Laden with Blunders

The pictures I am showing are of my 38" quilt.  I can be overly critical because it's not your's.  I can explain my errors in the comfort of knowing that I made them on my own quilt.  Mostly, these are not huge "errors"; they are more a matter of personal pickiness, or cases where the stitching didn't turn out as symmetrical as I would have liked.  Whatever the reason or excuse, it is frustrating me because each time I quilt the last couple days, it seems I make many hours of pickout too.

This corner is actually coming along pretty well.  My brown thread arrived yesterday.  Then we got snow today, kids got school delayed an hour and my daughter ended up home today with an eye infection.  As a result, not too much quilting.  For the entire day, only the sections of curved cross-hatching on the brown.  Oh, I say that, knowing that I did start on the center star only to realize it was going to have to be picked out because I hated it.  

 Yesterday was full of ups and downs.  Pros and cons.  I DID manage to get the bottom 2 corners quilted.  And I even like them.  That's a definite plus.  The downside, however, is that they (see below) are not exactly like the top two corner stars.  Translation: Some Pickout Required!  I decided that I like the single 1/4" of outlining on the inter-connected blocks (below) better than the double-line (above).  That's a relatively quick and easy fix.  I also decided that I don't particularly care for what I did on the 1/2" narrow border (above).  If I quilt on this at all, I will use a coordinating thread not the gold.   I am always going to be my worst critic, and sadly, won't be completely satisfied until this looks right, even if my right is different from your's.

 Only a little bit of the center red star shows, but it's all coming out.  I have been sketching away this afternoon trying to come up with something I like.  I want motifs that I have repeated elsewhere to make it cohesive.  That will come, and is by far and large the smallest of the quilt's demons right now.  What I discovered last night is that the filler that I am putting on top of the pieced stars has distorted the lines of the piecing in a few locations.  I didn't stabilize each seam before stitching the fill because I didn't want all those extra lines.  But another quilter noted today that I could have done it initially with water soluble thread (insert whack of forehead!).  It's not that it is an extremely huge area should I decide to rip it all out.  Afterall, this quilt is only 38" square, but it is, Ah... (in my best nonexistent Maine accent) wicked tightly stitched.  It would make me curse some fierce obscenities, and probably make me create some new bad 4-letter words. None the less, there may be no getting around it if I hope to have this in top showing condition.  If you double-click on the next picture, and look at the lower left points of the star, you can see what I am talking about.  That line ought to be straight.

So, thanks for all the great comments recently, and be patient with me as I stew in my frustration.  I know that much of this quilt is insanely unique.  It's just the other areas that leave me rolling my eyes that I must deal with :-)  Hope you have a good week-