Near disaster

First, let me thank you for the kind comments on Betsy that were left. I appreciate them all.

I pulled her out last night with a goal to finish the alphabet before I misplaced the floss again. I was sitting in bed, which was probably where the mistake started. And I got up and down. Left-brain was moving stuff around. My scissors were left near the WIP, and when I came back from the kitchen, my snips were buried almost to the hilt in the middle of the yellow fabric.

These scissors are sharp as a scalpel. They're cheap scissors, just the CraftSmart ones from the craft store, but I like them because they cut so well, with little effort. Both Left-brain and I can attest, they cut flesh really well; I don't put them in the project bag for that reason, and he took a hit by reaching around in the bed. We're dang lucky they haven't poked through the new sheets.

My fabric didn't fare so well. I pulled them out and tried to assess the damage. Since I need new glasses, I couldn't tell if there was a hole in the fabric right away. But there was.

At that moment I became emotionally compromised. I know something had to be done, because it was going to pull when I have the piece mounted. First I tried to see if the stitching would cover it. It wouldn't. I told Left-brain that it was all messed up and I couldn't figure out how to fix it.

His suggestion: "Trash it." He knows that I am not a fudger, not a mistake leaver inner. It's one of my personality quirks with this craft. I know only God is perfect, and the Amish put mistakes in their work to show they are less than God, but my feeling is, if it's worth doing, it's worth doing right. But I don't want to start Betsy over again. So I gave him the stink-eye. He brought me Cherry Garcia as a mea culpa.

So I fudged. I have one wonky leave which covers the hole. I moved some of the star motifs around a bit to make the wonky leaf look like it was supposed to be there. I'm not happy that I had to do this. It makes me twitchy, but I really don't have any other choice. I reason it out by saying that a woman working a sampler 150 years ago wouldn't have tossed it out for a hole; materials and time were too precious to waste. Just because I have more time now and materials aren't so expensive doesn't make either any less valuable.


Here is the affected area all fixed up. I'm hoping that it looks like it was supposed to be this way all along:



And yes, I have learned to keep my scissors away from the fabric now.