Wednesday, March 29, 2017

Embracing "imperfection"

After so much success with my pillow auction to support the Red Cross after the devastating fires in Fort McMurray, I decided I wanted to do another in support of a local charity. I finished one pillow, then started in on three more tops.

I saw a neat block while scrolling through Instagram that inspired two pillows. It's based on a pattern that's part of a BOM hosted by the Portland Modern Quilt Guild.

I love how these dark prints look for the background. It really makes the colours shine.


And this dark grey background is good too, especially for the very colourful fabrics I picked for the star. How awesome is that psychedelic kitty fabric by Tula?


Oh boy was I happy with how these two pillow tops turned out, especially on the heels of the great disappointment from another. Cue what I am calling "imperfectly perfect" ...


When I came up with the idea for rainbow of Alison Glass fabric in half-rectangle triangles, I was so excited. It took forever to cut out all the fabric (after figuring out the math with some muslin prototypes), sew and then trim the HRT. But as soon as I started sewing them together, I realized HRT were not as straight-forward as HST. Points on one side were cut off, and the points on the top were floating. I was crushed. All that time, all that precious fabric wasted! I thought I can't auction this technically imperfect quilt, and I didn't even want to share it. My perfectionist side was aghast.

But then I let it sit for a couple days, mostly to ignore the disaster. Yes, I could "fix" the problem by trimming a bit off the ends of each block. Instead, I decided to embrace the imperfection. While it is technically wrong, it doesn't really take away from the overall effect of the pillow. It's still a lovely rainbow in gorgeous fabric. And I will proudly include it in my auction, although for full disclosure I will point out the issue so the eventual owner is not disappointed.

All in all, it was a good lesson in not getting too caught up in perfection.

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