Posted on Wednesday, August 12, 2009 | By Lisa Swenson Ruble | 0 Comments

A Lesson in Humility

I spent some time this past weekend trying to assemble a quilt that’s been in the making for at least three years, if not four. The queen-size quilt uses a big block design to showcase a variety of half-yard cuts of Kaffe Fassett fabric I impulsively purchased at Quilt Festival a while back. I loved the pattern, but I’m a bit of a matchy-matchy person, so I was definitely stretching my own boundaries by putting all different colors and prints of fabrics together in what I consider to be Kaffe’s style.

Now ”big block design” tends to be synonymous with ”fast,” but the danger there is working so quickly that you make a mistake. Which, after reading the title of this post, you’ve already figured out that I did. Basically the design features four 4-block squares surrounded by a thin border, and then finished off with a pieced sashing and border. 

When I first bought the fabric, I came home excited for the project, cut my pieces, and sewed my sixteen big blocks together. Three pieces of fabric each, piece of cake. Then life got in the way. I got married, we moved, etc. Fast forward to last summer. I pulled out those blocks, arranged them on my design wall, sewed them together to make the larger squares, and added the thin border. Great progress! 

You guessed it; life got in the way again…this time, a baby and all the preparation that goes with that little bundle of joy. This past weekend I pulled the large squares out again, intent on finishing this quilt top and crossing it off my list. But something just wasn’t right. The pieced sashing and border wasn’t lining up like it should, as you can see below (say hi to Thomas, who was supervising my sewing!). 

My mistake, now more than a year old: I merrily sewed the blocks together without paying attention to orientation. Oops. The overall pattern of the design didn’t exist. 

So now, I’m spending my ”free” time ripping out the long, long seams of each larger square and reorienting the blocks. 

My lesson to be learned—even if it’s a ”quick” pattern, pay close attention to what you’re doing…especially if you put the project down for a year or two halfway through. With all the ripping out, this carefree, fun, ”quick” quilt is going to take me longer than some of the more complex ones I’ve made! 

And then, to add insult to injury, when I sewed the sashing pieces together, I used pre-cut pieces (back from when I started this project) without measuring, thinking ”oh, I’m sure I cut everything correctly when I started this project.” Oops again. So now I’ll be ripping the seams out of the sashing as well, because the pieces are too short!

 

Lisa Swenson Ruble