I need to tell y'all what I did to a quilt I finished back in March.

It's the one made from my mother's church dresses and a few pieces of my grandmother's apron, and I quilted it the way I always do, close rows, little even stitches, because that's how I was taught and my hands don't know another way. It hung in the front room six weeks and every time I walked past I felt like the quilt was holding its breath.

So Saturday I sat down with the seam ripper and took out near every row in the center medallion. Two hours of pulling thread. My granddaughter thought I'd lost my mind. Left the borders quilted tight and the middle just loose cloth, and now it hangs with a little sag and a shadow in it and honey, it lives.

Here's my trouble though. The tight quilting is the thing the ladies at the guild praise. "Look how even Miz Gloria's rows are." Forty-some years of that being the compliment, and it turns out the rows were the quietest part of me talking. I don't know yet if I'm going to redo the corners or leave them. It's been four days and I keep going back and forth.

Any of you ever take something apart after it was already done and good, just because it wasn't right?