Originally Posted by
bkay
I'm a novice. I'm making my second quilt, an I spy quilt. I am starting to put the rows together and they don't fit. I measured it and one of my charms is 4 3/4 inches instead of 5". It's too much to ease in. I tried that. I decided to try to reduce the seams on the charm toward the bottom of the charm and see if I can fit it in, as I laid it out and the colors work where they are (I can't replace this color). Will it look wonky? Am I better off just to tear it all the way out and replace it with another light color?
I may run into this again, so I need a plan of action. I got many of these charms in a swap, so there may be others. (Now I know why the there are swaps for 4" charms.) I thought I had caught all those that were off, but obviously not.
This is one of those experience things - you learn from your mistakes. I'll not use swap charms again without measuring each and everyone of them.
bkay
I know you've already fixed it, but an idea for "next time"... in the same situation I have made 4-patches or 9-patches in place of the charm square. Obviously it depends on the size of the print and how much you like it, but a half-square triangle might work as well, maybe even kind of off-set on purpose so it doesn't look like a mistake you tried to fix. A few of these spaced around seems to add a little visual interest.