I was really excited that by late afternoon I had a block of time to sew. First, I made the back for Lucy's snowball quilt. I always try to have the back and the binding done before I start sewing the front. It's a treat to be able to keep moving once you have the quilt pieced. It's just one of those discipline things I make myself do. Here is the fabric for the back.
Then I decided to start quilting my soon-to-be born granddaughter #2's quilt. I was just humming along and thinking, 'Wow, I might get this quilted and the binding machine stitched to the front before I go to bed!'
I was half way through the quilting before I thought to turn the quilt over and check the back. I hardly ever have trouble with puckers after years of tweaking my 'sandwiching' skills of pinning together the back, the batting, and the quilt top. 'Oh my. There is a pucker.'
'Oh my there is another one. Oh, you have got to be kidding me...' Yes, there were many puckers. Sigh. So I marked the puckers with safety pins. Oh, yay.
I am going to blame this on the weather. The day in June when I made the quilt sandwich, it was a gorgeous sunny one with low humidity. Today it was muggy, hot, and ridiculously humid. I think it changed the backing some and made it ripple. Am I dreaming? I have never read any blogs that have addressed humidity and machine quilting. The carefully pressed snowballs on my design board aren't crisp looking any more because of the humidity.
I began to rip.
I was lamenting about it all. I could rip out to the end on some of the quilting lines but it wasn't really feasible to rip out the all the quilting. I would have to resandwich the whole quilt, and I could risk putting a hole in the quilt from excessive ripping. So I was going to have to 'spot fix' some of the puckers. Matching up the serpentine stitch is really hard. One hundred years from now when the quilt police start looking closely at this quilt, they will say 'She could really piece well, but too bad about her machine quilting skills.' After my pity party, it dawned on me that this quilt was for my new little punkin. I hope she loves it so much that it becomes shreds long before it ever makes it to its 100th birthday.
Lesson learned. I am over it...sort of. I have a really busy week of babysitting and such. I won't get to work on these quilts for a few days. So for now I am stitchin' and moanin'.
1 comment:
I never thought about it, but humidity COULD make a difference. I mean, look what it does to our hair! What a shame. And a bunch of work.
But remember, once it's all quilted, and then you wash it, much of that will be disguised by the crinkling up of the fabrics. At least, it's worked that way for me more than once. And besides, your little granddaughter will feel the love you put into it and she'll love it because you made it!
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