Before
As the saying goes…’If you don’t have time to do it right the first time, when will you have time to redo it?’ . I’m learning patience as I grow as a quilter. When I began 5 years ago, I only wanted to machine sew and take all the short cuts. I’m only now starting to recognize the benefits of ironing and hand sewing. Sewing is a precise craft but it does lend itself to failure fixes, as represented in this pillow, you just need a seam ripper.
Curves have always intimidated me in sewing, but they are so pretty when executed. Having some general experience behind me, I felt it was time to try what I dreaded. I decided to start small with a pillow so I could control my focus and patience. I bought some adorable Cotton and Steel fabric to invest myself in the finished product, rather than using leftovers that felt like a throw away. The beginning piecing turned out really well because all my pieces lined up as expected. But when they suddenly didn’t, maybe my cutting was off, I struggled with what to do. My impatient self told me to power through so I decided to allow the fabric to gather and line up the whole pieces. In the end, this would have been fine if each piece was consistently gathered, but they weren’t.
I had such high hopes for this clamshell, I really wanted it to look how I envisioned it. I had enough fabric to start over but after a good night’s sleep and the realization that I didn’t want to look at this pillow anymore in it’s current state, I decided to seam rip out the bad parts and do them right. The intricate shape didn’t make this easy but I did learn that for this shape, it’s better to cut extra fabric than to gather it. And through lots of internet searching, this shape might just lend itself better to paper piecing.