Originally Posted by
quiltinglady
Honey, you did well.!!! For your next quilt, I would recommend taking a quilting class if any are available in your area. If not get a basic beginning quilting book from the library and follow its suggestions. Many have small quilt patterns you can make so you won't get discouraged. You must continue with this hobby, as you will find it relaxing and rewarding. You are too creative to stop now. I love your backing fabric. Very clever to use it there.
Oh don't worry, it's not my first.. and it definitely won't be my last... I'm about to start quilting a top for my nephew that I finished piecing a couple of nights ago (still need to finish pressing the seams - that's my very least favorite part of the process and where I tend to drag my feet), I've digitized some very cute applique owls for a quilt for my niece's first birthday, and I am amassing the fabric for not one but two queen sized quilt for "me" since my husband and I don't share well, so we can each have a quilt on the bed to use - I don't have much stash so that finding things I like has been a lengthy process.
Anywyas, part of the reason I didn't do anything with this quilt top sooner is because of the way my mom described just "not being able to deal with it" - it seemed like maybe there was a technical reason she couldn't do it that would prevent me from doing it but she's done some amazing quilts, and I didn't get the FULL backstory to the quilt top until I was actually at her house getting it ready to quilt (she has more open floor space than I do, I didn't have anywhere big enough to lay the whole thing out).
Basically this top was pieced over the year leading up to her divorce from my dad. Once they were divorced, she just couldn't handle seeing it, so it was stuffed away, so while she couldn't finish it, she couldn't get rid of it either (and I don't blame her, with all the work she put in piecing those blocks).. she said she tried to take it out several times to work on it and just cried, and so she put it away again. I don't recall ever seeing it as a child, even though I have very vivid memories of every other quilt she made me and several others she made (starting from the one when I was only 3 on the quilt frame, which I very nearly wore out - I still have it and it's definitely well loved, another she made me when I was 5 also on the frame, and one she made me several years later which was one of her first fully machine quilted quilts). It may be not seeing it set up on the frame yet as to why I don't remember it, but I also can't remember seeing any of the quilts my mom made my sister and some of those are still around and I'm very familiar with them and I know they must have been in plain sight for months... maybe because they were for my sister I just blocked them from my memory
