Quilt Destruction

Have you ever destroyed a quilt on purpose? I know, this sounds like a really evil thing to do, but sometimes you just don't have any choice.

I made this great quilt top and was very happy with it. I wasn't sure how I wanted to machine quilt it so I went against my better judgement and tried to do someone else's design, not only that but I tried to do it "their way." If you are a machine quilter who does your own work, loud sirens are probably going off in your head right now as you read this AND you already know how this story turns out, I'm sure.

I'll just say that the quilting did not go well, but I gritted my teeth and kept quilting it, even though I was beginning to hate the quilt (actually not the quilt, but the quilting). I finally made myself stop quilting it when I was more than half-way done. I just couldn't go any further, feeling the way that I did. At tis point, I gave myself a few different options:

1) rip out all of the quilting and requilt it
2) throw away the quilt and start over.

Option one was not a good idea -- it was already over half-way quilted and I was afriad to inflict damage if I tried to rip out the quilting. Option 2 seemed like my only choice except I was loathe to throw away the 16 vintage (irreplaceable) quilt blocks that were part of the design. OH, what could I do??????

I actually came up with an alternate solution that was a combination of Options 1 and 2 -- I decided to remove the vintage quilt blocks from the quilt and then remake the quilt. The vintage blocks had the least amount of quilting but it would take some time to free them from this bad quilt.

Finally, after a week of ripping, I freed the vintage blocks and removed the outer border (which hadn't been quilted yet. This is what is left of the quilt:



As sad as it is, the new and improved quilt will be much better. And, I learned the hard way to quilt my own way.