How "perfect" does it have to be for you until it is "good enough"?
 

After the third try - sometimes it is just not going to get as "perfect" as I had wanted it to be.

I stand back, take several deep breaths, and move on.

I do try to figure out "why" it isn't coming out as expected. Sometimes I never do figure out the reason.

My husband used to say, "Hey, it's folk art!"

'Perfection' is in the eye of the beholder. To me, a meal that is cooked for me, is perfection--as long as I don't end up with food poisoning, that is :D. A ray of sunshine on a cloudy day--ditto, as is the smile on another person's face. I am not and never will be perfect. Nor are my creations.

I'm with you Bear--three times and it's time to accept what is and move on. Life is too short and I have too much fabric. (you want to know a secret?? In the top currently under construction, I noticed a four patch that was off by a few threads in the center--and I let it go!!! Oh my! Have I lowered my standards? Nope, just stopped getting frustrated with minor IM-perfections.)

Well in the art world you have the Michael Angelos and Picasso. So very different but equally amazing in their own way. My quilts can go from one extreme to the other. I try for MA but may end up with Picasso. Just be proud of whatever the outcome is

I’m with you on the 3 times and most time it is good enough.

My current tree skirt project had 45 blocks to stitch together. There were a couple of intersections that had issues. I learned to baste them together first, check alignment and then stitch down the seam again.

Yep, 3 times and I’m done!

PS: I also used pins about every 1/2 inch to hold the pieces together and that helped.

Three is the magic number for me also. After that, the fabric gets too "worn" for my liking. Finished is always perfect in my eye.

I go by the rule of anything you can't see from 3 feet away is good enough. Sometimes only you can see the mistakes too. I tend to be more critical of myself than others.

Every quilt I make has a mistake in it. No one will know unless I point it out! Nothing huge like one piece wrong side out or anything. Just I know it and tell myself that is the mistake for this quilt!

At some point, there are diminishing returns in terms of the integrity of the fabrics.

I just adjusted a seam perfectly in a set of squares, only to flip it over and realize that one of the seam allowances was now dangerously narrow in one spot. Did it look perfect from the front? Yep, but the fabric itself was very soft and prone to fraying, so I replaced it with another, realizing that the surrounding fabrics probably had just one more try in them, so I’d have to hit it the first time. Which I did. Holding my breath.

I love scrap quilts, but working with scraps, particularly soft and well-handled ones, has risks of its own, so, short of starching a lot of little pieces, you have to have enough extra to replace anything that’s had 2 or 3 tries.

Or so I think. :)

hugs, charlotte

I am a perfectionist, but I know that I can't achieve that status. I will try to fix something a couple of times, then I let it go with good enough. We are our own worst critics, and all we usually see are the flaws. No one else cares, so I've learned to accept it's good enough, and finished!