Mola Quilt - Progress and Perfectionism

The challenge when piecing the mola quilt was to get all the panels to fit together in an aesthetically pleasing manner despite the variation in panel size and shape. To ensure that none of the design was lost during the sewing process, each panel required custom trimming to the 1/8 inch. Therefore, none of the panels were of a standard size that would easily fit together as a whole.

To build this quilt, I concentrated first on the center panels that were of the most importance to the customer and worked out from there, adjusting as necessary as I went along. As there was no trimming area on the long, skinny rectangular panel, I used it as the starting point and pieced around it.

Initially I chose to err on the side of caution and allowed myself plenty of room for adjustment by opting for sashing that I knew was wider than necessary. I certainly didn’t want to get to other portions of the quilt and find out that I’d have to cut into part of a panel’s design to make it fit into place! After the upper right was pieced, however, it became clear that the first section needed to be tightened up. So I set about un-sewing and moved things up by about an inch.

No, I’m not kidding. I really did un-sew just to tighten things up that tiny bit. But compare the before and after and you’ll see that it was the right thing to do!