the ugly quilt

Well, I think the most positive thing I can say about this child-sized quilt is that it is finished.  Otherwise, I must admit that it must be the ugliest quilt I've ever done.

It wasn't intentional, though.  I'm not even sure when I made the blocks.  I think I was fooling around with strip sets and kaleidoscope/wedge rulers just to see what they were like.

Because you really can't do too much with an octagon shape until you square it up .. oh, wait, you COULD just butt them up against each other like you do with hexagons, but that would have created an ever uglier quilt, if that could possibly be imagined.   So, I squared up each block with a solid and used those same solids for sashing.

I know I picked the rust and brown fabrics simply because I had enough of them in the stash and they didn't look *terrible* with the string blocks.  Is that an awful way to pick fabrics or what? But, again, it wasn't intentional. 

Generally speaking, I like to use the test blocks and the 'fooling around' blocks that I make.  These blocks were of a good enough size that I could actually make a reasonable sized quilt with them.  I know I would have had horrible pangs of guilt had I just thrown them out, although on second thought, maybe I should have cut them down to make veterinarian cage liners ... the animals certainly wouldn't have minded.

But, I didn't make cage liners, so a child-sized quilt it is.  It'll keep some child warm and that counts for something, right?  Can you tell I'm desperately trying to find a silver lining?

I did a lot of free motion quilting on this one.  I probably should have done a pantograph, but pantograph work with my Lizzie is awkward due to the physical place I needed to put her.  So, I tend to avoid pantographs.

In retrospect, I think I just made this entire quilt with the wrong approach.  I'm not terribly pleased with it, although I *am* pleased that the top is quilted, labeled and bound.  It'll be out of my house pretty soon, which clears up some space.

This just shows you that my quilts don't always come out eye-pleasing and I do make errors in judgement .... although not usually all in the same quilt!  :-)