I thought this top would be easy to get ready for hand quilting.

I was wrong. Very wrong. When I pressed the top, I realized how bad it was. There is often a reason you find unfinished tops!

First, the edges had been chewed. That was a pretty easy fix as I trimmed the borders down by a lot. This gave me enough to add borders on the two sides that didn’t have any.

The top wasn’t too bad, until that bottom row that flared out like a skirt.

I removed that and it was already better.

The sashing is not a problem so much as the blocks. Some were machine pieced.

Some hand pieced. And some were a combination of the two. All this to say, sizes varied.

I have a couple holes to repair as well.

And you can see here why the two sides never had borders added.

At this point, I decided to just trim the ends and not worry about losing points.

I ended up shortening that row I had removed by running a few tiny seams in the sashing. Then I sewed it back on.

It is still is not great. But it is flatter than it was.

Now I’m rethinking my decision to hand quilt this. I might just machine quilt in a random grid and call it good. I’m kind of sick of it right now.

Have a great day.