Netflix, hand quilting and an unfinished wedding quilt

Every August I pull out my wedding quilt with the intention of finishing by my anniversary at the end of the month, put in a few hand quilting stitches, miss my deadline and put it back away again until next year.

Last year was my fifth anniversary. I had promised my husband I would finish it by that milestone. But with a three-month old in the house, I failed miserably at meeting that deadline. I don’t think I even worked on the quilt at all.

The signature quilt is one of the first bed quilts I started. The six-inch squares feature a four inch square in the center that guests at our wedding signed at the reception. I thought people would just sign their names but many wrote beautiful, funny and, at times, inappropriate messages. Really you’re asking someone to be dirty when you have an open bar and ask a bunch of 20-something guys to write on a quilt square. Let’s just say one square didn’t make it into the quilt. It is still floating around my sock drawer.

The problem is I finished the quilt top very early in my quilting life. I hadn’t even figured out how to sew an accurate quarter inch seam. So instead of attempting to quilt it on my domestic sewing machine, I opted for hand quilting using big stitch.

I am not positive that “big stitch” as it is defined by my quilt guild is the same as the actual definition. But to do it, you take pearl cotton, thread it onto a large eye needle and start stitching. The stitches on the top of the quilt should all be about a quarter of an inch long, and the stitches on the back of the quilt should be as small as you can make them.

It was a great solution for me at the time, because I was able to control a needle for hand quilting much better than a sewing machine for free motion quilting. Plus, since the stitch was supposed to be large, I didn’t have to worry about getting teeny tiny, perfectly even stitches with fine hand quilting.

The problem is while I am a competent hand quilter, I really don’t enjoy it. I prefer working on a sewing machine any day of the week to handwork. All you have to do is look at my stack of UFOs. The majority of them require hand sewing.

So maybe this year will finally be the year. I just have two borders left, which I could complete during the time it takes to binge watch one season of a show of my choosing on Netflix. Completely doable. My husband works in the evening, so it would be great to just surprise him on our anniversary with the finished quilt hanging in our living room. I think that would make a great anniversary gift, since he asks about this quilt often.

Now I just have to browse my list on Netflix for the perfect show.