Throwing in the towel = to signal that one is going to quit; to quit. Fig. (From boxing, where this is done by a boxer's trainer to stop the fight.)(McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs., 2002)
Waving the white flag = to give up; weaken;yield. (Random House Dictionary, 2013)
Are you sensing a theme? I'm admitting defeat.
I fought the log cabin quilt and the quilt won (for now).
Over the last two weeks I spent many hours marking, basting, and quilting 8 of the 25 four-block log cabin units. Then I sewed some of the blocks together...and my painstakingly quilted diagonal lines would not match up from block to block. (Cue a middle aged lady wringing her hands and sobbing).
I decided to un-quilt all the quilting I've done so far. That's taking me longer than it took to do the quilting!
This quilt is too important to me to not be just right. My sister is my oldest friend (since birth, of course!). She's had a tough couple years health-wise and this quilt needs to be special.
So, after much wailing, I did the only thing I can do right now: I owned up to my limitations. I cannot finish this quilt by her early October birthday given the amount of free time I have between now and then. I know that Anne will love this quilt whether it's a present this October, or for Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentine's Day, or next year on her birthday. So I gave myself permission to put it aside for now, to continue to un-quilt it, to re-baste it, and to hand quilt it; taking as much time as I need to get it just right.
Sometimes you just need to acknowledge that it's time to give up.
Oh dear, that is such a shame! You sound so frustrated. I need to go back and read your posts to see what sort of issues you are having with your log cabin blocks. Are they coming out different sizes? I have the best success with that block when I pre cut the strips to the exact size needed, rather than stitching on long strips and trimming them down.
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