Seams So Easy

Uh, oh. Another wedding. Four weeks. Which quilt can I wrap up?

I have two more finished small snowflake temperature quilts. I have a couple of finished quilts I intended to one day give to children. I have an ugly quilt. I have about 14 unfinished quilts. I have so many cheater panels, I could probably open my own quilt store.

I'm still finding it very difficult to schedule time with my sewing machine, so something in the stash will have to do.

Blinded By the Light began with one of my Spoonflower panels, a Photoshopped and digitally enhanced photo of the sun coming through Venetian blinds in my living room years and years and years ago. The working name was Venetian Squiggles. I'd always thought I would do some kind of thin strip rainbow design along the top and bottom to conjure the feeling of the gentle curves of the original photo.

I finally began playing with ideas and scraps during the summer of 2022 and proudly ended up finishing the quilt on June 30. Until I took it off the long arm and inspected the back side. I was SO horrified. I couldn't even photograph the worst parts. I had utterly ruined my beautiful quilt.

I had to look up in my journal what was going on then what might have caused me to get into such a hurry that I somehow missed basting the top of the quilt and what prevented me from picking out and redoing the stitching. Then, after reading just a few pages of my journal, I was shocked I had conveniently forgotten why my life was so turned upside down then.

My dad had died suddenly, and Lizard and I spent an extra two weeks in California trying to help my mom with estate issues. The timing coincided with negotiating with our insurance company regarding the replacement of our roof, which was significantly damaged during the very same storm that took out so many homes in the Marshall Fire in the dead of the previous winter. 'Nuff said, right?

I buried/hid the flawed, embarrassing quilt away. I remember looking up how others fixed such a bad booboo during a couple of waiting room visits, but I let those all those painful memories and that ugly eyesore just sleep a good, long time. Last weekend, I pulled the quilt back out for the first time since July 2022 to assess just how bad it was.

Initially, just like when I first viewed the back of the quilt, I thought there was no way I could ever give this quilt away. I was way too ashamed of how bad it looked on the backside. But I can't finish another quilt in time for the upcoming wedding. I had to try to fix this.

I remembered how some quilters had hand-stitched unsightly bubbles and folds as neatly as they could, smoothing out their booboos as they went. I remembered a couple of crafty quilters who decoratively embroidered over rescue stitching to make it look like it was intentional. I didn't think embroidery would look so good on this quilt unless I did more than just the booboos. I decided to try to stitch down the 3D parts and then cover what didn't look acceptable with patches of matching leftover Kona solids, which I ended up not having to do. Hurrah!

To my surprise, only one area seemed to need a patch after I finished two nights of hand-stitching.

And, after washing, I'm totally in love with this quilt again! Perhaps I might even be able to share the memorable stories behind this quilt with the bride one day!

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