Quilt Kit

Last Christmas I received a quilt kit as a gift from my mother. Purchased at a local county craft fair, it contained several pre-cut fabric squares, binding and backing fabric. I think that kits like this are nice because they let you jump right into piecing the quilt together, skipping the fabric cutting stage, which is great for those of us with limited budgets / storage since it eliminates the need for special equipment, such as rotary cutters, rulers, mats... I personally enjoy measuring and cutting fabric, but welcomed the opportunity skip straight to the quilt design this time around. 

The instructions on the package stated “Randomly sew 20 squares together to make 1 strip. Make 14 strips. Sew all 14 strips together…” and so on. I was weary of what random ordering could do to this quilt – dark or light patches, ending up with the same colors next to each other, etc. – so I decided that I would try to structure the design. And this leads to what I suppose is one of the downsides to using a kit: while you can pick out a general color scheme, you don’t choose the individual fabrics. Some of the fabrics in my kit lacked coordination and were of disparate quality. There were a few that I didn’t care much for, including one that I decided to leave out entirely. There were also different amounts of squares for each fabric, which added a new challenge in terms of layout. So after fiddling around with a basic spreadsheet, I came up with this:

I decided that since not all of the fabrics were coordinated, a simple pattern would be best for the quilt top. I felt that this type of design would not only put roughly equal focus on the individual fabrics but would also allow room to be more creative with the stitching. 

It took me about one-third of the way into the quilt to realize that my quilting approach (quilting lines from the outside rows inward) was going to produce some major puckering towards the center. This ultimately led to a very awkward looking pleat down the middle of the quilt. My tendancy to not pull the fabric too taught when basting also probably contributed to the problem. I suppose I could have pulled out all of the stitches, but since I choose the three-step zig zag stitch, this would have left small trails of tiny holes all over the fabric. So I just soldiered on and figured that one day this quilt would serve as a reminder to me of how far along I’ve come. Plus aren’t handmade goods supposed to be imperfect? Isn’t that part of their charm? That’s what I keep telling myself.