The One That Didn't Work!

I’ve mentioned before that I didn’t mind playing around with color. I often don’t even mind if they “don’t work” very well - usually I will just pass them off to my charity quilting project and let the one who loves it take it home.

However, this is supposed to be Nr. One in my Upcycled Pinks series.

I made it a while ago. It feels like quite a while ago in fact. I was mostly done with my UP Greens series - at least the making of the tops, and decided to venture into the pinks. I decided to start with the same old “Show Off Pink Plaids”. I then decided to try something different and that was instead of cream or white, I decided to use gray as the contrasting color for the sashing and cornerstone 9 patches.

This is where I really did make the mistake.

When I finished with it and took the photo, I strongly disliked it.

And this is where it has sat for the past two years!

I originally took the photos of this top on September 8, 2022. I actually thought it was a lot longer ago than that as it seems like it’s been years and years!

However, okay - only two years - that is nothing in the story of my quilting.

The gray didn’t work for me.

Yes, it was different, but I hated it. It was simply too close in shade to the pinks. Not enough contrast.

I’ve been uneasy about it since then. I’ve hated to even think about it.

I wanted to tear it apart and redo it. I didn’t want to finish it and give it away (at least at this point) because it is going to be part of this UPcycled Pinks series. This is what I usually do when I make a quilt top I don’t care for. Someone will like it!

So, I decided to get started on this project.

I decided to just tackle it. I spend enough time “not sewing” that I can tackle taking this apart, row by row.

So I’ve started.

As I share this blog post with you, I’ve just begun this process.

I’ve never ever done this before. I normally wouldn’t do it, but I don’t have enough upcycled pink plaids to make another one from my fabrics. And this is number one in the series!

But because I am sort of picking, and then kind of “ripping” the pieces apart, I’ve had a couple of occasions already where the fabric in the seams ripped out. I decided to go ahead and press the pieces once taken apart and trim them down half an inch smaller and remake this top. Completely. But trimming down, this should remove the seams that ripped so I can still use the blocks I have.

I did just take off the piano key border and will use whatever I can from it when I get there once I get done with the top.

So far I’ve only taken two of the rows completely apart.

I’m going to redo the 9 patches using fabrics I found in my bin/s I have for my pinks. I am not going to take all the 9 patches completely apart. I am just going to redo them. I think I do have enough pink plaid pieces for that.

So here’s to this project. I may try to do a couple a rows at a time and then report and show you what I’m up to.

Oh - in case it isn’t obvious - I’m going to use WHITE as my contrasting color instead of gray. The reason I didn’t do white to start with was because I thought the contrast wouldn’t be high enough. However, after seeing how the gray looked, I know the white will be much better than that. And I chose the whitest whites I could find from among some of my white bins.

Taking a quilt top completely apart is something I never EVER thought I’d do.

Sigh.

But I am. Just thinking about this top has made me feel uneasy. So I decided to just ‘get it done’ as Karen Brown from Get it Done quilts on You Tube! Quit feeling uneasy about it and start fixing the problem!

Next report, I hope to have a couple of the rows redone.

Don’t feel sorry for me. I’m just tired of seeing this top sitting around that I strongly dislike! It is time to deal with it.

Thanks so much for coming along with me on this journey.

Now that I’ve started, I’m glad that I’ve begun to tackle this project. Prior to starting, all I felt was dread. Now I’m starting to get excited about the idea of this being “fixed” and feeling much better about it.

Have a great day wherever you are reading this!

Becky Petersen11 Comments