When we moved house I uncovered a cache of unfinished projects hanging around with my sewing things.
Most of them were things that I had lost enthusiasm for half way through, either because I realised they weren't going to turn out the way I had imagined, or because they were going to be more fiddly and complicated than I had thought. A few were half finished projects that I had inherited from other people. It just seems like such a waste, so I am trying to get as many of them finished as I can, and the ones that realistically I am never going to finish I should just donate or throw away.
The first thing I have finished was this little lap quilt. I started making this mid-2009, when Ali was younger than Milla is now, and it's been lurking around ever since, but once I got on with it it only took a few hours to finish. The plan was to have some cushion covers and a small quilt to beautify our drab brown leather couch. I made the cushion covers and pieced the quilt top, but then I realised it wasn't looking how I wanted it to and quietly put it away.
When I took it out again last week I realised the thing that was bothering me most was the linen and black striped square - it just didn't seem to go with the rest of the quilt. So I unpicked that and replaced it with a square of a beautiful text-print fabric that Amy gave me.
After that it was fairly quick to sew the back together, and put together the batting like a jigsaw from leftover pieces (a friend who was watching me do this described it as a "Frankenbatting"). And then I quilted it with the walking foot, I did a line on each side of the squares, and then two rows down the middle of the squares to make sure all the batting was secured.
I'm still not sure about the finished quilt: I love the fabrics (they're a mixture of Cloth, Publisher Textiles and Ink & Spindle plus the piece from Amy - not sure what that is) but the colour and scale isn't really my taste. The bit I like most is the rounded corners, I traced around a plate to shape them and then used bias binding to go around.
But, even with my reservations about the design, I am so glad to have this out of the work-in-progress pile and now it can go in the boot of the car to be a picnic blanket or the children can use it to play with.
