A rescue - of the block kind

  

Today I'm going to show you something that I probably shouldn't!  Don't we all like to think that everything we do is pretty decent and that we don't make horrible mistakes?  W-e-l-l - me?  Not so much!  Yesterday I spent over an hour cross stitching a rose onto the latest section of my hussif and when I removed the waste canvas I hated it.  H-A-T-E-D   I-T.  What to do?  Chuck the whole piece?  Leave it be and live with it?  Or....could it be salvaged?

So in the interest of full disclosure AND actually having a blog post for you today, I decided I would show you what I've done to fix the problem.

First of all, here's the piece as it was yesterday...

Can you see what had me bothered? (and, don't be nice and tell me that it's okay, because it really isn't).

It's the big honking single rose that is seemingly lying on its side sort of on the upper right.  I know I didn't have to tell you that, but bear with me.

It's too big. It 'fights' with the broderie perse flower on the lower left.  It's too much.  

I could have unpicked all those stitches, but it would have left a lot of holes in the fabric which would have been very difficult to cover up.

Now, here's what I did to make it better.

First of all I went to my stash and found something that had a pretty finished edge.  My reason for that was (if you look closely at the photo above) that the 'bad rose' was stitched quite closely to the nice seam below it.  You can also see that the broderie perse flower was 'higher' than the nice seam and because of that I couldn't simply stitch down a straight piece of fabric in order to cover up the bad area.  The curve in the doily I chose worked perfectly to deal with the broderie perse being somewhat higher.

Do you see in this photo how I've inserted the doily to cover the offending rose and also compensate for the broderie perse rose?  I basted the curved edge of the doily very close to the edge.

I then flipped the block over and trimmed away the offending rose, as well as the seam treatment I had done that was above it, leaving the block on the back looking like this...

As you can see I was now left with a rather see-through doily in the corner.  Because crazy quilt blocks are created on a foundation obviously I needed to replace the foundation in that area.  That was simply done by basting a scrap piece of plain cotton onto the back.

Now I am ready to continue with my block and I'm so much happier with it.  Yes, I did lose the small seam treatment that was above the offending rose, but it was a small price to pay for ending up with something I am happier with overall.  

So there you go.

A block rescue!

Today, here's a quote from Steve Allen.... "Sometimes things which at the moment may be perceived as obstacles - and actually be obstacles, difficulties, or drawbacks - can in the long run result in some good end which would not have occurred if it had not been for the obstacle"