I can’t tell you how relieved I am to have this quilt completed and in the mail. I AM SO RELIEVED!
And I’m more than a little annoyed at myself for letting it drag on for so long.
Thankfully the client is very patient and was in no hurry to get it, so it’s not like I missed a deadline with it, I didn’t. I knew all along that I could take my time with it.
Which is great, because the quilt definitely pushed my skills to a new level. I’d never done a whole cloth quilt before, which is a quilt without piecing any fabric - it’s just one large piece of fabric with the design element being the quilting stitches themselves. This one has a border too, but for the most part, it’s one fabric showing on the front (and the back for that matter).
Which means that the quilting really is front and center on the quilt (even though it's really hard to see in the photos above). The client, a 15-year-old boy, chose the fabric himself and told me what he wanted - waves quilted on the front using black thread, and a black border quilted with red thread. I decided how to quilt the waves (in six panels of different wave motifs) and it was my idea to do the circle quilting on the border, meant to look like bubbles.
All the stitching on this quilt took a long time, to be certain. But what took the most time was trusting myself to do a good job with it. Seriously, it took a lot of drawing practice on paper, several practice swatches on scrap quilts, and a whole lot of time talking myself into just sitting down at the machine and getting started.
I really didn’t want to mess this up and the size was very intimidating! (it’s 82" x 64").
Once I got started though, it really came together fairly easily, easier than I ever expected. It was still very time consuming and tedious, repeating all those motifs in back thread on such dark fabric, but once I got going, it was very satisfying to see the deep dark waves emerge.
Of course once I got the whole thing done, what did I regret the most? Waiting so long to tackle it, of course! Sigh. Maybe next time I’ll find more guts to just dive into projects like these rather than dragging my feet and feeling bad about it afterward.
To make up for the bit of delay, I made him a matching pouch, which I really love. I think the white thread really sets off the wave fabric and makes me think of foam. I hope he enjoys it!
Turns out the client’s mom is going to wait and give the quilt to her son for his birthday in November, so I’ll have to wait a while to find out how he likes it.
But that’s OK, because what I know today is that it’s silly to wait for uncertainty to pass - sometimes there is no amount of preparation that will take away the jitters, so we just have to jump in with both feet knowing we’ve prepared as best we can, and let our skills take over.
Remind me of that next time I’m intimidated by a quilt, will you?