Making lemonade

Have you seen the Bottled Rainbows quilt-along over at Stitched in Color? While I wasn't sure I wanted to commit to a whole quilt in this style, I really love the look of these colorful blocks. And it inspired me to try some ticker tape quilting.

I was in a purple mood, so that's what I went with. It was actually quite fun arranging my scraps into a pleasing grouping! Once I sewed everything down I was really loving how it came out. So much so that I was tempted to make more of these guys. But in the end I decided to stick with the original plan of making a little mug rug. Got everything all sandwiched, quilted, and bound. And then I did a dumb thing. I decided to wash it. What was I thinking? There's no real need to wash a mini quilt, right? But I had some other mug rugs to clean and some new fabric I wanted to wash. So I threw it in. And it brought out a flaw in my stitching. Eek!

What would you have done at this point? Take it apart? Applique right through to the backing? Try to hand stitch it back on? Throw it away in disgust? I considered all these things. And in the end I had a happy thought: my sewing labels are just about the size of the little rectangle that got messed up... and they're purple! So I pulled out the offending scrap and ironed on the label. I do miss the extra pop of turquoise in that corner, but overall I think it was a good and simple fix for me. And next time I'll be more careful with my zigzags!