The Mistake Quilt

Day 245: Piecework is pretty, but for my money, the real beauty of a quilt can only be seen when you flip it over and look at the back. It is on the reverse that the needleworker's skill is best displayed: the intricacy and regularity of the stitches, the development of the design, factors which are obscured by the panoply of bright colors on the front. The pattern is my own creation, and I've worn out several hard-card templates for the center flowers.

As you may recall from an earlier post, I tried to dump this half-finished patchwork on a friend, thinking my days of quilting were done. At her insistence, I took it back, bought a hoop because I had given my frame away, and resumed the work where I had left off. I have made a substantial in-road into the work remaining and have great faith that this time, I will see the project through to completion.

The top has an amusing history. I had got it in my craw to make a "Cathedral Window" quilt after seeing several at the Puyallup Fair one year. I selected a wide variety of prints and had carefully cut several hundred tiny squares for the central motifs, centering birds or flowers as the fabric allowed. When it came time to begin stitching the middles into the folded solid-color "windowpanes," I realized I had forgotten to leave a seam allowance. Rather than waste the fabric squares, I stitched them together as "streets and alleys," and the Mistake Quilt was born.