I'll share my first quilting project 25 years ago when I actually bought fabric for and everything. A double wedding ring quilt. It was the first time I used plastic templates with a rotary cutter. The lady at the fabric store told me that it would be so easy with this new template set. (Now, I ask the person who recommends something what their experience level is before accepting the advice)
I didn't have much experience, didn't pay attention to grain lines-pish posh, who needs grain lines, mixed fabric types, didn't prewash, and the very best thing was I needed a huge amount of beige so instead of spending all that money on fabric. I found a poly/cotton sheet that I tried to use. Which would have been passible if I had cut off all the decorative trims and hems and such, no, of course I didn't do that because who will notice? My 1/4" seam wasn't accurate, I didn't sew straight at all, some places it was more like 1/8 or even 1/16th because the machine and fabric sort of had a mind of it's own.
When I finally pressed it after about 1/4 of the way through a queen size quilt, the cottons shrunk at different rates and the poly/cotton didn't shrink at all, but some of the reds sort of bled onto the beige. One of these days, I'm going to take it down and do something with it, haven't decided what.
On other projects that don't turn out quite as the directions say, I tend to toss the instructions away and see what else I can do with these pieces/squares. Good luck and welcome to the WIP club