Thanks to all who offered your tops as practice quilts.  One thing I learned in the very beginning of my longarm days is never to practice on anyone else’s quilt.  No matter how much people tell you . . “Oh, it’s just an old junker.  Do what you want with it.” Well, you mess it up or even if you don’t mess it up but it looks really ugly, then they show it to someone else and even though they may not care how it looks, eventually someone is going to see it and they’re not going to hear that you were just practicing and they’re going to think that was your best work and . . poof . . no one wants you to do their quilting.

There have been times when I’ve had ideas that I knew would work but felt like my skills just need a little bit of perfection and I’d offer to do that as a custom job on a quilt and charge panto prices or something like that but when there’s a big, out of my comfort zone project, no way am I going to attempt it on someone else’s top.

So, here’s the lucky top from my stack of unquilted tops that was chosen for this little practice project.

Do not ask me what I was thinking when I made this quilt.  I don’t have a clue!  Isn’t this so unlike anything you’ve seen me make? Yes, it’s pretty darned ugly.  You can say it . . won’t hurt my feelings.  There’s a heck of a lot of quilting space in there and lots of practice room.  I just hope I have more of that rose colored batik for binding but since this project was made almost 9 years ago . . I’ll be surprised if I still have it.

Next time you see it . . well . . you may never see it again.  Just depends on how this experiment goes.