Norah Quilt

During the pandemic I was lost and looking for a project that spoke to me while I was in quarantine. I stumbled upon the Norah Quilt along from Sunny Day Supply Co. and it spoke to me.

I used mostly scraps and a few pieces of treasured stash for the majority of the quilt. It was my first log cabin type project and I made a pretty crucial mistake. I hate borders and sashing. I usually refuse to pin them and hope for the best. Terribly risky of me, I know.

When I was starting and going through this project, I was not thinking about the project while I was sewing. I was thinking about: the pandemic, quarantine, online school, and a massive amount of family and personal problems. I used this project as therapy and a way to organize my thoughts in a way. I did not realize that the lack of pinning resulted in a severely wonky quilt top, until it was a pretty major problem. Because I was not pinning, some of the rows were not the right size and basically the center of the quilt was trying to pop out.

I ended up breaking down in tears about other thing going on and had a very successful and cleansing cry on the kitchen floor next to the messed up quilt top. I then angrily threw the quilt onto the top of the closet.

About a day later, I made an Instagram post explaining that there would be no more progress posts because it was ruined and I attached a picture. I was then overwhelmed by helpful quilters on Instagram that gave me ideas and links to videos that could help me. The quilting community on Instagram is a truly magical place that is so unlike most of the internet.

I tried the various ideas and basically ended up ironing, steaming, and starching the quilt like CRAZY. It was still reallyyyy messed up, but with some heavy hand quilting (another great Instagram suggestion) I thought it could be salvageable. The problem was, I wasn’t completely done with the quilt yet, unless I wanted it to be a baby quilt. I wanted a full sized quilt. I decided that instead of continuing the small strips, I would transition to two set of larger strips until it was full sized (my take on yet another suggestion). A few fat quarters later I had a finished quilt top.

The center was still trying to escape from the quilt though, even after all that starching. I grabbed the treasured koi fish fabric I had been hoarding for the backing and went to baste it. I worked so hard basting this quilt. I put over a 100 pins into it and because of how hard I was stretching it while trying to even it out, a few seams ripped open.

I then spent a large portion of quarantine hand quilting it with some black thread. Desperately trying to make the quilt less messed up than it actually was.

It is now finished and less wonky than it was, but it is still pretty wonky. You can see it in the wrinkles. The center still comes out a bit. It is not a perfect square.

For finishing touches, I added stripped binding and a quilt label from Southern Charm Quilts.