I didn’t update my progress on Mom’s Quilt last week, but that doesn’t mean I skipped on the sewing.  Quite the contrary!

Week 3

I logged 8 1/2 hours on the quilt.

I finished the rest of the heart blocks.

I finished the Flying Geese – including all of the gluing, sewing, pressing and trimming.

I had my pieces and it was time to put everything together.

Which obviously starts with the “spread everything out and stare at it for an exorbitant amount of time” phase.

Week 4

Many have elaborate design walls.

I don’t have the real estate for that.

Others will use the floor – which I’ve done –

but I don’t have the knees for that.

Me, I chose the bed.

The design wall I happen to sleep on.

My dogs weren’t happy that they couldn’t “help” but my knees were glad to avoid my crawling around on hard tile while I figured out which layout looked right-ish.

Blocks were shuffled.

Colors have been admired… and second guessed

I’m finally happy with the arrangement, so I carefully stack each block-set in order, one row at a time, to finish the final construction.

I start pairing all of the four-patches and hearts to make the last half of my blocks.

3 hours worth of sewing the beautiful corner pieces.

Then I started joining the blocks to form the rows.

Then I join the first two rows

It’s all coming together now and I’m seeing my vision come to life.

I hang them on the curtain rod I have hanging up specifically to display quilts as I work on them, so I get the dopamine fix needed to keep going.

I have to see progress or my brain tells me there’s none being made.

I step back and admire my work.

Well, Shit.

That’s when I noticed it.

Not when I was rearranging the blocks 80-bajillion times

Not when I was painstakingly joining the block pieces.

Not when I was building the rows.

every. single. one of my 4 patches was sewn 90° wrong.

on 12 blocks.

That’s half my quilt.

48 blocks sewn wrong.

48 tiny reminders that paying attention? Not optional.

It’s a Design Choice

I briefly debated whether or not I could justify this as intentional…

There is no official pattern, so it totally could have been.

Wonky?  Sure

Slightly Off Kilter?  LITERLLY.

And no one would know….

Except me.  I would know.

And, there’s a magic in a lot of quilt patterns where one design creates a whole new design by “accident”

It’s not by accident.

But that wouldn’t happen the way I put it together originally.

The Great Unstitching.

So, I grab Jack (the ripper), take a deep breath and commit to the great unstitching.

starting with dissecting the two rows I had already put together.

Then yeeting the stitches from the individual blocks making up those two rows.

I did get smart and grabbed my Chalk Pencil to number my squares so I don’t have to revisit the layout, so at least I have that going for me…

And then, I could engage in some reverse sewing…

or unpicking as they say across the pond…

or frogging which is normally what I’d say about a crochet project that went off the rails…

Sitting on the couch, watching 100 Chefs and breaking the chains of semi-perfect seams apart.

Making progress in the wrong direction.

Thread was everywhere.

Thread on my shirt.

Thread on the couch.

Thread on the dogs…

I mean they get fur everywhere, so it’s only fair, right?

Literally thread carcasses everywhere.

Putting it all back together again.

So, I’m concluding the week kind of where I started.  Putting the 4-patches back together again.

The right way…

Slower this time.

Paying attention.

Remembering that this is not a race and is supposed to be relaxing.

Lessons from the wreckage

Could I have decided those backwards blocks were a feature, not a flaw? Oh, absolutely.

Could I have called those rogue blocks a happy little accident and gone about my day? Yep.

Could I have renamed the mistake “artistic interpretation” and saved myself a whole lot of seam ripping? Absolutely.

and sometimes, that’s exactly what I have done

and will do at some point in the future.

Because quilting – and life – doesn’t require every imperfect thing to be ripped out and rebuilt.

Sometimes, our best laid plans go sideways.  Sometimes we look at where we’ve ended up, realize we are not where we wanted to be, shrug our shoulders, accept the new reality and trudge forward.

And that’s ok.  There’s nothing wrong with that.

Plans change.  Circumstances change.  We adapt, adjust, and move on.

We Change.

We Grow.

But every once in a while, when we look at what we’ve made or where we are, we realize it isn’t what we want and discover that we actually CAN go back.

We can unpick a few (thousand) stitches.

We can clear away the thread carcasses of a decision that didn’t serve us… and we can try again.

It may take longer.

It will most likely be messy.

Picking up the pieces will probably require tools and help.

But shifting gears and changing course doesn’t erase all of the effort that came before it.

Sometimes shifting gears IS the work.

And sometimes, the most important thing a seam ripper teaches us is this:

Just because you’ve already put in a lot of stitches doesn’t mean you have to keep sewing the wrong direction.