I went to high school in England, enjoying 7th-12th grade at a British private school in the northwest of England. The end of high school was also the end of my time in England, and I was very sad that there although my American peers had their yearbooks and a series of reunions to look forward to, there would be none of that for me as a British school system graduate.
Because I was am a giant nerd, though, I had the idea to make my own yearbook in the form of an album quilt. I made the album blocks, ironed freezer paper to the back of them, and took them to school with Pigma Micron pens and asked a selection of friends to write messages for me. I even mailed one (or maybe managed the handoff in person?) to my American bestie who had returned to the US two years earlier.
I planned to set the blocks on point in a sea of white and do beautiful hand quilting in all that negative space and have the quilt grace my college extra long twin bed.
That obviously did not happen.
I had finished the quilt top promptly (I assume) in 2001, but never got around to basting it and as the years went on I realized this project might go unfinished forever. Not only was the hand quilting keeping me from getting started, but teenagers can be a little cringy, and most of the quilt block messages still have me rolling my eyes.
Then, in 2012 I started seeing this amazing machine quilting from pictures around the quilting blogs I followed (this was back when people read blogs). I wrote to her and got on her list of quilts to tackle. She was a little behind, but I told her not to worry at all because I was excited to see what she could do and I would rather her tackle the quilt when inspiration struck. I certainly hadn’t been in a rush in the previous decade to get it done, so there was no rush now.
That quilter is Angela Walters.
If you are not a quilter that means nothing to you. But I managed to get on the waiting list of the most famous long arm quilter right before she became super quilt world famous and hiring her to the do the quilting on your quilt was no longer something you could do.
Her career was exploding, so it did take over 2 years to get the quilt back. Unfortunately the original backing (plain white to match the front) had been misplaced and she swapped it with a white on white backing. I actually really loathe white on white fabric and I was so disappointed that it was all I could see when I looked at the quilt for a couple of years.
Eventually I moved on (I mean, I have a quilt quilted by Angela Walters!), but by that time I was in nursing school and didn’t have much time for sewing.
In the last year or two I went to create binding for this so-close-to-being-done quilt, and I was upset to see that the leftover fabric that I’d been saving for the binding, fabric I’d moved across continents and countries and decades, was gone. I kept hoping it would turn up, kept checking different places, but couldn’t find it anywhere.
Last month I decided that it was time to move on once again with this quilt that just never wants to behave. I would bind it with plain white fabric and give up the unreasonable hope that the fabric would turn up. While my original vision had been for a scrappy binding to match the scrappy border, hadn’t I rolled with other punches to the vision? I decided the fabric must have been accidentally discarded in The Great Fabric Purge of 2018 and it was time to chop up some white Kona.
And then, while looking for the felt to finish off my Jesse Tree Ornaments (and other big WIP commitment of this winter), I FOUND THE FABRIC! A very satisfying end to this quilt’s 19 year saga!
