• domesticity,  house-sitting,  sewing catastrophes

    Operation Quilt: Day 2

    strips

    I know you are all sitting on the edges of your seats waiting to hear how it’s going on the quilting front. It’s an exciting raging battle between me and the threads, let me tell you. Today I pretty much just cut. Cutting cutting cutting… It was hard though!

    I love this old fabric

    I hate cutting this fabric up. I feel so much pressure to use it wisely. The patterns are so old. Each piece seems like it holds a story, if only I knew what it was. I bought them in a stack at an estate sale years ago for something like 25 cents a piece. I know they are old flour sacks but I don’t know how old they are. I hope I am doing them right putting them into a quilt. It seems like a better thing to do than keep them away in some dark corner of my closet.

    situating

    So cut away I did, as carefully as I could. I admit I had to take several breaks because some of the flour sacks were wonkey and not square. It’s stressful (for me) to figure out the best way to cut an odd shape to use every scrap possible. Way too much math for my lopsided brain. I even called my mom in a moment of weakness.

    pattern a

    Somehow my mom magically figured out a way to get untangled from whatever she was doing and she came to my rescue! I love my mom. Or maybe she just couldn’t resist all the fun I’m having with this silly quilt. She and my nieces drove down to visit me. Which is great because Bug is bored out of her skull rattling around in this great big house full of toys to play with.

    cubby

    What kind of kid gets bored in a house full of somebody eles’s toys? She is so weird that way. She’s never played with toys much. She has a room full of them and she’d rather bug me. She’s always been that way.

    It’s nice because I never have to pick up much after her but it’s a pain in the butt because sometimes I’d like to do my own thing, like you know, make a quilt or something. So I’m very happy my nieces are here to entertain my favorite little monster. Not that I don’t like Bug’s company or anything. I just need some space once in a while.

    first seams

    Once they were here I finished cutting pretty quickly. I did sew a few pieces together just to see how’d they’d look. I wasn’t sure about the strip width but I think I’m settled on it now. It’s actually turning out to be a lot easier than I thought. I don’t want to jinx myself but I think I can totally do this, especially now that my mom is here. She’s not doing it for me, that would be cheating, but she is helping me out of those crazy second-guessing circles I seem to spin myself into.

  • crazy stuff,  sewing catastrophes

    Operation Quilt: Day 1

    vintage fabric

    I’m not feeling very confident about it but I have decided upon my latest challenge for this last week of house sitting. I will attempt to make a quilt.

    A quilt!

    Lots of artsty fartsy people make quilts. Surely this is something I can do, right? If I can cover a couch and make collage postcards then I should be able to pull this off…in theory. I’m not setting my goal high. I just want to assemble some fabric into something that could be used as a cover on a cold night. Something cozy and homey.

    I’m a little worried. This quilt might turn out to be a total flop because I am not a perfectionist and lining up corners seems way too laborious to be fun. I don’t necessarily want to make a crazy quilt but I admit that might suit my personality better than anything orderly. We’ll see. So far all I’ve done is gather all my vintage fabric together and wash it.

    Lily prefers the warmer tones

    I thought I wanted to add some new fabrics to my collection to spice up the color palette but actually visiting the fabric store with my “intense” (that’s what someone called her the other day) three-year-old turned out to be more daunting than actually sewing. So I’ve decided to just use what I have and mix in off-white muslin. I think it might be pretty.

    a plan?

    I really wish my mom was here to help me but she’s tied up doing other things. Maybe you guys could cheer me on. I can do this, right?