Oops! The Fudge Factor

Hi everyone! Hope your week is off to a good start. Warning: Post is picture heavy.

Today I am going to show you an Oops! and the Fudge Factor. Have you ever been working away on a project, getting so much accomplished and then when you next pick it up you realize - Oops! you screwed something up?? you cut it wrong, didn't cut it correctly and are now out of the fabric you need? Marked it wrong, sewed it wrong? Well I have, many times, and then I spend quality time with my seam ripper or my computer searching for that elusive fabric. For me, many times it is from not going to bed when I should and trying to get "just one more" done. This is usally the same time of night when I am typing up blog posts and hit a button where they disappear into cyberspace :)  I am getting better at stopping when I am really tired, knowing that I might just create double the work and have to redo tomorrow because I just had to do one more tonight.

Above is an example of a minor issue: my seam is off. Easy fix, rip the seam out, repin, and resew.

                              

                   .....and wa-lah! Looking good to go, ready for the next one!

                            

                                                 Notice anything wrong with this block?

At first it looks like it is a simple case of sewing the seam wrong. Nope, couldn't be anything that simple. Each part of the petal was sewn and then trimmed so that at the narrowest part of the white background should measure 1/2".  Now do you see the problem with the lower right hand 1/4 petal?

You guessed it!  I cut the lower right white background short at 1/4 in vs 1/2 inch.

Now in this pic you can see it doesn't make a difference on the interior petal seams. Just sew them together and trim the extra 1/4 in of print off the center seam. But you can still see the lower right

is shorter than the rest. How am I going to fix it? I am not sure but I think (hope) it will be with the

      Fudge Factor!

              No, no, no, not THAT Fudge Factor!

                         Although I know it does make it better sometimes! ;)

You know, it's what you do to make it work before you totally give up and redo the block!

Yes, I am hoping that between the give and take of the seams and trimming the blocks down to size that I can make this work vs. having to remake that 1/4 petal!

Is this earth shattering, change your life info - no. Its just sometimes it seems no one ever talks about the little things that go wrong. Or even the big things. Life is not perfect and neither is the process of creating. So I believe that showing and discussing what goes wrong is part of the process. I don't think it is whining, I hope you don't think it is whining..... It doesn't mean you are less than, or not competent! It just means that you are human, and having one of those days that all of us have! 

So on to my progress for the week end! FIVE, more Retro Flower blocks! Belowe are single pics of all the completed flowers so far.

          Love this soft coral, lacy pattern!

     This one turned out better than I thought it was going too!

 This is my Oops! block and has all the colors of the other blocks in it.  It will tie the color scheme together (that's my plan anyway:)

  Bright and bold red!

My first!

   My favorite, so far! Love all the colors!

        A bit wild, or maybe it has an asian feel?

So go ahead, work that Fudge Factor, knowing that you are competent and creative, and everyone else has the same things happen to them. And when it works-- celebrate lifes small successes, sometimes they are the sweetest of all!

Linking up to Freshly Pieced

Mail Call!

Just had to show you what came in the mail!



Isn't this just so pretty and bright? A bit whimsical, a bit modern!

This is Flying Free from Antholgy Fabrics. A BIG Thanks to Julie over at

 Intrepid Thread for sponsoring the giveaway!

The Flying Free collection was inspired from a whimsical place where modern and retro collide and I hope that each piece of fabric fromFlying Free fabric collection is designed by Adrienne Looman for Anthology Fabrics. modern and retro collide and I hope that each piece of fabric from this set brings a smile to you. The mixture of birds, fruit, flowers and trees r

I won this bundle from one of the give aways over at Plum and June.

Lots of great advice and guest columnists, tutorials, and Giveaways!

See you soon!

Happy Father's Day! Weekend Catch Up

Well, how has your weekend been? Happy Father's Day to all the great Dad's out there!
My Dad passed back in 2006, but there are very few days that I don't think of him. My son is a Dad and he spent today with his son, out playing in the yard, having fun! Just as it should be...
Here is a shot from a couple of weeks ago, a little fun while getting the yard watered from the dry conditions.

Remember---the laughs and giggles, the sun so hot, the water so cold! Welcome the lazy, crazy days of summer!

In keeping with the summer theme, here are those sweet little hotpads that I gave you a glimpse at last week. Both the same, just a shot of front and back. They are made from my scrap packs from Hawthorne Threads (all except the binding which is a Moda dot). I just love them! Love the colors! They go with my Fiesta dishes perfectly! The funky little lobster bell is just for kicks - it was a gift from a good freind!

What I don't love is the binding! I tried to apply it by machine (meaning not handstitching the back) and I would say it turned out rather mediocre. I have close ups, but who wants to ruin a Sunday by picking it apart. I think my binding was a bit too wide to begin with. I like it smaller, more tight like it appears on the pad on the left..... But practice makes perfect, LOL! And I seem to get plenty of that, that's why I have two seam rippers ;)

Moving on to other projects:

Looky, looky! Retro Flowers are a'blooming! Yes I worked long and hard on these today. The bottom row is all pieced, the others I laid out to get a feel for the colors and possible positions and to match up any directional patterns. As you can see there are 6 that only have one petal on the wall because my design wall is not big enough to hold all of them!  What do you use for a design wall? This is a piece of styrofoam insulation covered with white flannel. And it works well, but it is just not big enough sometimes and can be a bit bulky to move around.

That's it for today, I hope you have had a great weekend! I did ;0

Feel free to leave me a comment, I love hearing from all of you!

May Mayhem and on to June

Hello all---oh how I have missed all of you!

May was a bit crazy--- you know the guy from the Allstate TV commercials--




Mayhem is his name, and I think he stopped by my house!!  Have you seen him?? Run!!
I am sure all of you have experienced times in your lives where just keeping up with work, family, friends, and obligations is over the top, let alone having any downtime for personal projects--ie. sewing....  but enough about the past and on to June!

I must let you know about Judy at Furball Farm Quilting.   
She is a longarm quilter with her business based just outside Maroochydore on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia.

She was so sweet and nominated me for the Leibster Blog award --thank you so much Judy! -- and I would like everyone to click on over to her blog and say Hi! She does beautiful work as shown in her pics on her blog! Leave a comment and let her know you stopped by, everyone needs some blog love :)

Also I wanted to introduce you to Beth over at Plum and June! If you don't already know she is hosting the

She has a great list of guest bloggers --check out here and here, for their posts and thoughts on blogging and sewing/crafting. Oh and what a wonderful bunch of new bloggers for you to meet and check out their tutorials and links! The blog hop has already started and will continue thru Fall. If you have missed some of the posts, stop by Beth's and ck it out, and say Hi! It's a great ways to meet new people and get tips and inspiration! 

That's about it for today's catch up! I will leave you with a little bit of sweetness that I just love! It is a small project that I did get to work on a bit! (outside of my Retro Flowers!!) These are made from scraps from my scrap pac's from Hawthone Threads--just love all the fun fabric that came in them-- a great way to add variety without having to buy yardage!

I hope to finish this today and have pics this week along with Retro Flowers progress!  Have a great Sunday!!

Ginny