Adventures with Seam Ripper

After spreading out all my fabric across the floor and reorganizing a lot of it, I managed to select fabric for the back of Fields of Foxes from my stash. The teal and white print is Put a Lid On It from Michael Miller, the grey chevrons and bird vine print is from Cloud 9’s collection for Joann, and the blue and green chevrons are from Joann several years ago. Yay for using up fabric that was languishing in my stash!

Then I got to quilting. Because the fabric is so bold, I was thinking of doing some straight lines along the diagonal diamonds with a bit of FMQ in the diamond centers. Note the operative word ‘was’ in the sentence above. I was thinking of doing that. I spray basted as usual, and then got down to quilting the FMQ bits.

Sadly, the back turned into a puckering mess. I didn’t take any pictures because truly, it was disheartening. I have a few theories why:
1. Usually, I FMQ from the center out, but this was quilted from the edges across. I thought that if everything was quilted down that it wouldn’t shift, but I guess that wasn’t the case.
2. The backing green chevron fabric is a little lighter weight than the others and may have gotten a bit stretched.
3. Aliens. Small, pucker-causing aliens.

Also, my quilting thread didn’t get along with my machine and kept snapping.

I talked all this through with my sensible husband and tried to convince him that I’d be okay with tucks. He responded by looking me in the eye and reminding me that I would be much more pleased with the finished product if it had no puckers. So, to the seam ripper I went.

Three nights of unquilting and two thirds of a season of New Girl later, the layers are separate again. This time, I’ll pin baste the sucker and quilt it with some all-over spirals. Boom.