The Quilt From Hell

So I began this quilt last summer after visiting my sister who graciously allowed me to pillage her fabric stash as she had finished up her projects and hadn't quilted in years. I knew I was looking to stick with an ocean beach themed RV design, and mostly with blues and greens, so I was tickled to find the fabric that I did in her stash to make a quilt. I hadn't bought the RV at that point and was living in the Karma van. I had planned on buying an RV with a Queen size bed in the back, so I started making a quilt for that size bed. I didn't have a pattern, as I don't usually for quilts unless it's a piecework quilt. This is just really a blanket. I wasn't planning to do any fancy hand-quilting, as I knew my hands were in no shape to even consider that. I did not have any bedding when I returned from Australia other than a couple of lap quilts, one made by my sis. 

As the temperatures dropped, I felt the need to make some quilts, as I planned to make most of my own things in the RV. The nights got colder and I was too stubborn to buy blanket, so I ended up putting the half finished quilt on the bed at nights to keep warm, and hoped I hadn't left any pins in it. I had added the layers without trimming them, so the quilt was big, bulky and the layers shifted all over the place. The quilt was so damn big and it took up half the bed chamber with it's sprawling layers. I tripped and snarled myself up in the bedclothes so damn many times, and fell on the floor, or into the wall, trying to get out of it. 

I didn't have anywhere to really spread it out to get the layers sorted and pinned, and then machine quilted. So I tried to make a few quilting lines in the Karma van. That did not go well. Between the needles breaking, the thread breaking, the bobbin becoming tangled again and again, that before long I gave it up after swearing, stomping around, and screaming to the sky. My hands would not cooperate to rip out any mistakes or snagged thread, and I kept dropping things. I cried, I screamed, I cursed. Every few weeks I would haul this damn quilt out again and again to try and work on it and it never ended well. Then I bought the RV and it was too big anyhow, massive for a single bed. So then I had to decide what to remove from the quilt, and trimmed all the yellow off - I hate yellow anyway. But again, with no place to stretch my quilt out to properly pin it, the layers kept bunching up as I was using a variety of fabrics with their own level of stretch and shift. 

I used a flannellete sheet for the fill, and cotton sheeting, and a piece of a hospital sheet I think, from where my sister lives. There is also a piece of a sheet my mother gave me from the sheets she had for my dad's sick bed. We had searched and found the softest of cottons for my dad to be comfortable, and one of them had torn so was not of any use as a sheet any longer. Now it is part of this quilt. I also have added a piece of dip dyed aqua blue eyelet to the back of it, just for a surprise. 

I finally gave up on machine quilting it and bought some ribbon to tie it instead. Even that was a friggin chore as I still couldn't spread it out to work on it so did a little then gave up in disgust as the layers shifted and bunched again. But by that time my daughter was arriving for Christmas and I needed to use the quilt as it was cold and I didn't have any other quilts made either. So she used the unfinished quilt, but at least I had trimmed the excess off by then and it was not the burden it was, but still UNFINISHED! 

This past long weekend I had the use of a friend's big living room while I house/cat sat for them and hunkered down, finished tying it, then pinned the bloody hem, and dragged it back down to the camper to sew it. It is now complete. It looks okay, and turned out well enough, but is not my best sewing by any stretch of the imagination. At least I didn't burn it. I had threatened to many many times as I sat in my camper and cried about my useless hands, and the damn quilt that I couldn't manage to finish. I have added some photos here, but sorry, I did not take the quilt back into the house after I sewed it to take a photo and I can't get a good photo of it in the camper. Nash gave it a good smelling as I had it on the floor of the living room that had a rug on it, and two resident kitties. He knew I had cheated on him with other cats.