Because I don’t have enough things to craft and because I don’t have enough stash, I’ve added quilting/sewing to my multi-craftual existence. I’ve wanted to get comfortable with sewing for a very long time. I don’t particularly want to sew clothes, but I would like to be able to make a project bag for my knitting or perhaps a quilt.  A quilt, you say? Well, don’t mind if I do.

I had a great time picking out fabric:

I hauled my sewing machine and the fabric up to a friend’s house, Meli, who kindly and patiently got me started. It wasn’t as bad as I remembered.

We cut some small squares, but I just wasn’t happy with the little squares. I wanted something bigger that would be a lot easier to piece together and make me do less sewing show off the patterns of the fabric I chose. We cut bigger squares and things started coming together for me. Meli talked me through sewing together one row of squares and I took the rest home to finish up.

Can I stop here for a minute to ask why in the hell do I type “guilt” first and then have to backspace and retype “quilt”?  Every. Single. Time?

I added some of the border and then the sewing machine stopped working. I had a flashback to the time in my life when I first learned to sew, taught by a dear friend that I am, sadly, no longer in contact with. I used a an old Viking machine (given to me by my MIL) that would only work for someone who wasn’t me. Whenever I sat down at the thing, the thread would suddenly break or gob up under the fabric. She would sit down at it, adjust nothing and the thing worked perfectly. I left it behind when I moved into my new house. I ventured up to Meli’s house again and she put the rest of the border on for me.

The current sewing machine had only been used a few times in the last 10 or less years so I figured that servicing probably wasn’t needed but a bit of a cleaning might be. A few helpful youtube videos later and the thing was working again. As an aside, the laptop monitor and phone also started to work properly but the dishwasher stopped working. Do our appliances get together and coordinate these things? Is it a predictable rotation? When the dishwasher starts to work again, what is next on the Broken List?

Meli had loaned me a seam guide but I gave it back to her when I went up to her house. I’ve ordered a seam guide and when it arrives I’ll start the back of the quilt.  Meanwhile, I’ve put the small squares we cut earlier (along with the small squares that came in a Halloween charm pack that Meli gave me – squee) into the shape of a table runner and I’ll zip those through the machine as well. Meli may have created a monster, I’m thinking of getting a zipper foot for the machine (I’m sure it came with one, but the accessories are all long gone, probably lost in the move) so I can fix a favorite makeup bag of mine.

It was fun doing a little sewing again and the meager skills I’d acquired (and then abandoned) 20+ years ago came back.  I assume with practice I’ll get better. I don’t know that I could say I’ve really enjoyed it, but I do feel a bit of satisfaction with my progress. I may or may not have purchased more fabric because, you know, one can never have too much stash.