Back to Square One

Uuuuuuuuugh. I have been making a lot of mistakes lately.

First there's the non-progress on my Anna Maria Horner Greatest Hits scrap quilt. Back in February I picked up some gray-ish/taupe-ish fabric for sashing. I cut it up and sashed the quilt. And then it sat. For months. (It is still sitting.) I never got around to adding the top and bottom sashing and finally realized why: because it is UGLY. Not only is the gray/taupe solid a bad color choice, the width of the sashing is all wrong -- way too wide. So now I need to rip it out and start over. This time I'm tempted to just sew the scrap columns together without sashing... Or, sash it with Kona Snow, 2 1/2 inches wide? Another color? I'm open to ideas; what do you think?

Before I ruined it with ugly sashing. 

OK, so then I managed to finish the Priory Square quilt top using the Boxed In pattern from the book Beyond Borders by Julie Herman of Jaybird Quilts. It looks fantastic. However... there were a lot of piecing errors, and most of them due to my laziness with regards to a 1/4 inch seam. Amateur hour, I know. Fortunately, I was able to square the quilt up and the solid sashing throughout hides my mistakes.

All the pretty boxes!

I wish I could say I learned my lesson with that quilt. Nope. I moved on to expand the Cotton + Steel plus quilt I started many moons ago. I took the perfect square and added columns. And when I tried sewing the new columns to the old square, the seams didn't line up. Not even close. Yep. Now, I do use a guide and while my seams may not always be perfect scant 1/4 inches, usually things DO line up. However, in this case, I used my new machine (Kim Gordon) to piece the new columns... and I had used my old machine (Kitty) to piece the original square. Different machines, different guides. I just wasn't thinking.

The original baby-sized square with pretty seams.

I got verrrrrry familiar with my seam ripper this past week. I wanted to forge ahead with the project and disregard the mistakes. I tried to get comfortable with that path. But--and I think this is a sign of growth--I couldn't do it. So I ripped out the entire new section, but I kept the original square and will finish it off into a baby quilt. Which is what it was originally going to be anyway. And, because I can't get this color story out of my head and I don't want all of those squares to go to waste, I not only retrimmed the new section, I cut out the squares to remake the old section. Once I get it all stitched up I'll still only be halfway done with the new, larger quilt, but I think it'll be worth it in the end.

Whew. I wish I could say those were the only mistakes I've made, but there have been others. "Learning opportunities." Uh huh. I'm learning a lot. Hey, I'm happy to report that in between making errors learning opportunities I finally took the time to figure out the needle positions for a perfect 1/4 seam on Kim Gordon. (Side bar: isn't it annoying that a 1/4 inch foot doesn't make a 1/4 seam without some adjusting?!) SUCCESS!

On that note, here's my Quarter 3 Finish List. I've got the DCMQG sewing retreat in August and hope to get some quality stitching, so here's hoping there are a few finishes!

Priory Square quilt (above) -- piecing done; needs to be basted and quilted
Cotton + Steel (baby) plus quilt -- time to baste and quilt that baby!
Cotton + Steel plus quilt (the re-do) -- piecing in progress
AMH greatest hits scrap quilt -- let's not talk about it.

Project Piles:
Natural History twin quilt for M -- pattern picked
AMH mixed up king quilt
Doe strip quilt

Linking up to On the Windy Side for the 2015 Finish Along Q3!