That Quilt

We all have that quilt. It may not be pretty, it's probably seen much better days, but you love it and you can't get enough of it. Well, this is the day I share with you the story of the quilt I talk about the most. I've mentioned it before, but I don't think I've actually shared pictures on here. Well, today is that day. To talk about that quilt... My hubby is going to kill me! :)

 Welcome to our bedroom! (This isn't that quilt) Under this comforter we have strictly for quilt protection and extra snuggle stuff if someone steals all of the covers (like the littlest dog we have). Our room is actually much darker than it looks here, we have dark furniture (complete coincidence) but we have dark red walls and black suede curtains with blackout shades behind them... Here's why:

When we bought this house and moved, Ben was working third shift. He would go to bed around noon so we had to make this room as dark as possible so he could sleep at the brightest part of the day. He's now on days, but we never repainted, yet. Too much furniture and moving stuff and painting over red... (what was I thinking?) But we love it.

Under that comforter or some icky comforter that comes out of a bed-in-a-bag thing would be this quilt:

 This is the quilt I made for my Hubby. Sorry for the bad picture, but I scanned this in off of a photo I found last week while reminiscing. Here was evidence of how beautiful this quilt once looked. The vibrant colors...And the white. Look at all of that white fabric! It was so pretty. Notice I said "was".

Well, if you don't know the story, here goes: I made this quilt for Ben. It was supposed to be a lap quilt, but when I laid it out, Ben looked at it and said, "That's it?" with this super exaggerated sigh. So I added a border, and another one.

This was one of the first quilts I made, I think the largest up to this point. It was also the second quilt I ever long arm quilted and it was the first I custom quilted. My feathers on this one are a far cry from what I can do today, but you have to start somewhere!

The picture above was when the quilt was hanging at the local juried quilt show. Ben went with me to pick it up as he thought it was quite insulting that I make him a quilt that he couldn't have or use for months since it was at the show... Oooopppps. So, Ben and I picked it up and he bear hugged it the entire way home.

Once we got home, he disappeared. Here, he went into the bedroom and promptly put this quilt on our bed. Our queen size bed. Remember it was supposed to be a lap quilt... Well, it only hangs over the sides by a few inches, but he then explained to me that I use blankets on the couch and I fight with the dogs over them, but he doesn't. Honestly in the almost 11 years we've been married I can think of maybe 4 times he's had a blanket on him and it's usually when he's really sick. That's it. So the only way he would get to use his quilt would be if it was on the bed. Okie dokie.

Meanwhile, while he and I were picking up said quilt, we lived next to my grandparents at the time and they fed both of our little dogs tons and TONS of treats. Probably more food than they get at dinner... Fast forward to 5:30 the next morning to where I'm woken up by a dog getting sick from all of those treats all over the quilt! PANIC MODE!!!

I tried to take the quilt off of Ben and the bed without him knowing, but I failed. Miserably. In my failed attempt, I heard "where are you going with my quilt?"... I replied that the dog got sick on it. Ben was like, you can have it!

Well, that was Dilemma #1. Dilemma #2 began in the wash. I prewashed (or thought I prewashed) the fabrics in my young little quilter mind... I know much better now... But alas, we washed the quilt and the dark red woven I used for the back bled. EVERYWHERE. I'll show you how bad in a minute. I really could have used a box of Color Catcher sheets back then!

So without further ado, here is the quilt in it's current state...

 It actually doesn't look that bad in this picture, minus that gaping hole in the middle. That would be Dilemma #3 courtesy of this little guy:

Duncan had this habit of not really chewing on blankets, but shoving them in his mouth and using them like a pacifier when he slept. When he was a puppy it wasn't bad. The older he got, it turned from a cute little habit into destructive psycho. So, the quilt has holes. LOTS of holes. But it still washes up, it's still warm, we just make the bed so the hole is towards the top so we don't get our feet caught in it. 

 Here's proof of the holes. All of those little arrows (and I'm sure there's many more). Duncan would burrow under the comforter and over the quilt and pacify on the quilt...

 Some holes aren't that bad, like this one where you can see the lovely pink batting that certainly didn't start out that color.

 And here's the larger hole and it goes right through to the sheet. That's a wide open hole there! Oh,and some of those fabrics used to be white. It's interesting to see the fabrics that were once white on white prints. Now they're more light pink on darker pink...

Oh, and more of that lovely pink batting. It's really pink, like REALLY pink.

So that's the quilt. That's the quilt I love and talk about more than any quilt I've made, even my book quilts. I don't know if it's sad or just humbling.

Now, I know I'm not the only person to experience a quilt in this manner. Please share with me your quilt horror stories. 1. That way I don't feel like the total dork in the quilting community. and 2. So that we can prove that these things happen and we've lived through them.

Hopefully your story is in the past enough that you can laugh at it now. Have a great weekend all! I'm going to hopefully go work on a new quilt that won't end up in the same state as the quilt I just shared!