In 2018, Samantha of Aqua Paisley had a quilt-along for her Down Memory Lane quilt… and I was ALL IN. It was a brilliant pattern (and still is), would use up my bigger scraps because I rarely use red for quilting anyway, and I’d end up with a Valentine’s quilt. Perfect.
It was such a simple quilt to make, lots of chain piecing (my favorite) and every little block was so satisfying because it was A HEART. No complaints.
I finished it, sent it to Kelli of Simply Mackbeth to quilt it in the eternal favorite Modern Loops, and promptly bound it when it came back. Done! Fabulous! A family favorite! I took photos, started a blog post all about it…
Then… what happened? How did it take until 2020 to finally finish the post and get it published? In the meantime, it was sitting on our couch, enjoying a residence on the quilt ladder all year long (and then another year long), and we were just loving on the love quilt.
So, today I’m remedying that! You’re getting a blog post about it. And bonus- this story comes with a plot twist that I didn’t even realize until I FINALLY took it outside to get a full shot.
Oh yeah, that’s why I never published it. I needed a full shot. 🙂
Here’s the funny part of this story… when we took it outside to take pictures this past week, I realized that I had used DIFFERENT WHITES in the quilt! I hadn’t even noticed in my house for 2 years!!
This brought up the memory of last summer, when I was making a Popsicle Parade quilt for a class I was teaching at Garden of Quilts, and didn’t realize I grabbed two different white fabrics from my stash to use. The popsicle quilt is no joke, as it involves curves, so when I took it out for pictures of the finished top I basically freaked out (anyone who saw my instagram stories that day and remembers the non-stop nervous giggling… that’s a freak out. ;)) and had to re-make the entire quilt. It was fabulous in the end (I’ll post it soon… like 2021), and I was absolutely amazed that I could make a throw-size Popsicle Parade quilt in one week! Desperation does wonders.
Anyway, so here I am, taking pictures and I suddenly gasp and say “HONEY! This quilt has two whites in it too!” and my husband, after a dramatic pause and with slow, shameful peeking around the quilt says, “Yep. I hoped you wouldn’t notice.” Ha ha! He ALSO remembers the week I had to frantically remake a quilt top. We will now just pretend like the side squares were all supposed to be a warm white in contrast to the cool white of the heart blocks.
Yep. That’s right.
But as I was looking at these photos, I realized that the two whites are hardly noticeable in the light that comes into my house, and that’s all that really matters… right? It is still a family favorite, it STILL makes me smile (albeit now that’s a bit more of a knowing smile), and I still drape it on my couch and over my quilt ladders.
The moral of the story is to always stick to one white in a quilt, but also to enjoy your quilts even with their mistakes!
I had to laugh when I read your comment about having more than one white in your quilt. I got so frustrated trying to reduce my stash while matching whites. I decided to ignore them and then anyway in a pixelated heart quilt. The subtlety of the different colors actually made it beautiful so now I don’t worry about out in my Scrappy quilts!! This one is darling!
I’ll bet that many of us have done the same thing! The quilt was stitched with love and that’s all that matters! It’s absolutely darling.
So I start out with several whites ON PURPOSE – yep I’m a rebel. No matter how close or far away I was I couldn’t see the color difference. I would like to applaud the not random randomness of the hearts. Wonderful balance without the marchy-marchy (if that’s a word) It’s really lovely. You may take a bow. Found the pattern on her website, very reasonable. More nice things there too – so many quilts – so little time.
Every time this happens, I think “I should just have a quilt that purposely doesn’t have same whites!” ha ha! You’ve got it all figured out! And yes, Samantha has SO many great ideas on her blog. She’s so talented!