An Uncooperative Quilt, High School and a Mustang

I am having so much trouble with this quilt and there is no reason for it! In order to stay on my self-imposed schedule, I should have finished Thursday . . that was 4 days ago and I haven't finished yet. I will finish tonight, no matter how late I get to bed. When I wake up on Tuesday morning, this quilt will be in the "To Be Quilted" pile. Problems I've had (that I should NOT have had!)

• I didn't get enough of the black fabric. I knew while cutting it that there was going to be a problem.
• I must've been in another world while writing the directions because I totally left off one border and of course, it was the black . . I had about a yard left over of the other fabrics.
• Where there are points meeting, the seams were thick and the 301 kept skipping stitches on the downhill side of the humps. That's when I switched to the Bernina and there's a slight difference in the 1/4" feet and I have some places where I had to really work to get the seams to line up.

The pattern is shown in purples and greens. The fabrics are black and orange with a little green so all weekend, I've been saying "purple is black, green is orange . . " so that's been confusing. I was just not liking this quilt at all. I showed it to Vince last night and he really liked it. I think at this point he likes anything that isn't lime green and purple!

The blocks are all done, I'm working on the pieced border now. I just walked away and looked at it and . . I might can learn to like it.

Here's what's kinda funny. As I was looking at the quilt, here's what I thought that made me smile. My high school colors were orange and black. We loved orange and black at Westlake High. The thought never occurred to us that those were ugly colors .. they were our colors!

In Louisiana back then (WAY back then!), we could get our driver's license when we were 15. Can you imagine? No permit . . just straight up driver's license! So, I turned 15, and on the day of my birthday, we got my license AND my dad bought me a Mustang. Not just any old Mustang but a white 1967 Fastback just like this one! I didn't have a clue how to drive a car with a standard transmission but I learned. Everything was great for several years and then . . for some reason my dad decided to have the car painted. There were a couple of rust spots on the trunk lid and dad had gotten a lid off another Mustang from a junk yard and it was green . . kinda that mossy green that is a fairly normal color for cars . . a factory color. You would think since I was happy with a white car, it would have been fairly simple to paint the trunk lid white to match the car. My dad has this bad habit of doing things that have a major impact on the lives of others and he forgets to mention that he's doing it. Once he took my mom's Buick LeSabre (tank!) to get gas or something simple and came back with a VW bug. He had traded mom's HUGE car for a Volkswagon. And, not just any VW but one with a stick shift and no air conditioning. She couldn't drive a stick shift and no one can survive in south Louisiana without air conditioning in the car. And, they're still married! Back to the color of the Mustang . . what do you think? Paint the trunk lid to match the car or paint the whole car to match the trunk? Yep, paint the whole car! We all swear my dad took the Mustang to a blind painter who matched the green and painted the whole car green. But, it wasn't the right green. It was some pukey yellow shade of green. I was sick! Can you imagine being a teenager and driving around in a puke green Mustang? No wonder I'm scarred for life! So, this quilt I'm working on reminds me of high school. Orange and black for the school colors, a bit of white for the Mustang I loved and a bit of green in memory of the blind painter! :) He really wasn't blind but he could've been color blind. Judy