The good, the bad, and the plain ugly

The good.

I noticed a lot of bloggers showing us some favourite Christmas decorations so I thought I'd join in.

This is my all time favourite because it was made by my DD, SIL and two of the grandkids in 2007. One of the grandkids was only two at the time. It has very special meaning for me and It reminds me what Christmas is all about on so many levels.  Note the sheep!

Another goodie, this parcel arrived last week. I love these dots. In fact there aren't many dots I don't like but these have a retro feel and will go with thirties fabrics as well as the brighter designer lines. It's Kai Honeycomb and I got it from here.

I decided I'd better get onto quilting the cot quilt for my grandson before he gets too big for the baby hammock and goes into a cot. You might remember this one from earlier this year. I got a bit lazy and decided I would machine quilt it in a simple way. Since it's small, why not use basting spray?

I lightly starched the backing and pinned it to the mat in the sewing room. Placed newspaper around the perimeter to catch the overspray and opened up the doors for ventilation.

So far so good, I'm using a beautiful wool batt, Tuscany by Hobbs. It's so soft and luxurious.

The bad.

I merrily quilted some loop de loops over the majority of the quilt. All the time, I'm thinking how puffy the wool looks and I prefer the look of cotton. I carry on because this baby will need the warmth in cold New Zealand in winter.

About 3/4 of the way through, I look on the back and notice some bad tension problems that weren't occuring at the beginning. I'm too ashamed to show that part but I really hate the puffy look on the front.

The ugly

I can live with some things that aren't exactly what I'd like but this was just too yucky and embarrasing for me to pass it on as a gift so I decided I would have to bite the bullet and unpick it. One evening of unpicking and I'm over half way there to getting this back to the starting point.

I't's been another valuable learning experience and now I'll hand quilt this using perle cotton in a big stitch, it should go fairly quickly. The hard part is that it's pretty hot weather here so sitting with wool might get a little uncomfortable.