Oh Deer! Epic Fail.

This is an unusual blog post about a baby quilt that I made for my newborn niece (my first niece!). I devided a jelly roll of Momo’s Oh Deer! into boy-ish and girl-ish prints and used the majority of girl-ish prints for a stacked strips pattern. Everything went well until it reached quilt-top-stage.

Then I wanted to appliqué the name and things started to get out of control.

Just so you know: doublecheck the direction of the letters before you fuse them to the background and before raw-edge-appliquéing them )o:

Maybe a hint that I chose the wrong font?!

I chose a piece of flannel and a left-over piece of batting that was just big enough and started quilting pebbles. Within the 2,5” strips I simply outlined the seams of every other strip.

Several thread breakes made quilting tough and enervating.

The binding was made from a mixture of white fabrics and leftover strips.

When I finished quilting and binding, I popped the quilt in the washer like I do with all newly-made quilts.

This is the mess that came out of the washer together with the quilt. And another big ball of fibres came out of the dryer afterwards. It turns out the batting was a leftover from the other bearding quilt.

This phenomenon is known als “bearding”. The fibres of the batting penetrade the fabrics on both sides (top and backing). The more fibres you pull out the worse it gets.

I am so angry with whoever produced the batting (I threw away the packing before I finished the first bearding quilt) and I am angry with myself: I should have thrown away ALL the leftover batting pieces that I had when the batting ruined the first quilt.

I was so disappointed with the result that I even forgot to take a photo of the finished quilt before I gave it to my sister. I contemplated throwing it away but decided it could be used as a wall hanging, seeing it had hangers at the back.

I sincerely hope this will never ever happen to you!
Happy Quilting
Christine