At some time or other, every quilter has made some mistake when cutting pieces that wrecked the plan for the quilt. It happens. And when it does you take a few minutes to pout about it then sit down and figure out how you are going to fix it. This is one of those times that it has happened to me. I am having to change up my plans to account for a mistake I made cutting the leaf shapes.
This quilt has been fighting me for a while. Regular readers may remember that when I started the quilt that the directions for cutting the background fabrics did not add up to the dimensions given in the same directions. That was not just my opinion, I showed the directions to some of my guild members and they could not make sense of them either. If I wanted to make this quilt I was just going to have to wing it. I did manage to get the background squares for this applique quilt cut in a way that would work with the patterns for the applique. The problem was that it was going to make it very tight to cut out some of the applique pieces with the fabric I have available.
I cut two sets of the applique pieces with the applique leaves facing up. Unfortunately, I cut two sets of the applique pieces facing the wrong way. I don't have enough fabric left to cut more pieces correctly. Since
the applique pieces are the opposite color of the background fabric my
choices were limited.
I had planned for all the leaf appliques to face in the same direction; leaves facing up. Since two sets of the applique are only going to work in the opposite direction I could make one row of leaves facing up and the next row of leaves facing down along the course of the quilt. It looks a little funky, but at least it forms a light/dark four patch. I could turn the other two row up, but that turns the four patch into rows of stripes. That might be okay in some applications, but with this design, it leaves the quilt with a row of neutral on one side and a row of green on the other. The quilt appears unbalanced. The four patch is a better option. However, it needs something to make it work. The leaf shapes become a little vague when some are right side up and others are upside down.Hopefully, my plan is to use the small half leaf shapes that were created when the leaf applique was cut to make small leaves that will fit inside the leaf outline. I will reduce the size of the leaf by about half and then applique it in the center of each leaf outline. It will help define it as a leaf. Or at least I hope so. It is the best idea I can come up with at the moment. I may able to find some coordinating fabric in my stash that can be used to make acorns. That would help tie in the idea of oak leaves.
The first two photos show my block options. In the third photo you can see some of the small leaf shapes placed between the leaf outlines. My plan is to reduce the size of some leaf shapes and applique them inside the leaf outline, which means the outline would be echoing the shape of the applique. I have not reduced the size of any of the small leaves, so I don't have a photo of the leaf inside of the leaf outline.
My other alternative are to drive across town and spend more money on fabric (presuming that they have some of that fabric in still in stock) or fall back and try to fix this in some other manner. I am not inclined to throw good money after bad. I guess I will try to work with what fabric I have. If all else fails, I can take the whole thing apart and do something else if the fabric. Although, at this point that would be a lot of work. If nothing else, a quilt will keep someone warm. It might be worthwhile to focus on that instead.
