Oh thank you for the first laugh of Christmas morning. I simply cracked up at your mother's words. If anyone could define my 'style' that would be it. Patsy, I did the same thing on my first quilt, so can relate.

Thankfully no huge boo boos this year, but I did find one patch on a crazy quilt, where the fabric was turned so the back, instead of the front was showing. I left it, since it was a crazy quilt.

I used a fabric to sash a quilt that is just completely and utterly wrong. The mistake was not admitting it after a block or two, so now I'm going to have to figure out a solution that hopefully won't result in me taking a queen sized quilt completely apart!

Annie

Oh Annie, may the lightening bolt of inspiration strike your way!

My biggest mistake this year was the result of pure and uncomplicated laziness! I didn't want to go through the trouble of getting out my large folding table so decided to just do the cutting on the floor. Large cutting mat goes on the carpet and out comes the ruler and rotary cutter. I cut LOTS of squares. But when I started to put them together I realized that the carpeting had enough 'give' so that when I pressed along the fabric to cut it everything moved just a little. None of the cutting was accurate and no line was really very straight. Next time I need a large cutting space I'll be happy to get out the big table!

Kate

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Annie, with your amazing quilting skills maybe you could use a contrasting color thread (or variegated color thread) to completely change the way that sashing looks?

Kate--I wish it were that easy. I'll take a picture of the quilt in a day or two and you'll see what happened. It's going to take a LOT more than some great thread to rescue this blooper!

Annie

Annie, instead of taking it apart, why not try cutting down the middle of the sashing and adding a second sashing. Maybe you can find a fabric that works with the bad sashing and the quilt top and brings it all together. It would be a lot easier to cut it then remove all those stitches.

I like Fran's idea, but then I don't have to do it.

My mistake on my Zuni Sunset was in not planning ahead on how the quilting design would be affected by the way I ironed the seams.

Actually, as there were four stripped triangles done individually in each block, there really was no way to figure out exactly how to iron the seams. I just did the generic iron to the dark. At that stage, I had no way of knowing which triangles would be pieced to make a block. Blocks depended on color combination.

At that point, I could have reironed the seams, but I wasn't thinking that far ahead. I quilted the center seams, which meant in some cases the quilting actually switched sides of the seam at mid point to avoid the seams. If the quilt were not so visually strong, that switch might have shown. Lesson recalled.

Fran--Great minds must think alike. >grinI put this top together nearly a year ago, then had to move on to other things, so I haven't had it out since last February and I'm hoping that when I get it out again, it won't be as bad as I remember.

Annie

My biggest mistakes all came on what was supposed to be an easy quilt. First I mis-cut the base blocks - the rectangles were supposed to be 4x the length of the squares, then I way underestimated how much fabric would be needed for the background and ended up using 4 different fabrics instead of 1, so the blocks looked framed instead of popping out from a background, but noone other than me knows what it was supposed to be verses what it became!
Annie - I hope that when you bring it out, you like it more than you remember. I have not done a lot of applique, but I love the way a beautiful applique can change the whole look of a background fabric that I otherwise might not care for.
Karlene

My Biggest mistake was the same one I keep making. Perhaps in 2009 I will have finally learned "measure ten times and cut once!"

This time I did several hundred HSTs for a QOV using my "wonder ruler" which works, well, like a wonder. TOO BAD that my "scant 1/4" seam was a little TOO scant. I tested it before starting there is this tiny voice inside my head that compels me to go "a little scanter" so there will be "enough room" later. And then when cutting the triangles the same voice says "go a hair bigger. You don't want them too small..."

So after pressing them open -- and starting to sew them to their 2/5" square buddy pieces, I was horrified to discover most were about 1/8" too big. I just finished retrimming them ALL against a triangle template I made. Sigh.

I think next time I will put a line on my "wonder ruler" where the SEAM should be and measure against THAT as opposed to the edge of the fabric.

Annie -- I have made your mistake in the past too -- you know the fabric/style/whatever doesn't sit right with you but your forge ahead until you have a whole quilt top and then you KNOW you just cannot live with it...

I make so many that I can't recall the worst but one that comes to mind is a miss read of the directions. I made a bunch of 1/2 sq. triangles to discover I was needed 1/4 sq. triangles from the block. I had to choose a different fabric as I didn't have enough to do it correctly.
I would like to say "live and learn" but unfortunately I never learn. Jayne

My biggest mistake was to think I could cheat, and instead of sewing the hexagons of a Stack-n-whack together using plain-colored triangles, sew them onto some ready-quilted unbleached muslin--a trick that worked fine when I appliqued big flowers to make a quick quilt for my cousin who had Alzheimer's disease.

What I didn't take into consideration was the way the slightest difference in the sizes of the hexagons after I had turned their edges under, coupled with the unevenness of the ready-quilted muslin, would make it impossible to match up the corners of the hexagons. I don't know how long I spent pinning and basting and redoing it before giving up. Haste makes waste is the lesson I ought to learn from this, but, like Jayne, I suppose I never will.

