I had just learned how to use a rotary cutter, which revolutionized my quilt making! (I mention that detail because a lot of the scraps I am discovering in my scrap bin have been marked for cutting with scissors - I had actually forgotten I did that once!)
The colors of this old quilt were chosen to match a Laura Ashley border on an upstairs bedroom wall.
We used the quilt for many years, but eventually it it showed signs of wear on the binding, and several squares had worn through. The quilting thread was torn all over. What to do?! I still loved its vibrancy. But I didn't want to hand quilt it again.
I removed the binding and mended the holes. Now what?! I thought of machine quilting it - but had never done that before. So I folded it up and put it in my mending basket - where it has sat for years.
A week ago, my quilter friend Jean mentioned the term "organic quilting." So I decided to look it up online. What I discovered was an interesting style of machine quilting - in parallel lines, not necessarily perfectly straight... ("Organically" straight - straight to the eye and hand doing the quilting!) It didn't look hard, so I decided to give it a try using my old quilt.
Instead of sewing across the whole quilt at half inch intervals, I decided to sew only through the squares of the Irish chain, ending up with a series of 9 parallel machine quilted lines.
Once I started, I couldn't stop! It was a lot of fun seeing the quilt come to life again. And when I put on the binding, I reversed the strips of fabric, tucking the worn part inside. Now it looks almost new!
It's not perfect - but I'm pleased that it's usable again! Now it can go back into the bedroom with the Laura Ashley border - where it belongs!
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