The Great Quilt Sort

The Great Quilt Sort is in full swing and I’ve managed to organize, fold, and make decisions about most of the quilts in my closets.

I started by giving a lot of quilts away. My in-laws and my family took a few quilts and I gave a baby quilt away to a friend that’s expecting. It’s a very pink quilt so we’ll cross our fingers she’s having a girl.

I continued organizing and sorting and found myself running into a problem. If a quilt could possibly be used for teaching, I felt a tendency to keep it. That pile grew and grew until it basically took up the whole couch. Do I really need this many quilts to teach a class?

I should add that I don’t teach classes in person right now. Maybe one day, but for now I’m focusing all my attention on writing and teaching online.

So… maybe these quilts need to find a new home too?

Another issue I have run into is my Quilt Along quilts. I need to keep those, don’t I? Well, many of these projects are 3 or 4 years old. They are done. It was fun to create them and we learned a lot, but it’s over.

As you can see, there’s a lot of emotional attachment here and it’s a process to work through it. I have many quilts that I’ve spent months, if not years quilting and it’s hard to let them go.

But I also need to make room for new quilts to be made. It’s a catch-22 because I’m afraid if I release these quilts one day I will need them and they won’t be there and worse, I’ll have to make it all over again.

Argh! Obviously that’s a bit illogical, but you get the idea. Now for another problem I could use your help on. I have a quilt that I probably put in over 200 hours of quilting very densely. It was for a mini quilt along back in 2010 and was supposed to be the show quilted version of an appliqued quilt.

I never finished it because at the time my definition for a show quilted / quality quilt was super densely quilted. I got in over my head on that project and never finished it.

So I’ve decided to turn it into a hoop quilt so I can at least enjoy it a little bit. But I found I can set up the hoop two different ways. Which way do you like best?

Option A – Off Centered. This captures a bit of the border area and more of the leaves of the heart flowers.

Option B – Centered. This showcases more of the quilting and the funky technique I was playing with at the time with travel stitching.

Let me know which version you like best in the comments below! I can only cut it once after all!

Overall I’ve really enjoyed this sorting process. It’s been an adventure to pull out all of my quilts and go over the designs and fabric choices. I can see how my quilting style has evolved over the years and I can see the direction I’m moving into and that’s fun too.

So that’s what I’m doing today! What is on your machine or piled up on your couch? I think I’m going to take a break from sorting and folding and go stitch something while listening to a fun audiobook. It’s time for a break!

Let’s go quilt,

Leah Day