06/06/2018
This is a cautionary tale about why you should measure twice and cut once. I didn't tell you about the sampler disaster that occurred between mid-September and mid-December. I started "Pots 4 Dickie," an intensely stitched, long, narrow monochrome band sampler by Long Dog between 15 and 18" wide and I can't remember at this moment how long.
I started in September, and kept stitching through October and November, worried a bit about the violet-ness of it, wondered if it would be boring to look at and whether I’d made proper thread and fabric choices, then started to notice that the unstitched border on the right was decidedly narrower than the left side, which was NOT good at all.
Never had this happened to me. This is a rookie fabric cutting mistake, and I couldn't figure out how I managed to get it so wrong. 20% into the sampler, and I only had 1.5" of border on the right, and 4" or more on the right. YIKES!! But I had made 2 major mistakes, one involving the badly cut fabric and the other in where I chose to start stitching. The first--the mis-cut fabric--is that I thought I'd measured sufficiently, and that it would be fine but didn't really check properly. The biggest mistake is that I assumed that the yard would actually be a yard, having just come from the dyer. I should never have taken for granted that the cut would be right just because it was newly arrived from the dye factory. I should never have assumed that I had a full yard of the fabric, and thus could also just start stitching in one corner of the sampler and hey presto, it would be right. My mistakes left me with few good options:
Option 1: I could keep stitching and see how close to the edge I would actually get. If it narrowed to an inch, I had no idea what I would do. You can't really splice a new piece of fabric just any ole' where into a band sampler.
Option 2: Stop where I was and frog it. I didn't want that as I like this sampler a lot, but it was a serious consideration because I was really disgusted with the whole thing at that point.
Option 3: suck it up, cut the stitched part off, save the rest of a large piece of blank linen, and either quit or start over on a new piece of linen. This last is what I've done: I cut my losses and started over in about February or March and am now where I ended before Christmas. I have been working very hard to finish projects, instead of having all that fun starting new ones, then letting them fall into unfinished object limbo so I can do the funnest part and start another new one. It's actually way more fun to finish, because then you have something to show for your effort.
