As You Sew, So Shall You Rip

I'm in the home stretch on Abby's quilt. The mind-bogglingly tedious yet terrifying free-motion machine quilting is finished, and all I have to do is sew the four border and four corner pieces to the main quilt body. It's not quite as easy as it sounds, as I'm quilting-as-I-go, which means that there's two seams to be sewn for each piece to be attached.

Yesterday I carefully pinned a long side border piece to the main body. It's a large quilt and hard to handle, but I eventually got it all pinned down smoothly. I sat back for a minute for a quick quality check before I began sewing, and was glad I did- somehow I had pinned the piece on upside-down. Crud. What a lot of work gone to waste. I unpinned it and left it alone in disgust overnight.

Today I came back in to the sewing room, eager to re-do what I had to undo last night. Carefully making sure the pieces weren't upside down, I re-pinned the border to the body and did another quality check. Yup. Looked good. I sewed the straight seam, fighting against the bulk of the quilt and feeding it through the machine. A quick iron, and then another round of fighting, this time to sew the decorative zig-zag stitch that holds the "grout" in place. Full of pride, I ironed the top out and then flipped it around to admire the other side.

And realized I just sewed that damned border on backwards.