2019 was all about finishing up some of my many UFOs (UnFinished Objects)… including the Sewtropolis Signature Quilt.  I started this quilt about a year before I closed my store… not knowing at the time that I would be closing.   It was intended to hang in the studio portion and I thought it would be a fun way to have my customers assist in a quilt.  There are 100 signatures most from the kids who took my summer sewing camps, but also from my adult students, employees and customers.

I managed to put the top together and that’s about the time I realized I needed to close my store…  and this project and so many others went into the UFO basket for the time being.

So here it is six years and a cross-county move later and I’m finally tackling that that UFO basket.   All I had to do to finish this quilt was to quilt and bind it so I waited till I had a few tops to quilt before reserving time on the long-arm.  After quilting the first two with no issue, I loaded this one and started doing my thing… and about 3/4 of the way into it I realized that the backing had somehow creased and was getting worse as I went along.

I can “live” with a lot of mistakes, but this crease was not one of them.  I took it off the machine, brought it home and took out most of what I had done.  To be honest with you – I had heard of people doing this and thought to myself NO WAY would I ever do this  – I don’t mind a mistake or a few, I think they give a quilt character – but this crease was in a league of its own!

Once I was done unstitching, I re-quilted it on my home machine, putting a heart in each of the blocks, and a wavy pattern on the boarder – which is kind of a metaphor for my business:  I loved my customers, but it was definitely a crazy ride!!!

Overall I’m really happy with how this quilt turned out – I loved seeing the signatures of the gals that worked for me (miss you ladies), the signatures of the camp kids – some who were seriously SO MUCH FUN, and I even teared up when I saw Skilo’s block.. God, I miss that dog!!!

Eventually I will pick off all the stray threads, but for now they are a reminder of the difficulty of my owning my own business and of finishing this quilt.