Checkered past

No, not my checkered past - that is not something that I can lay any conceivable claim to. I have meandered my way into middle-aged middle of the road mediocrity without any activities that could be described as illicit. Or even ill-advised. The most I could ever claim is ill-judged, and that only about deeply boring things, like investments. I am a bit jealous of people with skeletons on their closets, or vanished years. Anyway, it may surprise you to hear, the Checkered Past is a quilt! Shocking, I know.

I called it that because (a) it's in squares and (b) this is the third time I've quilted it. I very very rarely unpick anything, and I've unpicked the machine quilting on this TWICE because it just was so completely stuffed up. I do not know why it wouldn't work - doesn't it look innocuous? Neat little squares all lined up nicely. The first time was stitch in the ditch and it bumped and bubbled and rolled. The second time was wavy lines with a walking foot and it looked like absolute crap.

This time, on the principle of three strikes and you're out with the garbage, I did something I don't do much - quite a dense allover pattern. My preference is usually for less quilting and a softer finish, but this was a chance to do something different. It is meant to be leaves and flowers. There was a great deal of artistic license (I can't control my free motion quilting very well).

This is the back, a cute batik. The front are my own dyed fabrics. I like the back better than the front I think. On a completely different topic, I don't know if I should spell it "checkered" or "chequered". One is British, one is US. What do Australians do? Both look OK to me. I could get off my fat bum and go to the Macquarie Dictionary and find out, but I'm not going to. If I remember, I'll look it up later and put us all out of our agonising suspense.