On a “Finishing Roll”

After finishing the Dresden Plate Drama quilt (by the way, it’s been claimed by Guitar Girl for her bed, and christened “Rosette;” I was somewhat surprised that she liked it that much!), I still didn’t have my rayon thread in hand for The Misery Quilt (Grrrr!), so I pulled out another large work in progress and just kept going. I realized that this other quilt may be even older (!) than the Dresden Plate quilt. Ouch. Anyway, there was surprisingly little to be done, relatively speaking. Two or three easy days of quilting and then binding saw it done!

Did you know that metallic thread can tarnish?? Yup, it can…

I started making this one for my bed way back when. It began as a pattern from a book, and I modified the flower block and changed the border. I hand dyed the fabrics for the Log Cabin blocks with my friend Carla. I quilted most of it with silver metallic thread, and what I learned from that was “never again.” Did you know that metallic thread can tarnish?? Yup, it can, and even though Sulky America swears that’s not true, I have the proof sitting right here on this quilt. Aside from the tarnishing issue, machine quilting is difficult enough at times without throwing sensitive, difficult to manage, breakage-prone thread into the bargain. I finished up the outer border in cotton, thank you very much, since the floral fabric had silver overprinting on it anyway so why torture myself? At this point, done is more important than perfect!

There was a contest sponsored by Better Homes and Gardens at some point, and I thought I would finish this up and enter it, and even though I didn’t get it done in time (obviously), in my head it’s always been called “Homes and Gardens.” Now I have to come up with another name! This is another quilt that’s been around so long that I have no use for it anymore, really. If LittleOne’s bed was big enough, I’d give it to her, but this is queen size so that won’t work.

And now it’s back to the embroidery machine and The Misery Quilt, since my thread finally showed up late last week. Here’s the kicker: I ordered 20+ spools of rayon embroidery thread, just to be sure I’d have the right colors the first time around, since there were about 10 colors that I needed, I thought. I ended up using exactly three of the new spools that I ordered and waited so long for, and I’m not even sure that they were the colors that I couldn’t get here in Germany, because at this point, I just don’t want to know. *sigh*

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