Was at it again today. Thought maybe the problem is there is too much stop and start on this quilt moving from one element to another. I am easily confused after all......Hard to chain piece but I organized little piles and did four blocks at a time, one element at a time. Work d much better....only one seam ripped out!

Onebyone asked if my husband would notice if I chucked it....maybe not but there’s a story behind this gift and I just can’t do it! I think this will be a case of “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts” as often is the case with a quilt. The fabric is Stonehenge Woodland from a couple years ago. Not the bright and colourful fabric I normally go for.

sometimes it is better for me to stop making mistakes for the day and either go to bed or something away from sewing.

oftentimes i get an "aha" moment that helps me figure out what the problem is and how to solve it.

sometimes it does keep me awake, but when i am fatigued, i make more mistakes.

sometimes I put it away for a while like a month or two or if the mistake is not too bad...like points not matching completely or other alignment problem....I live with it....quilting for me is a hobby...I do not sell my stuff and I like designing and working with colors more than actually piecing and quilting so even though I am hard on myself, I am not a true perfectionist, and can live with the fact that everything does not turn out the way I intended. I always finish and if not to my liking my dog, Todie, does not care. He loves a new warm bed...lol.

Thanks for this thread. I'm not the only one having a great deal of trouble, and not to mention that it is minus 17 degrees F. It should warm up a little today.

I'll show you mine.[ATTACH=CONFIG]607662[/ATTACH]It's just awful. I did not get one quarter inch seam in the whole thing. Nothing lined up, the seams did not nest. The pattern is from Laundry Basket Quilts and is really cute, but confusing at the same time. I all him the pixilated giraffe. And yes, he was not supposed to have knobby knees. I haven't trimmed anything off the sides. He needs to be blocked, but I do not know how to do that? I have a border cut, but would like to block it first.

Yes, I have dated "Jack the Ripper" on this project, but it just doesn't seem to help. What can I do???

I see that it is out of focus. I can't even hold the camera. He is just so puckery. Will that quilt out?

My crazy frustrations usually occur when I'm making a bag or purse. I've been known to wad them up and throw them against the wall.... literally ready to put it in the trash... The next day, i go back and move forward. One purse in particular nearly became garbage 4 times. Now it's one of my favorites, and I've made the same pattern several more times.

I have thought about throwing certain quilts away or burning them. It seems to be the easier patterns where I make the most mistakes. I guess it is because I'm not paying close enough attention to the instructions because it is easy. Fix the current mistake and walk away for at least a few days. I have also learned to mark the pattern where I left off. Sometimes I have walked away for a couple of years.

The next time you get an ugly jelly roll as a gift, Make a rug.

My rule is that if I've made 3 mistakes in a row, then the quilt gets put aside until I can rethink it. By the 2nd mistake I'm saying "pluck a duck" under my breath. Substitute a common curse word for pluck, as I do. My most recent nemesis was a jelly roll rug - lots of ducks plucked on that one and it's still just a pile of rope. Prior to that it was Jenny Doan's Disappearing Hourglass - only ever made 4 blocks of that one and those were enough.

I was doing a house block pattern for a wall hanging...wasn't going to be what I had imagined...so wound up cutting the rest of the fabric into 5" squares, now I have enough to make an orange peel block quilt...so that fabric won't be wasted on something that I didn't like into a wall hanging...