Just Stuff: Just Naughty Quilts... ever have one?

I read somewhere that there are quilters who have quilts who end up in the 'Naughty' Box.

I don't have a Naughty Box per se... but I did have a UFO box (UnFinished Objects).

Let's stop here for one second and talk about UFOs.

I have a bit of a definition for UFO - this is, for me, a quilt top that I have finished, but before I load it onto my frame to quilt, I have put it aside to start something else. (Once I have something quilted, I have never not bound it. I love binding - and once you are at that point, the quilt is so close to being finished, I can practically taste it. I never have problems with my sewing machine when I am sewing the binding on - I'm good at those cute little mitred corners, and once it is on there, then it is completely portable, and I can work on it ANYWHERE!! And then it is FINISHED!!! Did I mention that I love binding?)

I have a friend who has a different definition for a UFO. She calls a quilt top that she has lost interest in and enthusiasm for, a UFO. In her case, a UFO is often given away - someone else will have to finish that baby, she has moved on. She calls a quilt that she intends to finish, but which is waiting in the wings, so to speak, a WIP. A Work In Progress. She might have several WIPs on the go at the same time. And she might have a few UFOs - but they are waiting to be rehomed... (I like her definition... but I don't believe I have ever given a UFO away to someone else.)

Okay. I feel like that is clear now. So back to the Naughty Box.

Back in 2008, I attended a quilt show in Ottawa where I saw a wonderful quilt with Houses on it. One of the vendors was selling it as a block of the month (BoM) and I made arrangements to buy it. I suspect that Blocks of the Month work differently in different circumstances, but how this one was going to work was thusly: Each month I would receive, in the mail, a package from this quilt shop with the fabric and instructions for a block of the quilt. I believe there were 10 blocks. The LAST block would also include the fabric for the border and directions for assembling the entire quilt.

I received all 10 packages in the mail by the late spring of 2009 and in July of that year, we sold our house and moved to Nova Scotia. Eventually, I found all the bags with the patterns and fabric and put them all together in one spot. And at some point after that I numbered the bags to make sure I had them all, and put them back in that spot... Time passed as time will.

In August 2012, we had a week's holiday planned, and I collected all the parts of my BoM, packed my sewing machine and thread, my rotary cutter and mat and a pair of scissors and headed for a cottage in Ontario for a quiet week of canoeing, walking and quilting.

This is where things start to go wrong...

I opened the first package, followed the directions completely (even to the point of making flying geese in a way that I would not normally make them) and I discovered that the shop had not sent me enough fabric to complete the first block.

The tree

The tree and sky

The first house


Hearts (red in the illustration... blue fabric included)

That bottom row is supposed to be flying geese!!

If I had been at home, this would not have been a catastrophe - I would have been annoyed, but I would have added some of my own fabric to the mix, and it would have been fine... I cobbled something together to make the block the right size, grumbled and grumped and got on with Block 2.

Block 2's House

Block 2 was very cute. A big house, with friendship stars above it, and when I used my own method for making the friendship stars, I had enough fabric left over to make the flying geese. Off go the stripes and on go the flying geese and all is well with the world.

The friendship stars at the top extend over the next block as well.

The next morning I got up and the DH and I did whatever we were planning to do that day, and then I got on with Block 3.

4 patches

An 'apple' tree to go under the friendship stars!

A red house, and here is Block 3

And I think I looked ahead at the directions for assembly - and here's the top row of the quilt. Cute eh?

Top row of House Sampler

Nothing to be worried about now, we are just sailing along!
I did not finish the whole top while we were on holidays, but I did manage to get quite a bit more done on it, until I hit THE SNAG!!

More flying geese

The next house

Block 4 is done

Block 5 - I must have felt rushed. I did not take a photo of the process here.

I think they are supposed to be flowers...

Block 6 - Cute eh?

Here's the layout so far! (So far, so good!)

