A Sophisticate on Easy Street - Part 3

I could call this post "A Comedy of Errors". I messed up cutting the strips (too narrow), messed up cutting the big triangles (too big), messed up sewing the little triangles to the squares (wrong edges) -- about the only thing I did right was cut the 2" squares! As I progressed, I also found the corner of the small square wasn't meeting up with the large triangle like it should. Normally I'd re-stitch them to make the pieces fit exactly, but that would have made the finished squares too small and caused problems later. So I took a break to think about my strategy.

Some of my wonky blocks. The colors are not a mistake; my green in Bonnie's  blue.

Now I could just show you pictures of my perfect blocks (I do have some), and leave out the details of my problems. But I can't be the only quilter who makes mistakes, measures incorrectly, and struggles with getting my seams in exactly the right place. Frankly, I'm tired of reading books and magazines that make quilting sound easy, that imply all you have to do is connect the dots and your results will be museum-worthy. I'm NOT talking about Bonnie's blog or books, or those of fellow mystery quilters. But there seems to be an implication in the professional quilting world that new rulers and rotary cutters and templates and programmable sewing machines and  You-Tube videos make quilting goof proof. But it's not. However you cut your fabric, it's still slips, bias edges still stretch and corners still slide. And I, for one, don't intend to pretend otherwise.

Sometimes everything works beautifully. Other times it doesn't. For those days I have a "three chances" rule. I'll try and fix a less-than-perfect block three times if I catch a problem soon enough. If it isn't right after the third try I stop and use it anyway. It didn't look like fixing these wonky blocks would work, since they'd come out too small if I did. So I decided to cut the rest of the big triangles slightly larger and then trim the finished blocks down to size. It's more work that way, but with only 64 total blocks to do all week, I knew I had time and that I'd ultimately be happier with the results. But every project and person is different.

So my message to anyone out there in Quiltville is the same one I keep telling myself -- "Let go of the desire for perfection. You don't have to win an award or create a quilt worthy of a museum. Just create the quilt that is in you today. Do the same tomorrow. And enjoy the process."

Here are a few of the good ones.

This post is part of Bonnie Hunter's Week Three Linky.