Jeez.
I spent hours and hours and hours on this mock basket weave quilt. It is a very easy, 4-square quilt, made of 2 materials with stripes. One color is cut vertically and the other horizontally. Strips are sewn together, cut, sewed into blocks, blocks into rows and there you go. A queen sized quilt.
Except that it took forever. Only 2 colors and prints got very boring. It lost its challenge. It is huge. Each block is 6 inches. The quilt is 16 blocks in width and 18 in length. That is 288 blocks. 1,152 squares. 96" x 108". I thought I would never, ever get it done.
I even started a new quilt. Got it just about cut out when I realized that if I didn't finish this one, I never would. And, since I had only 6 rows to go before completed I put everything aside and finished it.
When I made the last stitch, I stood up from the sewing machine and danced a little jig around my kitchen. I pressed the quilt top, pressed and squared off the backing and drove immediately to the quilt shop to have it professionally quilted.
At the shop, they measured it and I completed the paperwork and took one, long look at the quilt.
And, then I saw it. One block on the second to last row was sewn in sideways. Thank God it is the end block, but never the less, the quilt had to go back home.
Note block with safety pins. You can click on the image to really see my mistake!
Now, I am far from being a perfectionist. However, in quilting you have to be pretty darn near perfect. This quilt has been very forgiving as many squares don't quite match up, but it is very hard to see them. And, this mistake is at the bottom of the quilt on a corner. I could have let it slide and I bet no one would be the wiser (well, almost no one). But, after all of the hard work I just can't let it be wrong.
I own several seam rippers. They get a good work out on my quilts! Tomorrow night I will rip out the block, press it, and sew it back into the quilt correctly.
There are such quilt known as "humility" quilts. Quilts with obvious mistakes in them, still quilted and used. They are to remind the quilter that no one is perfect and we all make mistakes. I could have used this as my "humility" quilt, I guess. But, truthfully, knowing there was this mistake in it would have driven me crazy.
2 comments:
But, JA - Isn't every quilt supposed to have an imperfection? I know how you feel, though - I keep editing sermons right up to the very end... and still end up with something in each one that is not quite right. I figure it gives me something to keep striving for!
Well, dear friend, I had never heard that every quilt is suppose to have an imperfection. Makes me feel better, since like I said many of the squares don't line up, which would drive a lot of quilters crazy.
I did learn a lot about quilting with this quilt so it was worth it in the long run. And, I suppose I will laugh about this in the future!
And, no one is perfect - at quilting, at writing/giving sermons, at life!
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