28. It was not a disaster in the terms of an earthquake and lives lost, but to me it was disaster enough for me to reassess a particular procedure that I do and I am sure, had the situation not been rescued, it would have certainly caused a large amount of emotional upset for my customer. Here is the story....... I received a telephone call from a lovely lady who had been looking at my website and wanted some advice as to whether to choose to have a memory quilt or memory blanket made. We chatted and discussed the differences between the two (for those of you who would like to know too, I have since written a blog post about this, which you can find here) and she went on to choose to have a blanket made for her daughters 1st birthday out of her first year of baby clothes. The clothes arrived and oh, they were so adorable! One of the favourite parts of my job is looking through the baby clothes when they arrive and oohing and aahing over them, before the moment when I have to take the scissors to them! I always feel sad when I come to the cutting stage.
Baby clothes waiting to be transformed
So, the cute little baby clothes were cut into squares and pieced into panels before being assembled into a blanket top, layered and then quilted. Border and label added and then the blanket was completed. And it was so pretty.........
The completed Memory Blanket
Can you spot the Little Royal baby grow from the previous picture? Everything seems to be going very smoothly. I hear you asking 'What was the disaster?' Well, here it is. I happened to make the biggest doozy ever! I beautifully wrapped the blanket in tissue paper, popped it into a postal bag and carefully wrote my customers' name and address on the package.
I love my pretty parcels
I popped it into the post and messaged my customer to say her lovely parcel was on the way, confirming the address it had been posted to. And that's when it happened. I got a message back to say I had made a mistake on the house number ........ I had missed a number off! I can't explain to you how mortified and panicked I was! This was a very precious parcel! Several more emails went back and forth with tracking numbers etc and I contacted the postal service too. My customers husband went to the house the parcel had gone to and found out that they had refused it and sent it back to the post office. Luckily, when my customers' hubby explained to the post office what had happened they were absolutely wonderful and allowed my customer to collect her parcel. Disaster averted. Phew!!! I could breathe again. I can honestly say my customer was absolutely wonderful throughout this and she even sent me this lovely comment.........
"I am so happy with it, (keepsake blanket) it is even better than I had expected, I cried when I opened it. Thank you so much for doing it, you've really made my wish for her birthday present come true. I can't wait to give it to her, even though I'm sure she will care more about the wrapping paper."
So, as you can see, it wasn't a disaster of epic proportions, but to my lovely customer, the loss of her daughters first baby clothes I am sure would have been a huge disaster. And what have I learnt from this. I have set up a new system, where I triple check my addresses before sending out my parcels and I also get my husband to check them too! I am never making a mistake like that again! Until next time ....... Michelle x
