My quilting disability.. or is it?

Down Under Quilts magazine arrived today and I was amused to read Erica's 'confession' as to her directional weakness. I can understand this as my husband has absolutely no sense of direction. There is one road junction we travel on which is signed both Bristol and Birmingham... which happen to be in totally opposite directions. Every time we approach it and no matter how many times I explain that you take that road which later splits into two, one for each city, I can still feel the palpable fear radiating from him as we approach it at 70mph and he has to make a quick decision. We have solved that by ensuring that I am always at the wheel at that point. ( The confusion remains palpable though.)

A less easily solved problem is that whilst I have a fantastic sense of direction, navigating around strange cities on a sort of instinctive compass andthe abilty to retain a city map in my head, I do mix up my left and my right. I also reverse numbers if I have to read a sequence out. Like my credit card number over the phone, for example. Or if someone reads numbers to me I might well write them down in a different order. (When I sit as a Judge I drive advocates mad I am sure by asking them to repeat figures just to be sure!)

So whilst I will turn the correct way if I am driving, it is highly probably that if directing another driver I will have 'left' in my mind but actually say 'right'. (My Dad does the same thing but I know by some kind of ESP when he has done it and when he hasn't so I always go the way he intends me to go whether he actually said it or not! Very weird.)

The problem is that this 'disabilty' ( I am told it is related to dislexia although I have no problems with words save that I type 'eth' for 'the' and 'juts' for 'just' all the time) is that it sometimes translates to quilting.

Today I finished the top for this snowball quilt:

I didn't buy the fabric especially for it so having done the center ( pieced by hand on my travels and machine assembled) I measured to see if I had enough left for borders. Yes. Eight strips cut down the length was fine. Trouble is I then mixed up my directions and cut it the otherway. Not the first time. Which left me with seven strip for borders not eight. Grr.

The solution turned out to be utilising tag ends to extend te seventh strip and to create the corner posts ( or 'jewel boxes') as they seem to me. They absolutely make the quilt top. Such a simple thing yet such a difference. As one of the things I wanted to work on this years was more interesting borders this was a good start.

Plus while I was chain piecing them I realised that I could mess about with the blocks half done to create another scrap quilt. Like this:

or perhaps like this:

I do have some tiny bits of the african fabrics left so I might do that at some point when I spot some good backround fabric.

So perhaps less of a disabilty and more of a creative opportunity? At the very least I know that another of the many many things I love about quilting is the problem solving!

PS For those interested the african fabrics are recycled ones from Ragbags and the black fabric is by Timelss Treasures.

PPS I've just noticed - this is my 100th post!