Star

Tree

Block 7

And our holiday was over! We had a nice holiday, and I went home with these blocks all carefully folded up in my bag. Immediately when we were home in August 2012 I continued to work on the House Sampler. I'm sailing right along now, and everything is going well!

Block 8

The beginning of Block 9

Block 8 and 9. My design wall was a striped flannel sheet. What can I say, it worked!

And here is the snag! These wonky stars are WRONG!

At this point, the snag struck. The shop that had not sent me enough fabric for the first block had also sent a copy of the pattern to me with an error in it. The error had been caught some years before (I contacted the designer) and a corrected pattern had been sent to all the shops. However, I had not gotten the corrected pattern, and I did not have enough fabric to make them again. (It did not occur to me to remake them with different fabric) so what I did was, I figured out how to add a thin strip of fabric to the bottom of the wonky stars to make them the correct size up and down to fit in the pattern. And I added a strip of blue to the left of the first star to make up the difference in the width.

I was MIGHTILY underwhelmed. I was so underwhelmed, in fact, that I was afraid to call the shop owner and give her a piece of my mind. I only have so many pieces left, and I felt I might be better off keeping hold of them. Boy, was I ANGRY!

The wonky stars - too narrow and too short... Grrrrr!

The wonky stars above the houses.

The small squares and the larger ones to finish the block

The wonky stars, modified to fit. Notice extra strip of blue to left of first star.

And so on September 4, 2012 I assembled the quilt top, minus the borders resulting in the following;

Assembled House sampler, minus the border

And INTO THE NAUGHTY box it went.

In 2014, I got it back out. Hmmmm. Where is the pattern? I hunted high and low for the pattern. All of the left over fabric was in a little box, and the little box was in with the quilt top, so far... but no pattern.

I couldn't think of any way to blame the quilt shop for this, and the designer of the quilt seemed like a nice lady and I couldn't figure out how she could possibly have misplaced the pattern... I looked for a bag of patterns everywhere. Eventually, I took the piece of fabric that came with the last part of the pattern out of the box, measured it, did the math, figured out how much border I could cut out of it, and then I cut it and sewed it on.

It looked like this:

House Sampler Quilt Top complete

And I promptly put it back in the Naughty Box. Grrrr.

Fast forward to January 2016. Well, first, let's talk about October or November of 2015. I'm on facebook and I belong to a few facebook quilting groups. And one of them had a discussion about UFOs. And I modestly said, I thought I had 8 or 9 of them (whilst secretly thinking I had about 5 at the most) because I generally finished quilts once I started them (unlike counted cross stitch, knitting, crochetting, tatting, needlepoint... etc.) I didn't actually go and look at my UFOs, but I did know that this one was one of my 4 or 5 UFOs.

Back to January. In January I had a king sized quilt on my frame and it was taking me some time to quilt it. I free motion quilt with a mid-arm on a Grace Frame, and I love doing it, but a king sized Block of the Week (I still can't believe I did that!) takes some time. And I was thinking about what I would quilt next. And I was ALMOST finished being annoyed with this quilt.

So I went looking for it. I had 27 UFOs in two boxes and this was in the bottom box and in the bottom of the bottom box. When I finished the King Sized Quilt, I put this one on the frame... I like to take pictures of my work and I like to post those pictures in albums on facebook - I find the positive comments of my friends very motivating. And I generally keep all the information on one project IN the same album... I started quilting this, and taking photos of the quilting - and people were commenting on it. And my attention was arrested by the photograph that is the 4th one up on this blog. See the duotang? THAT's the pattern I was looking for! It wasn't in the original bags any more. I had taken all the pages, hole punched them and put them in a duotang...

So three days into the quilting process, I went downstairs to see if I could find the pattern. And the power promptly went out.

Do you get the feeling that this quilt was doomed?

Anyway. When the power went back on, I found the pattern. A couple of days later I finished quilting the House Sampler, and I put the binding on, and I love it now. The error in the wonky stars just gives it character. But it did spend a long time in the Naughty Box because of that!