Nancy Smith's Block

This month's block was made by Nancy Carlile Smith.  You can get a pattern for this block at Two Bits Patches. Nancy's mother Mary was a sister of Alice Criswell who made the quilt; so Nancy was a cousin of the bride Mary.  Nancy was married to James Smith and had three children when she made her quilt block.  Nancy had two more children and lived to the age of 68.

When I was drafting this block I was conscious of the irregularities in the applique. The ruffles around the outside aren't evenly spaced.  The reverse applique cutouts had a bit of a jag in the middle.  So, I redrew the outside line so the peaks and troughs were evenly spaced.  I considered doing a cut and paste in Photoshop to get the edge perfect.  The inside cutouts would benefit from a drawing compass, I thought, so that each semicircle was equal distance from the centre and from each other ....

And then it struck me that the pattern I was drawing no longer looked like the original block.  It looked quite nice, but I had somehow lost the character that made this block Nancy's.  I went back to my original tracing and kept the pattern as much like the original as possible.

I'm still in two minds as to whether I should have averaged those peaks and troughs.  Would it look better if it wasn't quite so .... undisciplined?

Have no fear of perfection - you'll never reach it.

Salvador Dali

I wish my stitching was perfect, nothing wrong with that.  However, I usually go for speed rather than perfection.  If I finish a seam and think, I should do that again, but don't; that's fine by me.  If I look at a seam three or four times and think it could be better then I do unpick and sew again. 

How do you approach your sewing?  Is it the journey or the destination that gives you pleasure?  I'm certain there aren't wrong and right answers, just different answers. Are you going to even out Nancy's block?