How my poor pitiful unloved quilt almost became a UFO

Sometimes you push the envelope and produce something new and different and better than your usual. Sometimes you do it and it becomes a UFO because it's just not lovable. It is so NOT YOU that you can't lavish the attention on it that it deserves. I am in the middle of that quandry right now.

This all started because I was trying to make bolder, brighter quilts for Project Linus, things kids would like, not my usual muted (someone said "muddy" - no, I didn't take offense, it's true) colors. I'm making a Clay's Choice block in 30's repro prints, set in white tone-on-tone print, with a bright print strip in the border which matches the backing, bordered on either side by white fabric. The print is kind of cute; it's all kinds of penny candy printed on a purple background, which is really bright but not as garish as it sounds when described. There's BBBats and licorice Scotties and orange slices and peppermints and ribbon candy. The print has purple, pink, orange, bright green and bright yellow, so I selected 30's prints in those shades and pieced the Clay's Choice blocks, using all fabric from my stash. The purple print was all I bought. Oh, yes, there are also Clay's Choice blocks in the corners of the border, and a 1" scrappy pieced border of 30's fabrics between the blocks and the outside border. Anyway, here's a picture:When it came time to put the outside border on, I discovered that I didn't have enough of the white fabric, so I rummaged in my neutrals box and found another tone-on-tone white to use. Stash-busting, remember? It looked fine under the light above my sewing table so I cut and pieced the borders and applied them. I happened to lay it on the back of my reading chair in the den after pin-basting, where it was in natural light. That was when I discovered that the whites aren't exactly the same shade. The border is whiter than the block backgrounds. But it was already sewn together and sandwiched and basted.

The difference in the white fabrics glared at me. Momentarily I debated ripping the border out, but figured that I couldn't match the other background fabric any better in the stores, so it was probably the best I could do. I decided to go ahead and machine quilt it.

It fought me from the first stitch. I stitched in the ditch around the stars, chaining them together by continuing the stitch down the inside border. It shifted, it pulled, it stretched, until finally the blocks were quilted. Then I started on the border and it completely defeated me. It was distorted and I hated it. So this morning I picked all the quilting out of the border and started anew, with parallel lines from the inner border to the edge. Finally, it was done.

There was a point there where I almost cut off the outer border and just made a wee little quilt, but the size (it would only have been 26" x 42") stopped me. That's hardly big enough for a little baby. It's final size is 42" x 58".

The binding is now done and, unfortunately, I still don't love it. It gave me too much trouble, and the colors are just too bright, too NOT ME. Perhaps a child who loves purple will take to it, and I really hope that happens. If the project had been for me, it would have landed in the never-to-be-finished pile days ago. I'm going back to muted colors for a few quilts, until I feel I can stick a toe in unfamiliar waters again.