The Quilt That Almost Broke Me

Of all the quilts that have tried to break me over the years, this one almost did it. I came very, very close to allowing it to win, but I stuck with it and eventually emerged triumphant! Nice try Grandmother's Choice block - picking on a poor beginning quilter! Sorry for the poor photo quality, I had to scan these in.

I made this quilt for my step daughter Heather's highschool graduation six years ago. I chose this block so I could transfer photos to fabric and feature them in the nice open center square. Being a self-taught beginning quilter, I just jumped right into all these billions of triangles. I also used whatever materials I felt like: recycled clothes, crappy cottons, linen, polyester, etc. Yeah....hmmm...probably going to regret that. But I just happily sewed along, by hand of course, and ended with 20 blocks consisting of 34 triangles each. I was tired but happy.

Happy, that is, right up until the point where I tried to make rows with the blocks. They were not all the same size. Hmmm, guess those bias edges stretched a bit. I measured them and, no joke, the smallest was FOUR INCHES smaller than the largest! Horrifying. So I almost let the quilt win. But I finally decided to pick a measurement from the middle and make everybody match that one. The larger ones I cut down a bit (without cutting off knots) and the smaller ones I added fabric to. When all was said and done, you can't really tell! Go ahead and enlarge the first one and see if you can tell where the mistakes are.

That's Heather on the left in the first one, me and her dad in the middle with a pie, and Heather and her paw paw in the last one. Enjoy!

Wendy