Recovering Perfectionist

“Never let perfect be the enemy of good,” or some similar quote attributed to Voltaire (who I’ve heard of but know nothing of as my high school Honors English class never delved into his life or his writings and I’m not motivated to do so now), came to mind today as I was piecing together quilt blocks.

When last I sewed, I discovered I had used the wrong presser foot and some strips were sewn together with a slightly larger seam allowance. Old me, the me who learned to sew from a mother who spent years during her childhood sewing for 4-H projects and incredibly picky judges, would have immediately ripped out all the stitches to start over. New me…the me whose sewing time is jammed in between making sure son has completed all of the college-freshman-in-the-fall stuff and graduating-this-year-stuff (all of which is much more confusing thanks to the Great Contagion) and the me who has taken on the care of middle daughter’s guinea pigs while she’s at college and the me who’s helping eldest daughter apartment search from hours away from the city she’s moving to next month…that me doesn’t have time to be picky. That me just enjoys the process of sewing and making something new. That me has little patience for perfection anymore.

You can see in the photo that the wrong presser-foot strip sets are off by about 1/8.” That’s fine with me. I can make that work by just centering the smaller piece on the proper-sized piece. Had I been off by much more, I might have corrected the issue. As none of the seams need to line up properly from section to section, there was no need to make any corrections.

So far I’ve sewn a lot of strip sets together and cut them into the required width pieces. I don’t think I have quite enough pieces yet for the entire quilt, but I was antsy to actually get a few blocks sewn together. Below is a sampling of the blocks I’ve completed. I’m loving this pattern as it looks quite complicated but is really very simple.