Debacle

I finished my quilt top. It's beautiful. I would love to show it to you. Except.

I opted for the "quick-turn" or "self-binding" method of finishing the edge, where you assemble the quilt sandwich inside-out, sew around the edge, and then pull the layers through a hole in the seam, sort of like making a pillow or a stuffed animal. Easy, right? Except. I put the layers in the wrong order, backing-batting-top, when they should have been top-backing-batting. And I sewed it that way. And clipped the corners. And only noticed my mistake when I went to pull the layers through.

So my quilt top is trapped in a broken sandwich, and I have to unsew a million billion stitches to free it from its batting and backing before I can show it to you. And then I have to piece together a new backing and re-layer and re-sew the sandwich, taking special care around the darned clipped corners. The good news is that the pieced quilt backing will surely be more interesting than the plain one I had originally been using. Plus, it's my learning experience. I find that every quilt I make has a lesson in it. Usually the lessons don't involve the kind of agony that this one did, but there's always something.

Side note: K has been using her Dover stencil books we gave her for Christmas and birthday to create lovely pictures. She does little tricks like stencilling in a giraffe, then repositioning the stencil slightly so she can stencil in another head to create the effect of two giraffes standing side by side. I think that's pretty clever for a five-year-old.