Tidbit Tuesday #16

Hello and welcome back to Tidbit Tuesday!! :D

The common saying is that we all learn from our own mistakes. Well, this time I want all of you to learn from my mistakes, not your own. 

One thing that you don't always see in blog land are the mistakes that we make. Mostly because we don't like to admit that we made a mistake. I don't necessarily like to admit it either, but one of the reasons I blog, is to teach. If I never show you the mistakes I make, how can you learn from them?  :)

Today's tidbit is thanks to a dear friend, Tracey, over at TraceyJay Quilts. I love this girl. She cracks me up and she has the cutest little man and on top of that, I swear we have the same exact taste in fabrics and quilting! She's like a bloggy sister. :) 

Tracey started the "Putting the Bee in Christmas" bee and this was her month. She chose two blocks and one was a cartwheel block. This block has lots of curves to sew.

Why is this the focus of Tidbit Tuesday? Pins. Pins? Yep. Pins. 

I don't pin. Ever. Well, not never, but I can count on one hand the amount of projects where I've used pins, not including pin basting quilts to quilt them. I just don't like them. It takes too much time and they poke you and that hurts. Pins are not my friends....

....until....

This happened...

Do you see that mess in the upper right corner? Ack!!! I ripped and sewed that same darn seam three times, on two different corners of the block. I was ready to email Tracey and say I quit. LOL! 

Of course I couldn't do that and I never would. So, I ripped it once more. Eyed my pins. Grumbled. Gave my pins a lecture about not poking me and started again. This is what it looked like...

No, they are not perfectly spaced but they did the job. Do you see the ends? They meet up! I nearly stood up and jumped up and down, and even better, my lecture worked. No pokes! :D 

I was still nervous though, because I still had to sew it down. So I complimented my sewing machine so she'd play nice, I lectured my pins once more to keep their ends to themselves and trucked along.....to get this!

**That top corner looks crooked. I think it's the angle that I took the photo because it wasn't crooked**

Can you believe that pins could make that much of a difference?! Ok, for those that actually use pins, I know you're shaking your heads yes and probably saying "I told you so!"...but for me, I had no idea they could be so useful. Especially with curves! 

So, the morale of the story is, use pins, especially with curves, unless you have this handy dandy little tool that I need to order. Head on over to THIS post and see how Julie at Jaybird Quilts puts this amazing little foot to use! She's quite the movie star too. ;)

Oh, by the way...this is how the block turned out....

Until next time...

Much Love!!!