Wonky Panel

When I saw this panel on the cover of Keepsake Quilting earlier this year, I knew I had to have one panel, then two panels. I have a friend who loves anything with a Noah's Ark theme. She is a grandmother-to-be, so I decided I would make her daughter-in-law a quilt with this panel as well as a quilt for my friend to keep at Grandma and Grandpa's house. I purchased a second panel at a quilt store when I finally saw it in person. This fabric store carried some coordinating fabric. Fortunately, I purchased a few yards of coordinating fabric. too. The baby shower is this Saturday. I thought about this panel, and thought about this panel. When I realized the baby shower was only two weeks away, I decided I should get serious about making these quilts. I wanted to finish my mystery quilts before starting these two quilts. When I finished the mystery quilts, I pulled out these two panels and began my plan of attack. I knew that I needed to trim the selvedges and square up the quilt. That was not so easy. I measured, and trimmed. Then I measured again, and trimmed some more. In order to make this panel straight with square corners, I had to actually trim off all the borders that are on this panel. Then I still needed to even up the center picture a little to make the panel even on all sides. This first picture is a picture of the original panel as sent to me by Keepsake Quilting. I did wash both panels. Notice the yellow border. Do you see how it bows to the left? There is no way I could square up this panel and have all the borders even. I guess I could have blocked the panel. I thought about that, but then I also thought that when the baby's quilt was washed, it would dry back in the original form, the crooked way. The second picture is what I ended up with after I sewed borders on the trimmed panel. These borders came from strips of the coordinating fabric. It doesn't look bad, but it is definitely not as cute as the original panel, but at least it is even on the sides and has square corners.

This last picture is of the print that I am using for the back of the quilt. It is one of the coordinating fabrics I bought to go with the panel. I love this fabric with all the baby animals. What I should have done was to make a pieced quilt top and use the panel as the back. I would have wanted more of the coordinating fabrics to accomplish this idea.

I was so disappointed in this panel. Why cannot the manufacturers make panels that are straight, and useable? I have used panels before, but I never had this much trouble getting them squared up.

Have you had problems using panels? What did you do to make them useable?

Happy Quilting