Mistakes! I make them too!

Sigh.

Some people think I don’t make mistakes. It’s simply not true.

Let me back up to a situation we faced many, many years ago.

My husband and I worked at a children’s home as houseparents for teenage girls. (We figured it was really the parents who were the real problems, most of the time!) Anyway, it was a Christian children’s home. Sometimes the girls got in trouble and had to be punished. The typical punishment was an hour of work - usually raking leaves. Now, for a while we had 3 Mexican girls there who were not there because of dysfunctional homes, but to help them learn English better as they wanted to go to college in the USA the next year. Our other girls told us we preferred them because “they never got into trouble!” But here’s the thing. It wasn’t true. They did sometimes get into trouble and had to do an hour of work here and there. The difference is - they didn’t storm off and make a big scene, so the other girls didn’t even realize it.

At times I’ve seen people post (on Facebook) a picture of a quilt top with a mistake in it and ask, “Should I fix it?” Then about 1000 people will answer yes, or no, or “Leave it, the Amish put a mistake in their quilts on purpose to show their humility!”

Side note - Wait… but if it is “on purpose”, then it isn’t a mistake!

That’s nonsense anyway. No one with pride in their work is going to make a mistake “on purpose” unless it is satire or to prove a point - and then, as I mentioned before, it’s not a mistake!

Anyway, it’s silly to ask such a question on Facebook and in the past I used to answer. Now I just scroll on by (usually). Why? Well, it has to do with one my pointers on “Six Tips for greater productivity”. Remember #1? Yeah…it was watch how much time you spend on social media! (I called it exactly - “Be careful how much time you spend getting inspired” because I’m sure that’s what we are say we are doing - you know, all that time we spend on You Tube and Facebook and Instagram!)

If the person had just taken their quilt top to a sofa or chair with their favorite seam ripper and started taking apart the offending part, they could be done fixing it before they had time to read and reply to 200+ answers (sometimes even more than that)! It’s such a waste of time!

Back to my point about mistakes. I make them. I do. I do.

But post them on social media and ask, “Should I fix it?”

Nah. I just fix it. Right away. As soon as I can.

Now.

Get it done so I can go on!

I don’t “leave it for a humility block!”

I do that enough with my quilting! I’m humbled enough about that a lot of times!

I will admit however, to trying to plan a quilt with several blocks with ‘mistakes’ in them - on purpose of course. Sort of a quilt with “find the mistakes” as a theme instead of “find the hidden pictures” like Highlights used to have in their magazines.

Anyway, my biggest “tip” for keeping myself from making mistakes, at least from making anything permanent, is to take pictures of the top before I make it into a quilt.

With that last quilt top, I should have taken a picture of the center of the top before I spent all day putting on the borders.

Just imagine my horror when I placed it on the floor to get a picture in the evening before my husband left, as my eye went along the design and I saw a mistake! In the center! Oh no!!!!

Oh yes! I had. Then I saw another one.

Sigh. And I had broken my own rule. I had almost taken a picture of the center but hadn’t wanted to take the time.

So instead, I spent a couple of hours taking out some seams and fixing them.

Yes, it was humbling.

But I did it. No, I didn’t take out all the borders. I took the borders off in one piece and left them in tact. All I was going to do was to move some things around - not actually remake the whole center!

So that is what I did - took off the border on the section that needed to be taken apart. Then took off the rows that needed to come apart and fixed them, and finally put the whole center back together and resewed the border back on, pinning and trying to make it fit again.

Not fun.

But I thought I’d take the opportunity to show you. I knew I wasn’t going to take all the borders off individually. It had taken me literally “all day” to get those borders made and on the top! I couldn’t imagine something more cruel than to take them all back off individually.

So here goes. My pictures!

Discovery!

I was devasted! I had worked so hard so hard to get that top finished in the evening so I could get some pictures in the morning!

Starting to remove the border from the center

I took off the first white border from the problem and down around the bottom

Another minor problem

While doing this, I noticed that I had problems with a couple of sashing strips - going the wrong direction. Sigh.

I had to take two rows off the center - one of the rows in the middle and the last one

The main problem in the middle of the quilt where I put two rows the same together - forced me to take it apart there. But that meant I had to take the last row off and use it to move into the spot I created.

So why didn’t I notice it before? I don’t know. I know I was working hard and when you are “up close and personal” with such a quilt - sometimes you don’t see the design as well as when you step back and look - even if you are checking for errors!

Here I had removed the double row of sashing/cornerstones

and I put them back on the row that was now in the middle of the quilt.

A little closer picture

The early morning bright light!

I was starting to put it back together. I had had to take off a row of sashing/cornerstones as well and put them on the top to make it all work out. All in all, I had to take out 4 long seams across the center of the quilt PLUS the seams around the border.

In this picture I am getting the center back together. Just one more seam and it will all be back in one piece (the center, that is).

Seaming the top back together

Now the top is coming together - the center. I have just the outer border to put back on.

Got the borders back on!

I just pinned them back and reverse sewed them!

And that was that! I did get it all back together by about 11:00 am the next morning. I was sad it too so long, but lesson learned!

Take those pictures!

Have a great day wherever you are!

Be sure to check out what my sis has for you in the store!

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