Tuesday, 28 September 2010

The Ugly Quiltling

Once upon a time there lived an ugly quiltling. The poor little quiltling didn’t look anything like the other quilts in the family, who all laughed at it and said how ugly it was. Even its own mother didn’t love it.

The poor little quiltling would sit by the lake and watch the beautiful quilts go by, and dream of growing up to be a beautiful swan quilt.

Sadly, this never came to pass.


See? Ugly!

I’ve joined the free motion quilt-along on Christina’s blog A Few Scraps. I’ve done some free motion quilting before – mainly stippling, though I branched out into (wonky) flowers and butterflies in my last quilt.

Definitely need more practice! I thought it would be a fun way to improve, so I finally put together the ugly quiltling the other night to be my practice piece. The idea was to put together a quilt top that you wouldn’t get too attached to, so you wouldn’t worry about “ruining it” as you learned. “If at any time you think to yourself ‘My god, this is one ugly quilt’ then you have succeeded,” Christina said.

So the poor ugly quiltling will never be beautiful, but it will certainly be very useful. Heaven knows what I’ll do with it when it’s finished – no one in the family likes it either! Maybe for the dog? My tastes in fabric have certainly changed a lot since I bought those. I think they’re from my “trying to like country style because everyone else does” phase. I’m looking forward to getting started on the actual quilting part.

Back in my normal colour palette of bright and vibrant, I’ve just made a pretty handbag out of the same gorgeous bird fabric I used for Demon Duck’s apron.

I saw it on Terry’s Treasures blog, and she kindly linked to the pattern, which turned out to be very easy, though I thought it would be bigger than it turned out. Maybe I’ll make a bigger one another time. I have so many quilting irons in the fire at the moment! Not unusual for me, of course, queen of the unfinished projects.

At least I’m making progress again on Verity. Hopefully another 5,000 words or so will see me typing “The End”.
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2 comments:

  1. Anonymous3 October 2010 at 09:37

    Why do you say it's ugly? I think it looks good!
    I wish I could quilt--I own one handmade quilt (not handmade by me) and naturally I'm too scared to use it on an actual bed.

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  2. Marina7 October 2010 at 22:44

    Why, thank you, Jenn! It's not that the colours don't go together or anything, it's more that they're not really my thing. Too drab compared to the brights I prefer.

    Please get your quilt out and show it some love! Quilts are pretty robust things, and it would do it good to be unfolded and displayed for a while, even if you don't want to use it all the time. I have a quilt my great-grandmother made which is a little fragile after all these years, but I still display it over the back of a lounge sometimes. When they're always folded in a cupboard they can start to wear on the fold lines.

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