The other quilt meme

And then there's the Bad Quilt Meme created by Tanya. Same rules: bold for done it, italic for ambition (ha, with this one?) and blank for nope, not yet.

• Made a quilt with no knowledge, no skills, and no understanding that either are needed
• Created an abomination and (at the time) was proud of it
• Created a quilt that was so hideous it made people or animals go blind
• Had relatives throw a quilt you made outside in the muddy yard for the dogs to chew (if so, I don't know, thanks be)
• Used severely mismatched fabric weights when piecing, for example, heavyweight denim and lightweight cotton
• Didn't pre-wash fabrics and later had them bleed all over the finished quilt
• Used badly mismatched needle and bobbin thread
• Puckered seams
• Misaligned pieces
• Ugly colors
• Polyester fabrics that pilled
• Thick, scratchy polyester double knit fabrics
• Batting that bearded up through the fabric
• Free-motion quilting whose stitch size changed radically from stitch to stitch
• Huge bird's nests of bobbin thread that clogged the throat plate of the machine and broke the needle
• Cluelessly attempted to stitch with a broken needle for several moments, thus perforating the quilt
• Made stitches big enough to put your big toe through
• Quilting lines that were about 6" apart and allowed - nay, begged! - the stuffing to migrate and bunch up
• Finished quilts that weren't "square" and/or were badly blocked
• Quilt tops that wouldn't lay flat, that had a "volcano" in the middle or perceptible ripple
• Backing that bunched up while quilting, leaving a portion of the batting uncovered. ("Surprise!")
• Hand-tied a quilt with heavy crochet or regular yarn, which required a really huge-eyed needle which left giant holes in the quilt
• Erroneously equated a quilt with a blanket, and "finished" the edge of the quilt with a blanket stitch using scratchy acrylic yarn. (See previous item)
• Had to use pliers to force the needle through the quilt, yet didn't understand that this might be a sign that something was fundamentally wrong
• Backed with a 100 thread count bed sheet. (Extra points for polyester)
• Quilted with fishing line
• Bled/sneezed/spilled coffee on a large section of quilt while making it
• Had people compare your quilt to one they saw at Wal-Mart
• Finished a quilt and only then realized that you hated it
• Gave a quilt to someone and had them be speechless - and not in a good way (it's unlikely to ever fade, since it's kept in a cupboard and rarely sees the light of day - and when it DOES, it's put out patchwork side down. It's not an 'orrible quilt either...)
• Trimmed loose threads on a gift quilt at the last minute and cut a hole through the top. (Thanks to SusanInStitches for this addition.)
• Sewed one or more fingers to the quilt, then had to carry the sewing machine and quilt around the house while looking for a screwdriver to remove the needle.
• Created appliques with satin-stitched edges, which after a shamefully brief time became frayed-edge appliques that flapped their way free of the quilt.
• Referred to your sewing machine's 'lint storage area' or 'felt pad' (I only referred to it as a lint storage area to see if Caity really would go into orbit...she just gave me The Look instead)

I should add that one of my favourite vintage quilts from eBay is so remarkably abominable that it gives confidence to even beginner quilters. I bought it for the design idea - and am perfectly happy to own it. And that I dislike intensely that the Quilt Police kybosh some people's quilting in utterly unreasonable ways. A friend of mine makes quilts in completely different ways to me, we diverge on pretty much everything about how we quilt - batting thickness, choice of fabrics, methods of attaching applique, you name it. But you know what? We're both having fun and making quilts that make us happy, and that's all that matters in the end.