Well you know how things are planned out in your mind. And how the SOMETIMES don't quite work out that way? Well I planned this baby quilt and need to get the top done today. I was on track until I went to put the blocks together.

Dang It! my elephant applique blocks were supposed to be 12.5 inches but due to a cutting error on the backing they will have to be 12 inches. No problem right? I can make that work, but now my corner patchwork blocks are measuring 13 inches instead of 12.5. Dang It! I guess I already said that.

Any suggestions? I thought about adding a border to the outside of the elephant blocks but that messes with the patchwork which I had planned on running through the entire quilt.

i had planned patchwork in the outer corners and the middle square and 4 elephant blocks in the middle sides and top. The quilt being 3 blocks x 3 blocks before borders.

Please help before I throw it out!

Sheila

Can you cut the elephant blocks smaller, add a border around each block, then trim so they are the same size?

You have the option of adding a border around the elephants to make them bigger. How big are the elephants? You can trim the blocks to the smallest possible without touching the elephants, and add a border to make them 13 inches. You can also redo them and save those for another project.

Do you have any pictures? Is easier to understand with pics.

Hey Grammy, you are faster typing than me.

You might be able to "stretch" or "shrink" the blocks using Sharon Schamber's blocking method. She has videos on Youtube. Perhaps some combination of this with trimming will make the different sized blocks compatible with each other.

Here are links to a couple of the videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-3RIWhBvcA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQkF02vpVuw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6aplw_tVZc

The middle video shows her stretching a block 1/2".

Could you trim the 13" blocks down & not mess up the pattern?
A picture would help us help you.

sorry to hear that you are having problems, maybe this will be a cool creative pattern in the works

they say things happen for a reason, good luck!

wow, thanks for these links, we learn something new everyday when mistakes happen, thanks

i took note of the fact that you don't think adding borders to the elephants will work. that may or may not be the case.

lay out all the blocks in the way you had originally intended.

take a photo and post it. once we can see it, i'm sure you'll get lots of helpful suggestions based on blocks we can see next to each other.

this can be fixed. i'm sure of it. take a deep breath. it's going to work out. ;-)

Okay I knew I needs pics to help you out.

So here they are. I was going to load them earlier but had unexpected company show up.

Thanks for all the suggestions earlier. My idea was to quilt diagonal lines using the corners of the blocks in the patchwork to follow. there fore I wanted the corners of the patchwork to match up to the center block of patchwork.

Hope you all have some suggestions.

Thanks-

Sheila

just a thought here...
maybe you could cut the right size background and re-cut the elephants and applique them on the square.