Warning: Engage Brain Before Sewing!

As if you needed more proof that I can do ridiculous things, I offer you the following…

1.  At SIL quilt retreat I spent 6 hours working on ONE 6” block.  I decided to use “quick” techniques I have learned rather than using weirdly shaped templates for this block.  It took me FIVE tries to figure out that a).  I was sewing the quick corners to the WRONG SIDE of the diamond and, b) the template given was NOT the wrong size.  Because we have found several errors in the size of a few templates I quickly assumed they had made a mistake in printing this one.  How humbling to realize they were RIGHT, and my LOGIC was WRONG…  and it just took me 6 hours to figure that out!

2.  Several days ago I was quilting on a customer quilt.  The rows were offset, which means I had to be very careful when realigning for the next stitching row.  I did the first 3 rows.  I rolled the quilt.  I realigned.  I continued until I finished the quilt.  It looked great from the front.  Turned to the back to check for loose thread or any other problem and found… I had aligned to the WRONG ROW on that first realignment, which caused the spacing to be twice as large as it should be between those 2 rows. 

I can now say with certainty that what it takes the longarm 11.7 minutes to stitch out will take about 10 hours to remove.  I had to rip out those first three rows, then re-mount the quilt in the machine and complete it.  Thankfully the re-stitching was uneventful and the quilt looks very nice.

3. (And my final piece of evidence…) Today I was constructing a backing for this small quilt. 

I had a piece of fabric 43” x 108”.  I was going to split the fabric in half and re-sew going the other way so it would measure about 84” x 53”.   This would be plenty large enough for the 43” x 52” baby quilt.  I cut the fabric.  I sewed the fabric.  I was mounting it into the quilting machine when I realized that… I sewed it back together the same way I took it apart!  It is now 43” x 107”.  Let’s try this again….  the quilt is now done, but I am still shaking my head that I would make such a silly mistake.

So, for all of you out there who sometimes do silly things, don’t feel bad.  Even PROFESSIONAL quilters make goofy mistakes.  I hope this is the end of my goofy streak.  Engage brain, engage brain, engage…

That will be my mantra the next time I sit to sew or step up to the longarm!!

Be blessed today!  Retreat pictures will be included in the next post!

KAT