A quilt for Mary Jane - Finally Finished!

 One of my oldest UFOs is ready for gifting!

I mentioned to someone recently that I am a great starter, but finishing this quilt makes me feel like I can tackle all those projects waiting in The Bins. 

I talked about this quilt in a post a year ago.  I got the top assembled, pieced the backing, and packed it up in anticipation of The Move.  

More about the quilt—when I owned a quilt shop, we were contacted by Rhonda Dieker, the author of and designer of the quilts in the book “Wacky Rails.”  She was doing a book tour and asked if we would like to do a class featuring the quilts from her book.  The shop was only a few months old and this was our first experience with hosting a published designer.  She was not well known at the time but we decided it could be fun and we signed up.  While the turnout was underwhelming, we saw it as an opportunity for a fun sew day and had a blast.  Rhonda was lovely and a good instructor.  

I had to quickly select the fabrics for the project and decided that this would be a great use of all of the Kansas Troubles lines we had in stock.  They all go together!  And this was when I was heavily into the muddy fabrics and my nickname was The Maven of Mud. 

The block construction starts out easy with uniform-sized strips sewn together in sets, similar to a rail fence block style, but then you slice those sets diagonally and sew them back together with other sets and, for me, that’s when things got a little tricky.  

The passing of time while a project sits in a Bin and you can’t see (or remember) the errors you made can make you cringe when you see the actual product once you release it from storage—especially when it has been in storage for 20 years.  This is where I was a year ago when I pulled the blocks from The Bin.  None of those blocks were the same size.  I looked at my seams and wondered what in the world I was thinking while working on the project.  

But—I have adopted and embraced the “finished is better than perfect” mantra and soldiered on.  I cut the blocks down (and the size variances were not as horrible as I initially thought), sewed the blocks together and thought, “That’s not too bad!”  

There are SO MANY SEAMS in this quilt.  I used a lot of glue while joining the blocks, and that served me well.

This is a project where a die cutter would be an extremely useful tool.  Obs, there are a ton of strips to cut and I’m sure that I may have miscut one or two (or 53) which contributed to the wonk.  A seam guide would also be a good idea.  

I decided there would be no borders because (1) I like borderless quilts and (2) it was pretty big (and heavy) for a lap quilt and (3) I was done. 

Katrina graciously offered to quilt it and she picked it up shortly after we moved into our new home.  She did a lovely panto of leaves that looks gorgeous—this quilt is so busy and I had told her that anything detailed would be lost.  She picked the perfect design.  

The backing is from a chunk of yardage I’ve had for 20 years, and I used most of what I had for the backing—a good use of stash! 

The binding—20 years after I started it, I still had some yardage of one of the fabrics in the quilt!  Talk about luck.  Most of the Kansas Troubles remaining in my stash are fat quarters and half yards.  

And now about the quilt’s recipient—I worked for Mary Jane in the 80s and early 90s, but have been lucky enough to call her “friend” for many, many years.  I was a single mom when I went to work for her and I can’t begin to tell you how good she was to me.  I have wanted to make a quilt for her for years, and now I finally have.  This year she sold her home of 30 years and moved into a new one and started a new chapter in her life—I thought it was the perfect time to gift her with a quilt.  (But honestly, is there a bad time to gift a quilt?)

I finished the quilt in July; I spent my evenings after work making the binding and attaching it.  While we had temps of 100 degrees and above for several weeks this past summer, I questioned my timing of spending those evenings in my recliner hand-stitching the binding to the back of the quilt…but I wanted it done.

And now, it is.  I’ll give it to Mary Jane soon.  

My 6’5” son was the only one tall enough to hold it up for its glamour shots.

Will I make this quilt again?  I’m fairly certain I won’t.  In all fairness to the designer, she provides options for orientation and includes line drawings for your use to come up with your color options.  It’s easy enough to make again, but I’m moving on. 

Are you ready for 2024? Are we ever ready? I had hoped to finish a baby quilt this weekend but I’ll be lucky to have it completed by next weekend.  I hope you have whatever type of Nee Year’s Eve you desire; we will have a quiet evening and go to bed long before the ball drops.  I’ll think more about my plans for the new year tomorrow and finish up the posts for the remaining items completed in 2023.  In the meantime, 

Go make!