Oh, the carousel quilt…. This thing has been the bane of my existence for a long time.
I did a search and the first time I blogged about it was in February of 2017. The last time I blogged about it was in 2021 when I solemnly swore that I would finish it that year. Yeah, that didn’t happen.
The pattern is De La Promenade from Quilt Fusion.
It was a massive and impractical project. It is fusible appliqué which pretty much means it is a bed sized quilt that can never be washed. I knew going in that this would be a wall hanging. We even decorated a whole room around it. The walls were painted to highlight it. There is other circus themed artwork in there. What there hasn’t been is a carousel quilt. My husband has been very sad.
The center blocks all went well. I had fun making them. They are fused and then you sew down the edges while it is layered on batting. You are doing this square by square. It makes it a bit of a quilt as you go technique. The problem came in with the borders.
I had a thought when I got there that I liked it as is so maybe I shouldn’t bother with the borders. But I did it. I should have listened to my brain. The borders defeated me.
The pieces were just too small to get sewn down well on the edges. They were fraying and looked awful. Once the borders were on the whole thing was too big to be able to manipulate it well to go back and fix anything. If you were trying to sew around a small piece on one side, something would be falling off on the opposite side. I learned to loathe this quilt. That’s why it would get put in time out for years at a time.
Also, the swan block is about a 1/4″ off square. I figured that out when the last mitered corner didn’t quite fit. There was no way to go back and fix that. I couldn’t look at this quilt. My husband loved it. My mother tried to fix it but gave up. I kept saying the borders need to go but we are years into to trying to fix it at this point.
Finally, a few weeks ago I just said that I was never going to finish this quilt if the borders didn’t go. My mom said go for it so I just cut them off. I had bought binding fabric for it a while ago. Could I find that fabric? Of course not. Why should anything be easy about this? I grabbed something else and bound it in a day and got it done. I can’t believe it is finished.
I don’t miss those hateful borders at all! My husband almost cried.
