This thread reminds me of Lisa Boyer's humorous book: "That Dorky Homemade Look: Quilting Lessons from a Parallel Universe."
Some suggestions from her book:
"You should plan on cutting off about half your triangle or star points. Any more than that is showing off.
Throw away your seam ripper and repeat after me: 'Oops. Oh, no one will notice.'
Plan on running out of border fabric when you are three-quarters of the way finished. Complete the remaining border with something else you have a lot of, preferably in an unrelated color family.
You should be able to quilt equally well in all directions. I had to really work on this one. It was difficult to make my forward stitching look as bad as my backward stitching, but closing my eyes helped.
When you have put your last stitch in the binding, you are still only half finished. Your quilt must now undergo a thorough conditioning. Give it to someone you love dearly—to drag around the house, wrap up in, spill something on, and wash and dry until it is properly lumpy."
According to Lisa, "If we didn’t make Dorky Homemade quilts, all the quilts in the world would end up in the Beautiful Quilt Museum, untouched and intact. Quilts would just be something to look at. We would forget that quilts are lovable, touchable, shreddable, squeezable, chewable, and huggable—made to wrap up in when the world seems to be falling down around us."
I love her books. I remember she told about one of the first quilts she made, how crooked it was and how many other mistakes were in it. But she entered it in a local contest anyway and, if I remember correctly, won a blue ribbon!