Help!

I like the idea of undoing work about as much as I like the idea of licking a sweaty bear's armpit. It's right up on my to do list with pulling my eyelashes out. Perhaps this is the reason I got so good at improvisation, at being able to 'fix' craft errors and change designs to produce as good an outcome as if I had followed the original plan. There are however some points in a crafter's day that defeat must be acknowledged and the only thing to do is undo.

This happened to me recently with a cross-stitch project I've been working on for nearly 18 months. I haven't actually been making my own version of the Bayeaux tapestry it's just I pick up and put down projects at the same velocity a child on lucky charms does laps of a garden. 

I thought I had found a fix to a border problem. A miscalculation left a 3 space gap where there should only be a 1 space gap. 'Not to fear', I thought, I will just put another pattern across the middle complimenting the design. I picked a nice flowery design and set to. At least an hour later, two colours and back stitch I proudly displayed my work to the craft critic in my house to have the rose tinted glasses removed. It did indeed look crap. The pattern was fine but having it go through the middle cut the should-be-complimenting words in half effectively divorcing them. Less than ideal!

Another, very stressful, very blue, hour later, this is what I had to show for my salvation attempt.

I was not a happy person and an even less easy person to live with. You can't even use these threads for anything else!

I've still to discover how I'm going to fix my 3-space-should-be-1-space problem (undoing the entire border really isn't an option) so if you have any advice I would be extremely grateful. If not, chances are the project will go away for another indescriminate period of time until I can think of another approach.

Did I also mention that I now have a green line across my work that needs sorting too?