A Cautionary Tale

This post should be called, "What's on my design wall?" However, this is really a cautionary tale entitled, "Read before you sew."

There is a similar adage in the non-quilting world called "Look before you leap."

Here's my story.






I played with EQ6 and came up with this design.










I thought it was a little bit boring, so I looked at my border book, Pieced Borders, the Complete Resource.

The first design that I liked was #158 Chevrons. On the following page is design #179 Chain of Parallelograms. Well, my teacher brain said, "They're both parallelograms. I'll do the first one."
I looked at the rotary cutting chart and cut all my diamonds and triangles. Then, and only then, did I notice that there was something that didn't seem to fit. The triangles didn't seem right to me. Back to the book I go, and actually read the authors' directions.

There it is on page 73, a lovely, clear explanation of the difference, in the quilt world, between a diamond and a parallelogram. Further down on the page is this, "A few borders such as #158 and 157 require set-in seams."

Y seams! I've cut my fabric and don't have enough to re-cut. I'm sunk! So, I'm still stitching Y seams rather than having this on my frame for quilting.

Also, now that I'm getting the border on I can see that the border is really too visually heavy for the interior of the quilt. I guess no one will be knocking on my door to have me design a quilt for them.

This is my reworked idea for this quilt. I like it a little better than my original design, but I'm still not crazy about it.

Now, the quilt I'm actually making did have some requirements, use the fabric I already had, and no buying new fabric. I can live with the quilt I'm making, and I'll enjoy cuddling up with it on Christmas morning. Maybe not this Christmas with all those Y seams, but some Christmas.

Visit Judy's blog to see what others have on their design walls.