A Literal Elephant in the Room...

Do you ever reach that point in a project when you really just start loathing it?  I'm there - I'm so there - with my Elephant Parade quilt.  Everything about it is feeling wrong and its more than a little depressing. 

They look so innocent, don't they?

Last you heard about this quilt, I had redone the blocks into more sparse pops of color. They still weren't quite what I loved, but at this point I wasn't going to go back to the drawing board a third time. I stuck with the small squares and once they were all sashed together, I liked them marginally more. The layout was reminding me a bit of confetti - appropriate for a parade. There was a smidgen of hope.

I put the back together pretty quickly - the quilt top is small enough so that a single cut of fabric was wide enough to cover the entire back.  I had quite a few strips of colored fabric cut and abandoned from the original block design, so I appliqued a couple here and there with a few elephants parading along. 

It was at this point that my first major "oh crap" moment presented itself - when I realized what I should have done with the quilt in the first place.  I loved the solo elephants on the back much more than a whole line of them on the front. If I had just been patient and let the fabric marinate in my mind a little more, maybe I would have thought of fussy cutting elephants into the center of a few blocks and randomly placing those here and there on the front along with the confetti.  That would have accomplished the more sparing look that I was going for.  Too little, too late.

With the back and the front completed, I just had to settle on a quilting design.  "Oh crap" moment #2 - should have just gone the easy route and done a simple crosshatch pattern with simple, clean lines on a quilt that I was already feeling kind of "meh" about.  Instead, I got it in my head that it would be cute to do echo quilting around one or two elephants in each row.  Some spray basting plus a couple extra pins here and there and I was ready to go.  It started out okay...and then hours (or what felt like it) later, I had made little progress.  And I was still in the first row.  Break out the wine!

An essential quilting tool

First elephant echoes - okay.  Second elephant echo and "oh crap" moment #3 presented itself - the motion of the circles was moving the fabric (despite my heavy basting) in opposite directions and as they got close to each other, I was getting rippling.  Lots and lots of rippling.  My pictures here are being pretty kind.  I think it looks much worse in person.    And it got even worse in the second elephant row. Despite the major rippling on the top, the back is shockingly remaining ripple-free - pretty much the exact opposite of what I would have expected.

Not to mention that at this point I was really regretting the design in general.  I thought it would highlight the elephants in a cute way.  Instead, now that I'm hours and hours in, I think they look like giant bullseyes.  This could be the bitterness talking though. 

So I'm giving myself a time out on this project.  It's getting put away for a week or two until I can look at it without wanting to take my rotary cutter to the whole thing.  Does this ever happen to you too?

 

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