Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Blaming it on the head cold


It's not my fault.  I said so in the title.  I am blaming this on the head cold.  If you aren't a quilter...you might not know what I'm talking about...but this is a big fat mistake.  All...or at least mostly all of the triangle points up there should meet neatly in each corner.  If you look closely, you will see that my points aren't matching up.  Any of them.  This is bad...very, very bad.

&*%$#@

The real tragedy is...I didn't make the connection until after I'd cut a goodly amount of fabric and had mis-sewn a grundle of squares made up of half square triangles...right then.


That pile up there...all bad!  I was supposed to cut my half square triangle fabrics into 2.5" x 2.5" squares.  Did I do that?  NO!  I cut them into 2.25" x 2.25" squares.  In an alternate universe somewhere...I may have just said...ehh....what's the big deal with 1/4" anyway and would have kept sewing.

Uhhhh...it is a big deal.  My 18 year old self wouldn't have worried about it, but as I am a much more conscientious quilter now...my 34 year old self knows this is no good.  Clearly my points are nowhere near matching up.  As I was sewing the last two rows I kept thinking, huh, I must not be cutting very accurately because my seams sure aren't matching up very well.  

 But it didn't compute.  I went about my business, kept on sewing then cut up some more fabric pieces...and then I started matching up some of the fabric I'd cut....wrong...with the previous fabric I'd cut...correctly and I thought....huh, man, I see what I did...I cut all this fabric 1/4" too big!!  

And went about "fixing" some of the pieces that were too big...then after I'd cut a considerable amount of perfectly good squares into perfectly unusable smaller squares...realization hit...big time.   Ohhhhhhh man!  I was supposed to cut the half square triangles 2.5" not 2.25"  dangblastitall!

Yeah....that up there is what is known as myself having a conversation with myself...and it's not going very well for...myself. 


So, as it would be terribly difficult for me to find all the patchworks pieces that I cut incorrectly in the above piece, I have made a few measurements and decided what I will do is toss the last two rows.  Those seem to be mostly sewn with the wrong size half square triangles.  There may be some in the previous rows...but it's not as obvious.

Sigh.  It is very disheartening to make a mistake like that and realize all your time and all that fabric are now for naught.

I now have several 2.25" x 2.25" squares made of seriously pink half square triangles.  I will save them, of course, and hopefully find a use for them at some later time.  In the meantime...I will find my seam ripper and weep into my Valentine's quilt as I tear away yesterday's work.

Fear not dear friends, I will not be defeated...I will just pay better attention next time.

Thanks for reading!


Heather


8 comments:

  1. Oh no! I'm a very beginner quilter and I am a terrible cutter, then I discovered that I can get quilting dies my big shot. Amazing, seriously the machine is only about $50 on Amazon you have to buy the dies but once you have them you have them for good. and entire quilt, with every piece, 6-8 layers of fabric at a time perfect cut in an hour to an hour an a half. When my Mum (a quilter) saw it she nearly died! I cut about 500 2.5inch squares last night in half an hour! - Seriously if you have some spare cash have a look, plus you can get really cute paper dies and use them for appliqué, I have been googling what others do - amazing!

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    1. Thanks Mel those cutters are pretty sweet. I'm on old fashioned kind of gal when it comes to two things...cutting my fabric and hand quilting. But maybe after my fiasco I may reconsider!

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  2. Sad! Good use of the word grundle though. Always look at the bright side.

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  3. Oh dadblammit...or dangblastitall as you say! What a tragedy. I do love your dedication to doing things the right way though. Sorry you had to rip out and do over at all.

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    1. I think I'll same dadblammit for next post. Love it! It's okay Sherry...it's the life of a quilter. You have to become close with your seam ripper.

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  4. Nooooo Heather!!!! I do love how the quilt is looking tho!

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