Strawberry Whine

That is not a typo in the title of this post. I meant whine, indeed I did.

The binding is on the red and white quilt. And, having ignored this quilt for so long, I am in love with it again.

It is the border that makes this quilt for me. I think it would be kind of boring without it. But that's just my opinion. As it is I was happy to find that I still have a lot of photos saved on how I constructed the blocks so maybe I can get a pattern written for it after all.

But, what was the problem that made me walk away from it for so long. Well, if you look up at the top row of blocks you will see a mark between the second and third block. If you look more closely it looks like this.

Yeah, pretty huh?! And that was what made me bury this almost finished quilt for the best part of a year.

Last Christmas we did some entertaining, as you do. Included in this was a number of younger children and although I had the quilt folded and tucked away under and at the back of my sewing desk (which is in the dining room) somehow a strawberry made its way onto the quilt top and it was sod's law that it had to land on a white bit.

The problem really began not with the dropping of the strawberry but the fact that I didn't discover it for over a month, and by that time it was a dried up discoloured lump only identifiable by the fact that I could still discern strawberry seeds on the outside of it. The stain was well and truly set by then and I dealt with it in my usual manner - ignored it. Walked away, sulked, maybe stomped a bit, and pretended it didn't exist.

Until the past few days. Yesterday I applied three different stain removers (not at the same time), and did two washes of the whole quilt - with copious amounts of colour catchers and stain/colour magnets. (By the way, what did we do before these things were invented?)

And now I have a quilt I can live with.

By no means perfect, and I am not done trying to get the remains of the stain out, but I can happily put this quilt out for Christmas and use it now. I may fold it so that the faded stain is hidden but I am sure that's understandable.

It really is more of a smudge now. Sunlight, other stain removers and time will do the rest of the job. Meanwhile, on the absolutely bright side, I love, love, love how the quilting looks all crinkled up. The contrast of the white swirls to the red straight lines. The swirls stand out so much more now and the quilt is all soft and huggable.

What's not to like about that? Though strawberry eating will be forbidden anywhere in the vicinity of this quilt. Just saying.

Susan

PS: This is the only quilt I have ever made that I had quilted by someone else and that someone is my friend Trudi, Brit Bee original member and long arm quilter extrodinaire. She can be found here.