The Tale of the Yellow Chaco Liner

We quilting bloggers like to write about the techniques and skills that go into the creation of our quilts. I know that I approach my quilt making as an art, and I’m happy to tell anyone who is willing to read my blog about it! At the end of the day, though, I’m making a blanket. I see quilting as a utilitarian art form.

I have never sold (or tried to sell) any of my quilts. All of them either live here at From Bolt to Beauty world headquarters or have been gifted to a friend or family member. As a result, my quilts are just as much about the recipient as they are the creator.

With that in mind, I want to tell you the story of quilt #3.

In the spring of 2013, I decided that my friend Miss L needed a quilt. This present would be both unexpected and meaningful. The problem with this plan, however, was that I had never made a quilt before.

So I did a test run, sewing a quilt top of big squares and quilting with a simple cross-hatch. I moved on to a baby quilt. With two quilts under my belt, I approached my third with confidence. Using Joelle Hoverson’s Last-Minute Patchwork and Quilted Gifts, I chose to sew my own version of this quilt for Miss L …

Cutting Corners, from Last-Minute Patchwork and Quilted Gifts

The tote bag, pictured below, incorporates the same fabrics I used in the quilt. The center rectangle was the floral, from Rashida Coleman-Hale’s Koi collection, and was surrounded by borders in the navy solid and the black dot, from Zen Chic’s Comma collection. (In the end, I bound the quilt with a fushia solid, visible in the second tote pic below.)

Photo courtesy of Leland Ave Studios

I marked the quilt with my trusty white Chaco Liner, from Clover, and a yellow version of the same tool, which I had bought specifically for this project. I love Chaco Liners. I find them easier to work with than white pencils or Hera Markers, and I never had a problem with them until I washed this quilt.

I did not follow the manufacturer’s recommendation and test the yellow Chaco Liner before use, and it washed out of the floral print but not the Zen Chic fabric. I was devastated. I did unspeakable things to that quilt in attempt to remedy the situation. I used commercial stain removers. I used a homemade hydrogen peroxide mixture. By the end, the yellow lines remained, and due to my interventions, some of the colors in the floral had begun to bleed. Sigh.

Here’s the thing: I gave the quilt to my friend anyway. It didn’t meet my expectations as the product of my creativity, but it still had a purpose to serve. The heinous yellow lines did not affect its performance as a quilt!

Plus, I made this quilt especially for Miss L. It was an expression of my love for her. Keeping it for myself because it didn’t turn out as planned was not an option.

Granted, I was too heartbroken to take a picture of the quilt. It doesn’t appear in my list of finished quilts here. But my friend was clearly touched by this gift, and that eclipsed the mishap with the yellow Chaco Liner. So there was a happy ending after all.

Actually, there were two. I had enough scraps for a tote bag, which I gifted to another friend just recently. I didn’t know at the time, but this friend was having a rough spell. (Children + illness = long days for mamas!) I could have buried both the yellow-marked quilt and remaining fabric bits at the bottom of my fabric stash. I’m happy, though, that I followed through with gifting the original quilt project and then made a second project that features the same lovely fabric combination.

Photo courtesy of Leland Ave Studios

Amy, over at 13 Spools, recently encouraged her readers to embrace their mistakes. The example she gives, however, is more of a design decision that she ended up disliking. Mine is more of a marking-tool malfunction, a mistake that could have been avoided. Can you relate to one or the other? I’d love to hear your experience along either vein and how you handled it!

Linking up to Finish It Up Friday and Let’s Bee Social ...