There are times when mistakes are made when making a quilt. Things that you know how to do are not done properly and the end result is a disaster. You can’t understand how or why you made it the way you did.

The Blue Star is an example of that. It was the next one in the pile of ufos. The Blue Star is the sample quilt for my class “Four Pins and a Needle”. The class was made several years ago for some office workers who wanted to learn quilting on their breaks. They did not want to use a machine. The Blue Star was hand pieced in the class, but machine pieced when I got home. It was hand quilted out to the last two rows. The class ended abruptly, before it was finished. The Blue Star was put aside.

The class welcome paper says: “The class will consist of several short lessons, 15 minutes each. Just enough time for a coffee break. There will be a little easy homework as we go along. There are no tests, just a fun class. You will learn hand piecing, which can be converted to machine piecing if you like. Also, design, color hand quilting, and other things. ” There were 17 items in the index. All have printed handouts. Number nine was “quilt sandwich and basting”. I taught that the backing and batting have to be larger than the top when putting the three pieces together.

Now. to restarting the ufo. Unfortunately, due to a problem with my hands, I can no longer hand quilt. That’s not a problem. I could make a hybrid and machine quilt the borders. Then I noticed that the border and bating were much smaller than the top. How did that happen? The backing was pieced, but not all the seams were finished. I would not have demonstrated it that way. All problems have a solution. I placed the quilt face up and laid the border back on the middle of the quilt. Then the backing and batting were cut one inch away from the seam. This was done to all four sides. A 3 1/2-inch strip of another color was sewn to all four sides. It was pressed. Then a similar strip of batting was added to the batting with Heat Press Batting Together. It was pressed and then quilted. Problem solved. The border looks intentional.

The next ufo has been started. It also has a little problem that needs to be fixed. But it can be resolved. I wonder if the pile of ufos all have little problems and became ufos because I didn’t want to fix them at the time.

Have a great day and happy quilting.