Rethink

Over the last 3 months I've been working on my latest quilt, gradually piecing together squares and rectangles, really taking my time, challenging myself to be as accurate as possible.

With all the blocks completed, I started sewing them together, working hard to make the seams meet, unpicking and resewing any which were out of line.

On Saturday, it had reached the stage where I needed to order the fabric for the sashing. I couldn't remember if the quilt had a border, so I pulled out the pattern to be sure of ordering enough fabric.

Horror! The blocks I'd so carefully sewn together were wrong! I'd joined them all in the same direction when they should have been top to tail (as shown above). No no no!!!

After a few moments of panic and despair, I regrouped. Luckily I'd only sewn 16 of the blocks together so it wouldn't be too much of a problem to unpick and rejoin them. However, there was still a nagging feeling that something else wasn't quite right. And then I saw it. Another error but even worse than before - I'd sewn the wrong components together! The thin rectangle should be in the middle not on the end!

Aaaaaaghhhhhhh! At this point I was glad Chickpea was staying at her boyfriend's as she's still blissfully under the impression I don't swear.

So, what to do? Should I unpick the whole lot and start again? I figured out a way to unpick just one seam of each of the 80 blocks and rejoin them to another but I didn't know whether that would disrupt the colour balance across the quilt. Not that it really matters as I don't even like the damn thing that much by now. <mentally stamps foot>

Deep breath and a rethink. Lots of crawling around on the floor, laying out and rearranging blocks. Sanity and calm returns and eventually a decision. No to unpicking and yes to continuing with how I started. When I looked back at all the 'in progress' photos which helped me decide on the positioning of the fabrics, I noticed that I'd been laying them out 'wrong' all along. A sign? Maybe the wrong way is actually the right way? Maybe my independent streak was rebelling against following a pattern too closely?

Ha! Or maybe there's a simple moral to this story. Even if your mantra is 'measure twice, cut once' it doesn't matter a jot unless you read the pattern right in the first place :)