Originally Posted by
Mrobert
Thanks to all of you for answering. I took 24 larger blocks of embroidered flowers on a cream background. I also gave her some light green material that I expected would be strips between the blocks. She cut down the size of the floral blocks and used the green to make alternating green blocks between the floral blocks. This created a checkerboard look. Instead of just putting a plain border, she put some sort of arrows in the corner and a green partial dark green border. I think she was trying to make it bigger although I don’t recall specifying a size. I think it could have been larger, but she cut the blocks from 12 inches to 9 inches.
Ok I'm
totally guessing here, trying to imagine how this could possibly have happened. It sounds like maybe there was some confusion about the terminology? "strips between blocks" (in your first post you had called them "inserts") sounds to me like you wanted sashing, not entire blocks? And maybe this woman didn't understand that? And to compound the issue, because she was thinking you wanted blocks instead of sashing, she realized there wasn't enough green fabric to make that many blocks of that size, so she cut the embroidered blocks smaller so she could get enough alternating green blocks, then needed to add the darker green to the borders to get it finished. Which, if this is actually what happened, is
still beyond what any quilter should have done without first consulting the owner of the top, unless you had given her leeway to do what she felt needed to be done to complete the top.
I do think it turned out nice, although I would be unhappy with the borders too, both the size discrepancy and the hourglass blocks. I like the quilting. But as someone else pointed out,
you're the customer, it's
your quilt, and she needs to make it right. At the very least, I would try to have a calm conversation about the communication between the two of you - what you said vs what she heard, why she felt comfortable making changes (especially cutting your blocks!) without consulting you first, and maybe once things have been cleared up, give her the chance to fix it for you without incurring further charges.