ACCURACY OR PERFECTION 

Over the years I’ve tried very hard not to be such a perfectionist about my quilting.  For one thing, I don’t make quilts to enter into shows.  So what if my seams don’t quite match up to the next block.  Or my free motion quilting isn’t as even as it should be.  I keep reminding myself that there aren’t any quilt police, and most people won’t even see my mistakes if I don’t point them out.

So, having said all that, what was I recently doing with my seam ripper in hand painstakingly taking apart the small quilt top I had spent hours carefully (or so I thought) sewing together at my last weekend quilt retreat.  For one thing, I was not happy about how it looked when I got it all pieced together, even though my friends at the retreat thought it looked good.  Several weeks later I took the quilt top out of the closet and looked at it again.  I couldn’t believe how bad it really looked.  I love the fabrics and the pattern but oh my goodness the piecing was just awful!  I knew that there was no way I could live with it looking like that.

As I attacked those mismatched seams with my seam ripper, I tried to figure out what possessed me to do such shoddy work.  I came up with some possible reasons that made perfect sense.  I mentioned that I was at a quilt retreat with friends.  Part of the fun of being at a retreat is talking and laughing.  And maybe some wine drinking too. And on top of those things, I had to do all my piecing with a walking foot on my sewing machine.  I had remembered to pack everything I needed for the retreat except for one very small, but critical thing - the shank that attaches to all the sewing feet used on my machine.  It was at home sitting in a cute little bowl on my sewing table.  I had removed it at home to use the walking foot and never replaced it when I was done.  Trying to accurately piece a 1/4” seam with a walking foot is just not the same as using a 1/4” foot made specifically for that purpose.

After the entire quilt was taken apart I repressed everything and even recut a few of the pieces.  Then I started piecing each block back together using a 1/4” foot, diligently pressing seams and carefully measuring each block as I went along.  What a difference that made!  As I sewed all the blocks together I was quite pleased with how much better they all matched up.  At this point you’re probably saying, duh, even beginning quilters know this.  Yes, I did know this, but I only recently starting piecing quilts again after spending years creating and making art quilts.  Guess it was time for a “piecing 101” refresher course. 

All said and done I learned a very good lesson redoing this quilt. As the old saying goes:  "Anything worth doing is worth doing well" sure rings true.  You can call it being accurate or being a perfectionist.  I call it a quilt I'm proud to show.