At school, my maths teacher, Mr Collins, used to say to me, “Gill, it’s no good being nearly right. Nearly right is wrong!”. The problem is that when something is nearly right, you want it to be right soo much it is very hard to make that leap of faith and start again !
Currently all of my children’s classes are making competition pieces for the Festival of Quilts at the NEC in August. Last year was the first time the girls had entered and it was great fun. At that time I had two children’s classes, and the older ones won a prize !! This year I have three children’s classes and all of them were super keen to enter ! The theme this year is “Patchwork Magic”.
Thinking of one super duper Patchwork Magic quilt is easy, two is more difficult and three is tough ! Especially when each group expect you to come up with the winning design just for them !! No pressure !!! This year, for one of the designs I was lucky enough to have the support of Jacqui Bignell of FlapDoodle Designs, who drew a fairy, just for my Junior Sewing Bee.
The Junior Sewing Bee comprises five girls from 9-11 years of age. Once we had the design, I think we all thought that it would be easy after this ! The girls and I took time to choose all the colours for the fairy, but I chose the background colour. I picked silver.
Half was through it was clear that is was just not right. ! Added to this the girls couldn’t understand how the fairly could be throwing out stars in the daytime. I chose to ignore then for one lesson (even though I knew they were right), but when they insisted it was strange for a second lesson, it was clear something had to change!
At this point it takes a lot of confidence to change direction. Five worried faces can be quite intimidating. However, like Mr Collins said, if it’s not right it’s wrong and so we jumped ship, cut the fairy off the silver background and ordered more material for a navy background. The girls were immediately happier with this, and we progressed. The thing I found most surprising was that by using a navy background a whole new colour palate could be used, allowing me to change the grass to a colour I much preferred.
Latterly it has been her hair that has caused an issue. The girls made the hair using a seminole patchwork technique, which was lovely, but looked really flat (and boring). Again there was much angst… But a trip to Sew Crafty for ribbon and the application of the most expensive thread I have ever bought (saved for a special occasion) seems to have solved the problem.
It is not easy with anything to change course,adapt a design, unpick your work, but ultimately you know if something is wrong and in my experience it is worth taking that leap of faith to move from nearly right, to correct.
The piece will be on show at the N.E.C in Birmingham from 7th- 10th August. I’ll let you know how they get on. Fingers crossed !
