Sewing & Cursing | Baby Quilt

My big idea to make a baby quilt for one of my daughter's life-long friends who is having a baby in July, turned out to be extraordinary fodder for my sewing and cursing series.  A baby quilt seemed approachable enough.  It was small, and there are tons of adorable baby fabrics.  How hard can it be?

PFFFFFFFFTTTTT!  Cut right. Piece right. Stitch right.  Don't get your pieces mixed up.  Don't let your mind wander about what you are going to dinner and find that your 1/4" stitch has grown or shrunk on you.

Sigh.

So the "Daisy Baby" quilt that I was going to make ended up look like Daisy Crazy quilt.  I had one side triangle that ended up being 1/2" short.  (They were all cut the same!).  And I figured that a straight edge could fix the other issues as I had managed the deadly trifecta of cut wrong, piece wrong and stitch wrong.  Those things compound in the worst sort of way.  That 1/2" inch shortfall on that singular triangle was fixed by my having the bright idea that a pocket (for a Binkie!) might not be a bad idea. Problem fixed.

But no...my other indiscretions (clears throat) I thought could be covered with binding.  And on the face of the quilt that worked.  But when I turned the binding over, it felt like (and looked like!)  I was stuffing too many errors in too small of a binding.  It just looked goofy.

So I will keep the quilt. One of my cats will lay on  It was GREAT practice.  Helped me with getting motivated to create a sewing area in my home (that was larger than what I had), remembering lost skills, building muscle memory and developing a process where I could manage my project without getting confused or confounded.

I pulled my expectations lower.  While the quilt was a bust as a gift, my cat will have a lovely little mat.  I had material for another quilt, which I had cut out.  But when I was piecing it, I realized that there was not enough contrast among my fabrics.  (There's a lesson in that).  But my material was lovely, so I simply made placemats that I could enjoy every day.  That was a win. And while doing them I concentrated on my scant 1/4" stiching, carefuly rolling and ironing the seam flat.

What a difference not being a hack makes! 

Back to gift mode.  A quilt?  Nope.  Let's do a changing pad.  I've made 2 and they look terrific.