One of my latest finishes is the Cherry Berry Quilt, made using Lori Holt's beautiful Berry & Sage fabric collection. This lap-size quilt finishes at 50" x 60½", and I used the coordinating backing fabric from the same collection to complete the project.
I made this quilt specifically for my Etsy shop after purchasing the quilt kit from Fat Quarter Shop. The pattern came together quickly and was very enjoyable to sew. In fact, I think I spent more time hand stitching the binding than I did piecing the quilt top!
Since selling Miss Moxie, my longarm quilting machine, I no longer have the ability to quilt larger projects myself. For this quilt, I sent it—along with another finished top—to a longarmer.
I'll admit, that wasn't easy.
For several years I quilted all of my own projects on Miss Moxie, so handing one of my quilts over to someone else felt a little like sending one of my children off to school for the first time. When the quilts came back, I found myself looking at every stitch, comparing the finished product to the work I used to do.
What surprised me most wasn't anything the longarmer did wrong. It was what I learned about myself.
For years I questioned whether my quilting was "good enough." I often wondered if my work measured up to the quilts I admired, and that self-doubt was one of the reasons I hesitated to open my Etsy shop. After comparing these quilts to the ones I quilted myself, I realized something important—I had been doing a much better job than I had given myself credit for.
That's not meant as criticism of the longarmer. Every quilter has a different style, different techniques, and different preferences. I'm incredibly grateful to have someone who can finish my quilts now that I no longer own a longarm. Instead, this experience reminded me that we're often our own toughest critics.
Sometimes we spend so much time focusing on what we think we lack that we fail to recognize how far we've come.
While I don't see another longarm in my future anytime soon, I have been experimenting with ways to quilt more of my own projects on my domestic sewing machine. It's a new challenge, but one I'm excited to learn. Quilting has always been a journey of growth, and this is simply the next chapter.
The Cherry Berry Quilt is now available in my Etsy shop, and I hope it finds a home with someone who will enjoy it for years to come. Every quilt I make teaches me something new, but this one reminded me of perhaps the most valuable lesson of all—to have a little more confidence in my own abilities.
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