So, the SnW hexagons, still annoyingly unevenly attached to their background, have been sitting under a table for around 9 months now. You know how hard it is to take something up again once it has shown that it isn't going to work out the way you wanted it to! And I loved the SnW fabric I had chosen so much, too!

There is one boo boo I've done more than once. That is sew several blocks or pieces together using the regular foot on my machine instead of the 1/4" foot. This usually means either wasting all the fabric and starting from scratch or spending several hours doing the frog (rip it) stitch.

Wow... mistakes to come I guess. I've only done a few
quilts - one with a group of people, and 2 others (and
another i'm working on now). So, really half of what you
folks are talking about I have no idea what your saying - I
don't know what a wonder ruler is, I'm not sure I know what
a sash is - is that the fabric that some people put between
the blocks? the way you iron seams can effect the ultimate
quilt??? Huh, guess I'll have to learn that one! Heaven's
I've probably already made THAT mistake! Lord knows if I'd
even know what to look for if it was wrong! I can
definitely see me cutting fabric on the carpet and not
getting a nice cut...

I guess my mistakes are more like not buying enough fabric -
and having to go back and not finding it! Ahhh! Or
sewing a block one way and getting done with it and
realizing it's completely backwards! I kept doing that
with the log cabin - cutting the fabric Or slicing an edge
off a strip and then when I get to the end I'm JUST THAT
much short on the other end to eek out one more strip...

The other thing that I'm thinking is a mistake is that I
fall in love with fabric and I buy it with no plans to make
something with it - I buy it because I like it... now I
have this enormous collection of fabric!!! What am I doing?

I also obtained this horrendous trait from my father - that
everything (alright not everything but most things) have
got to be useful. The practicality of items made or bought
has got to be there! So I make jelly b/c the fruit is free
and rotting. I make tomato sauce b/c I love tomatoes and I
have to use the excess or that would be just down right
WASTEFUL... I grow plants (flowers, vegetables, not house
plants) in the house because it's cheaper than buying them
(Ok, not initially but in the long run) *and yes I have a
point to my rambling* - I would love to quilt something
small but then I run into this 'practicality gene'. It has
to be a quilt that would fit a queen size bed... it's
practical! So that brings me to my other big mistakeS - I
just overwhelm myself making BIG things. Darn that father
of mine (who used to pin his socks together b/c if the
dryer ate one it was going to TAKE THEM BOTH) being so
practical.

Tom wrote: "The other thing that I'm thinking is a mistake is that I fall in love with fabric and I buy it with no plans to make something with it - I buy it because I like it... now I have this enormous collection of fabric!!! What am I doing?"

~~Stash building! It's a time-honored tradition among quilters.

Sashing: You were right, it's strips placed between blocks to frame them. Some blocks look best with some sashing, others look best when they butt together, like your log cabin blocks.

Annie

It really doesn't HAVE to be Queen or large, that's entirely up to you. I do smaller things, wall hangings, art quilts & lately have started making baby quilts.

I'm working my way up to larger & am working from approx 40" x 50", has allowed me to try lots of different designs (some current examples are at the attached Photo Gallery).

Am still intimidated by large, bed size quilts, especially since I sleep in a Queens size bed & have only a home sewing machine. I have concluded I'll have to make Quilt as You Go for a queen size or I won't be able to manage it in this sewing machine. (The idea of trying this actually scares the begeebers out of me.)

Mistakes can be a good thing! We learn from our mistakes, and hopefully before it's too late to fix it! I enjoy reading about other people's mistake, because I can learn what NOT to do! Here are two big ones I learned from:
I made 25 applique blocks on a light background fabric--took me 5 years. When I sewed them together, I pressed the seam allowances to one side, in alternate directions (as I was taught for piecing quilts). Then I went to a quilt show and saw an applique quilt hanging where that was done the same way, with seams pressed in alternating directions. Because you could see light behind the quilt, the seams were very distracting (it make the blocks look larger and smaller). Plus, it was probably harder to hand quilt through the 3 layers of those seams, not to mention where they joined in the corners. So I took mine apart and pressed the seams all open, thankfully BEFORE basting and hand quilting the thing!
Years ago, I used some antique blue-and-white house blocks to make a quilt, adding white sashing and setting blocks between them. After I basted the top to the batting and back, I could see a lot of places where the dark blue was shadowing through to the front, because the seams were not trimmed in such a way that the light fabric was just a bit wider than the blue. It was too obviously distracting! So I unbasted the quilt and fixed them.
BlueBars

That's exactly what I had in mind Blue--I'd MUCH rather learn form someone else's mistakes than make them all myself!

In reading about Cathedral Windows, I learned that the name comes from the way the light shines through the plain muslin when it's on the line. I'd always called the added diamonds of color the 'window' but that's not how it started out. LOL! One old instructions kept talking about 'to open your windows' and it was soooo confusing.