Mistakes!

First, the Stash Quilt Blog Ring has two new members: KC Quilter and Patchalot. Please take the time to visit these new members and welcome them to the Stash Quilts ring. Jan Mac asked to be put on inactive status while she travels and we look forward to having her back as an active ring member. For those of you waiting to join the ring, for now we're keeping the group to 30 active members and as someone leaves, the person who's been on the waiting list the longest and whose site is ready to be activated is the next one who joins the ring. That's the only fair way I know to do it. Hope that's ok with everyone. Actually, the saying goes: Measure Twice, Cut Once .. but I never seem to remember that! Ever notice how many things go wrong when you're short on fabric? Seems like things go just fine when I have way more fabric than I need but when I'm worried about running short, I make so many stupid errors. Here's the quilt I've been working on. No pattern and I never took the time to figure out yardage. The main blocks are made from various batiks and I knew I had plenty of that. The green . . I knew I had plenty of that. The purple - when I started out, I had no idea what I was going to do for the border and I had plenty of that. But, when I decided to go with the pieced border and then a 4" purple border for the outside, I was short. I went digging through the stash and found two more purples. The first one is a bit blue but the second one is perfect. It very well may be the same fabric because it's a Hoffman 1895 batik and I order a bunch of those from Web Fabrics. So, I have plenty of purple. But, it's the background fabric I'm worried about. It's the latte batik, also one in the 1895 line, and I had started out a while back with a whole bolt of that one. Guess I used more than I had thought. I needed 2" strips for the side borders and 3" strips for the top and bottom borders. Error #1: I attached the 3" strips to the sides so the quilt was then too wide. I noticed when I went to attach the top and bottom borders so I could either have taken the side borders off or trim them down. I trimmed them down so that was a bit of wasted fabric. Then I went to make the flying geese and figured I'd use Eleanor Burns' method because I would get less waste. Error #2: I cut the background squares the size I should have cut the green squares . . another few inches of wasted fabric. I decided to go with the Quilters Cache border. It's definitely the easiest one to piece of the options I came up with and it was about a toss up on which one you all suggested I use so I made it easy on myself. I'm really liking it too but I'll like it all a whole lot better when I know for sure that I have enough background fabric to finish this project. Judy L.