Need a Project? Take a New Look at an Old Quilt

Are you a loss for new projects? Quarantine is the ideal time to look at your finished quilts and ask yourself a melancholy yet potentially engaging question: Is this quilt really finished?

When I finish a quilt, I usually don't love it - I mainly see flaws. It takes a while to figure out whether it needs more. But this improv-pieced quilt was an exception. I just loved it when I finished it in 2017.

Then, the people I showed it to went "Very nice, meh, next."

Then QuiltCon rejected it. Dang, I was soooo not-understood.

I held my artistic ground, and defiantly placed it into my finished quilt pile (which happens to be the same as my unfinished quilt pile), where it sat until early February. I had just attended Road to California, and one of the costs/benefits of attending a show is that it makes you want to up your game. Could I add pizzazz?

What the heck, I went for it, quilting light diagonal lines between blocks. Then I appliqued puffy circles at the intersections. Now it looks like this:

I feel like I took an opera and turned it into a jingle. But that's not always bad - Bohemian Rhapsody, right?

The great thing about digital cameras is that you can take lots of pictures of every stage of your quilt's childhood. So, even though I destroyed the first version, I will always have Paris in the form of zillions of "before" pictures.

I originally called it "Eyeshadows," because the blocks look like eyes wide open, with rainbow mascara, Now, it might need a new name: "Round Pegs, Square Holes." The circles have batting inside, and the ones that hang over the edge have a finished back.  Each was quilted with a different design before being hand-stitched in place.

I'm not entirely sure if I ruined it or improved it, but it's definitely more fun than the original! And now, I sincerely hope it's finished!