I figured the quilt was ruined.

One of my friends saw it (after I took all the pins out) and fell in love with it and asked if she could buy it.  I gave her a look of utter disbelief and frustration and the hope that I could forget about this thing.

That was 2008.

It would not leave my mind.  And it was taking up a lot of space physically.

Fast forward to January 2021.   This friend loves pink, and so I took off the green border and, miracle of miracles, the thing lays flat!  So I went to find some pink fabrics (auditioning them this time, proving that old dogs can learn new tricks) and put them on with the lace.

It. No. Longer. Lays. Flat.

I called a friend who would be quilting it and asked if she could handle the 3-5 inch difference is side nd middle measurements.  I never found out, but she made me laugh about it.

I finally figured out what happened:  I had stretched the lace when attaching it to the quilt, and it didn't like being stretched out.  The lace gathered the sides in.

So I took out the third border and the lace  (which the quilt decided not to like after all).  It lays flat again. I put on a fourth border, without lace, and the quilt is now very happy with me, it lays flat, and I am disappointed that I can't put on the lace.  I took it to a friend to quilt.  

Then I decided to put the lace on anyway, after quilting and binding.  And, frankly, I DO NOT CARE IF THE QUILT IS NOT FLAT ANYMORE!  

And my friend loves it.  And here it is!

posted by Marion @ 3:51 PM