Quilt modifications

I have finished the piecing of my "Retreat" quilt.  This is not at all like the pattern looked like.  The flying geese border was changed because my husband likes to play with quilt designs on my design wall and he thought this layout would be cool. I'm referring to the flying geese border that no longer looks like flying geese but rather just an arrangement of triangles. That was an OK thing to do because it did not change the width of this triangle border.  I proceeded to apply the next 1" border.  When I started the outside border I ran into an issue.  After I had the four blocks for the first side sewn together, I took it to the design wall and it was way short... no easing would even come close.

  At first I thought it was off by just a little over 1", so I proceeded to add 1" (cut 1 1/2") in the middle of the 4 blocks. That did not fill the gap. After initially thinking I was off by 1", I found out I was really off by 2".  I then ripped that one piece out and added 2 - 1 1/2" strips using both colors and sewed the white side to the black edge of the block, and the black side to the white edge.  It almost made it look like I planned it that way.  I then put together the top border that has 6 blocks and thought it would be an even bigger discrepancy, and it worked out that the exact same size for the additional strips worked on all 4 sides.

I at first thought the pattern had instructed the strips to be cut the wrong size.  I went back to the pattern after I had verified that my seams were all indeed 1/4"... and they were.  Backing up a bit here... at the retreat that we were recently at, we had watched a video on a block made by using a "tube" method.  The finished block looked almost like the blocks in this quilt... minus one additional triangle.  We thought it would be neat for all of us to start this quilt at the retreat. Anyhow I decided I did not need to read the instructions in the pattern because I thought I could make the block based on that video.  I was soooo wrong.

I have not tried to make a new block using the instructions from the pattern because I had all 20 blocks for my quilt already completed that measured 7" square - the pattern said they should be 7 1/2".  Had I at least read far enough to see what size they should be, I might have avoided this issue. I only read enough to find out what size to cut the strips.


At the top of the triangles above you can see the point is actually flat.  By moving the ruler over 1/4" the triangle ends up being wider.  I told everyone to line the ruler up on the point.  In my defense, I typically do not try to show someone how to do something that I have not done before.  We decided on this quilt after watching the video on YouTube at our retreat and finding the quilt in the quilt magazine that looked like the same block was used.  I was sure I could assist everyone without running into any issues, but instead I have learned another lesson, but this time I led others astray in the process.

End result for me looks fine.  I could not have it turn out any better if I had planned it that way.  Hopefully the others who have already cut their triangles can come up with a fix that will work for them... and I would certainly, if they dared to allow me to assist them, fix theirs the way I did mine.