What to do when quilting doesn’t work…

Well if you’ve been reading along with me, you might remember that I have a new bee, the 3 x 6 bee that is currently going on. In this bee, you are in a group with 6 other people and you make each of them the same block pattern but use the colors that they have selected. I thought that this was a great idea and a quick commitment. Of course, being the overachiever that I am, I selected a perfectly lovely block that was entirely paper pieced and as is turns out fairly complicated. But I was ready to tackle the challenge. Here’s a reminder of what I was intending to make…pretty right?

angela-pingel-3x6-bee

Well I still think that it is a lovely block and would like to try it again sometime…but you can see where this is going. Obviously this block did not work out for me. And I have no one to blame but myself. I made the most classic paper piecing error there is. I did not check the inch measurement to make sure that I had printed my many copies of this pattern on my nice paper piecing special paper to scale. So after working on one block for over two hours and only having it less that half way done I discovered that there was no way that it was going to fit together. It took me at least another half an hour of fiddling to discover what the issue was. I of course assumed that the pattern was wrong in their measurements at first…but no…it was all me.

Discouraged and frustrated I put all my hard work aside and decided that for my sanity this month (I have soooo many projects this month!) that I needed to do another block for everyone. I felt really bad because I had already shown them what I wanted to do and given them the preview picture of what their block might look like. And everyone was quite excited about their block. I’ve never had to back off from a pattern before…but let’s just say that my mental health needs as few challenges as possible lately. I needed a block that not only looked really interesting but one that I would still be able to accomplish.

So I searched and searched through my lovely new program EQ7 and found a bunch of potential blocks. Then I played around with color placement to see how my partners’ color choices might look with the different patterns. I was so happy to do that (yeah technology!) because some definitely did not work and one stood out the clear winner.

I chose this block and here are a couple of EQ7 renderings.

angela-pingel-EQ7-rendering-bee-block

I had to make sure that I could do a rainbow version because one of the members choice a rainbow color scheme.

angela-pingel-EQ7-rendering-bee-block-rainbow

This block still has some tricky parts to it with the four corners and I had to choose whether to paper piece them or use templates. Well after my last paper piecing debacle, I choose to make templates. The added bonus of that is that I can cut out the pieces in front of the television while the babe wonders around on the floor trying to figure out how to crawl.

So I actually managed to make one block and my goal is to make one a day until I’m finished…I even hope to squeeze in two on a couple of the days!

angela-pingel-actual-bee-block

I’m still very proud of this block and how it turned out.

So the lesson of the week…sometimes you have to retreat. I needed to find something that was more suited to my current talents and not worry about learning something entirely new or challenging myself in every way. It’s okay to just challenge yourself a little. Heck, some of these color combinations are challenging. LOL. So hopefully I’ll have some more blocks to show you soon!!

 

3 thoughts on “What to do when quilting doesn’t work…”

  1. I am sorry it didn't turn out how you wanted at first!! But good job for finding something just as beautiful!!! I can't wait to see you finish your first design though! You are much more determined than me! I would have just given up and call it good! LOL Your very creative!

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