Does anybody have a quilting horror story to share?
maybe cut up everything and turn it into a string quilt.
Gini,
She is pretty cool....I was taking shots of the ripples of the water as material for a future painting...
~~Mona~~
About 30 years ago when I was just getting into quilting I decided to make a Star Burst Quilt. At that point I was not yet into rotory cutters or fancy rulers and made my template out of cardboard. I pain- stakingly marked and cut each piece and then started hand sewing it together. In my infinite wisdom I thought it would be much easier to handle the quilt if I quilted the quilt in quarters and then assembled it all together. Now, anyone who has ever used cardboard for templates knows what happened. After quilting all four quarter I lined it up to put it all together and discovered that NOTHING fit. The template had shrunk as I had gone along and the first pieces were much larger than the last. After all that work I ended upputting some material in to take up the space but all in all the beautiful colors and pattern were ruined! I have never made the same mistake again and hope that maybe a new quilter reading this might save themselve a lot of time by learning from my mistake!
I got a call from the quilt shop owner who has a brand new Innova with all the computerized bells and whistles. I had given her a queen sized quilt top that had 48 blocks that contained 70+ pieces to each block. It was one of a kind, as there were several pieces of the quilt that were scraps that had been saved over a few years now and can never be replaced. The call was concerning the fact that she ruined my quilt. Somehow, the machine ate all the way from the quilt top through the batting and ripped up the backing all but 24 inches of the 101 length of the quilt. The sashing is also ripped beyond repair. You know she has no insurance for this kind of thing, so how do you put a value on what can never be replicated?
OMG Carlene. how awful,that has to be the worst horror story yet. Gee I wish I had an answer for you .Does she know what caused the problem? IF it was a manfacture issue ,I tell her to contact them and offer a settlement . if it was her, she be offering me free fabric for a year. Barbara
EAT!! SLEEP !! QUILT!!
Carlene that is also the worst i've heard I think the least that shop couldv'e done is try to replicate your blocks for you!
Quilting My Rainbow
Oh, Carlene, I am so sorry that you had this experience. It is true that you can't replicate this quilt and the shop owner had no business not watching what her machine was doing. Is the shop owner offering anything at all to you ? I think that the only thing you cold do now was to retrieve the quilt and somehow work on making a smaller quilt out of it and never letting that shop owner near anything of mine. She should offer you enough fabric to make another quilt with at the very least. Ginny
I am stunned. I read this to DH and said, how do you put a price on that. He said there is NO way. I would ask her if it was the machine or operator error. I think I would ask an attorney. If it was the machine, but, she was not right there to stop the machine, then she is equally responsible.
Carlene
OMG....I don't know what to tell you. There is no way to put a value on something like that. At the very least she would replace the amount of fabric and the batting.. She sure wouldn't touch another one of my quilts.
Vinton, Virginia
I'm wondering if you could get an appraiser to give you a written appraisal with the blocks that are left as to what the finished quilt would have been worth had it been properly handled and quilted? It might cost you $40 for the appraisal but well worth it to get what it actually would have been worth and the value lost because of her negligence. Just a thought.
Diana (Bink) in East Tn.
Diana:I'm wondering if you could get an appraiser to give you a written appraisal with the blocks that are left as to what the finished quilt would have been worth had it been properly handled and quilted? It might cost you $40 for the appraisal but well worth it to get what it actually would have been worth and the value lost because of her negligence.
I think this is a good idea. I doubt that you will ever get anything near the value of the quilt, but at least you would have something to show her when trying to get some compensation. I would just be devastated.
Patti
Chiliwist Valley
Carlene Foster:I got a call from the quilt shop owner who has a brand new Innova with all the computerized bells and whistles.
Sounds like operator error to me. I bet she left the machine all alone expecting the computer to do the right thing. I think Diana's solution is a good one.
So sorry this happened. I can only imagine how the news made you feel.
Carlene that is the worst quilting story I've heard.
gini in north idaho
Carlene, my heart goes out to you. I can feel that sick feeling in the pit of your stomach.
My horor story is piecing a red and white Ohio Star. I washed the fabric with Retayne as recommended and proceeded to put it together very painstackingly as this was my first quite to be pieced by machine. It was a queen size with alternating star block with plain white blocks and scalloped edges. My son and daughter-in-law came for a visit and upon seeing the top immediately asked if they could have it. When I explained that it wouldn't fit their king-size bed my son being himself immediately started giving me suggestions on how to expand it. (I didn't have enough of the red to add more blocks. I thought it over and decided that I could add a plain white border. All the time I was piecing this I envisioned a feathered wreath quilted in the plain blocks so I found a pattern with a feather scroll for the borders. I added the borders and marked all the quilt except on one border I made a mistake so I just wet the border to get the marks out (I was using a graphite pen). I towel dryed the wet edge of the quilt and laid it over my cutting table to dry. The next morning I went in to press and finish marking. There were red streaks running down the border -- the red fabric had bled. I didn't cry, but I wanted to. I remembered reading about Synthrapol so I went to the quilt shop and bought a bottle, came home and rewashed the top. It took three washings but all the red bleeding disappeared. However, now I have a top with ragged seams that had to be trimmed and all the hours of markings had to be redone. Well, I did all that, sandwiched it and started hand quilting. Ten years later I'm still quilting on it periodically. About three years ago I decided enough. I would finish that quilt and I worked quite steadily for quite some time. However, I had a "life interruption" and laid it aside for a few days and when I picked it up again I noticed a yellow stain and a terrible odor. The cat!!! I tried several things to get the stain and odor out, but nothing worked. I considered throwing it in the washing machine, but I didn't know how the exposed batting would hold up besides I didn't know how I would remark the unquilted part of the quilt with it sandwiched. I gave this a lot of thought then I made a decision. I got a black garbage sack, stuffed the quilt in it, and asked my husband to take it to the dump. After ten years of dealing with it, I never wanted to see it again. And, I haven't regretted that decision.
Oh. My stomach did a lurch when I read " I got a black garbage sack..."; I knew what was coming. Sounds like that quilt was a thorn in your foot.