So far in doing A&S in the last year, I have learned that I cannot, even with a ruler, cut a straight line. (Thank you bookbinding for teaching me that.) Today, I learned that even with measuring 18 thousand times and remeasuring, and calculating and then measuring again, I still can’t get it right.

This is the current state of the fan. (Yes, so far behind I’m first in my own race, but we’ll ignore that minor detail for the moment.) The right hand side is a print out of my inspiration fake, I mean fan, that I’m aiming to follow along with. The left hand side is my stitched outer border and the start of the inner border, the ones surrounding the eyelets in the picture. Notice something? Say like the fact that I’m a good half inch off? Say like I’m far closer to those being inner borders than outer borders? What? And I’ve already pulled thread guides so I can’t just /declare/ them to be inner borders?

Insult to injury, I got it right on the sides, just not top and bottom.

So the question became, as I put the project in a momentary time out of indecision. Am I utterly devoted to making an exact textile replica of a non textile item? Or am I looking at this and going ‘ah ha! I am going to make lace in the style that this was trying to fake.’

I think I’m pretty comfortable aiming for the later. I CAN’T make an exact replica, textiles and non textiles don’t work the same. So mine will be longer and narrower than the original. Alright then. The only real change is that the middle section won’t be quite as wide. That’s fine, I haven’t decided what’s going there yet anyhow.