Fester

If you were here yesterday, then you know that I have encountered a wretched problem for a quilter: pleats on the back. One of the two offending sections is shown above. Yikes, is that ugly or what?! Now I can say that I have only seen one other pleat on a quilt that I quilted, and this particular one had a horribly pieced and sagging backing . This backing, however is a tightly woven hand-dye, and I pieced the back myself, so that is not it. I blame the pleats completely on having to quilt it down diagonals, and needing to leave areas unquilted, while other areas were stitched. I obviously did not have it stabilized appropriately. Shame on me. Live and learn. Never again (I hope).

I ended up with bunchy areas on both sides of this quilt, where 2 areas of diagonal stitching came together. As you can see, the excess in the backing is between 0.3-0.7". Luckily for me, the excess was within 8-10 inches of the pieced backing seam. Unluckily for me, however, there were heavily quilted areas of feathering to remove. UGH.

The entire fixit took me about 1 hour per side. I removed LOTS of stitches. Hopefully I can meld the new stitching into the original without seeing a ton of cut threads. Here, I have tucked in all the excess, in preparation for the hand stitching. Too bad it is three different threads that have to be restitched.

The row of hand stitching above is not very straight, but HELL, what am I supposed to do?? There, some of my pent-up frustration. I'm sure you can imagine the multitude of other foul-mouthed words I have uttered in the last couple days! The unstraight seam might have not shown so much if not for the nature of these nearly solid, yet clearly not solid fabrics. Boy, the backing that the owners originally sent for this quilt which was a hideous floral sure would have concealed this mishap better. Incidentally, I convinced her that a more solid fabric would show off the quilting so much better, so she ordered $100 of Cherrywoods for the quilt instead. Some decisions do come back to bite us in the arse eventually I have learned.

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Just so you don't think that this blog has become a bitch-fest, I will show you a couple shots of the front. The quilt will undoubtedly be lovely when finished (yes, once again, tomorrow is my target day for finishing this one:-))). It is an axisymmetrical log cabin quilt, so the florette below is not in the quilt's center. I accentuated the quilting, however, to draw one's eyes to that as the central motif. It looks pretty. Lighter logs are feathered, while darker logs are done with a combination of ruler arcs and swirls. The owner wanted oak leaves incorporated somehow, so they are placed in the red squares as well as along the border.

And the border...This is very pretty in a most coordinated tan thread. It's a 10" wide bordeer so I broke it up into the oak leaf swirls, feathering and 1-2" of 0.5" piano keys.

Stay tuned and you'll see the rest of the quilt, as well as the back. And with any luck, my need to curse uncontrollably is done. This evening I will reload the quilt onto the frame, and tomorrow I am finishing the quilt. Yes, I am, I tell ya. I am finishing Fester! It is nearly 8 hours over my budget and needs to be done!! Cheers :-))