From my eyes…

My best girl friends bought me a sewing machine for my birthday. My parents visited on Easter and my mom helped me figure out how to thread it and get started. My first project was curtains that I’d promised my roommate for her birthday. We picked out some fabric and I stiched it up into a valance for the slider where she plans to put up vertical blinds soon. And a small curtain for the window in front of the kitchen sink. Here are the pics. I promise my upcoming project won’t have so many, but I was excited that I did this all on my own and made up the pattern and everything (not that it’s all that hard).

This is the valence

 And close up

And the curtain

And the curtain with the velcro tie I made for it. Doesn’t quite hang like I wanted, but it will do. As soon as I find my glue gun, I am hot gluing a wine bottle cork to the tab on the tie

This morning was fantastic. I was able to pick up my t-shirt quilt that Karel had finished for me earlier in the week. I was so excited to see what she had done. It was far more than I could have even imagined….and she had already told me what she was planning on doing….I just had no idea how amazing it would turn out.

You can’t see it (the pictures just don’t do it justice), but each shirt has a different type of quilting over it. Some a diffrent types of swirling (which I’m sure have a special name, but I have no idea what it is), some have squares, some diamonds, some Xs, some, like the Paris map and picture of Aaron are traced in the lines in the original picture. It is just amazing. It makes for a fabulous back, too.

When I flipped it over to see how the back turned out, there was the most special little patch that I had no idea was going to be there. Karel had created this special for me. Of course I immediately started crying (so did my mom…and my dad when I showed him later). It just made it that much more special.

                        
Oh, I love it. I can’t thank Karel enough for her time, energy, fabric, skill, and kindness in doing this with (for) me.

On Friday and Saturday I spent time with AZ Quilt Queen, Karel making some progress with the pieces we’d created a few weeks back. 

I have to admit, I thought the big talent part in quilting came in picking out the fabric that would look beautiful when sewn together. I couldn’t have been more wrong. The quilting process is very grueling. It take hours to make one quilt. It is probably the hardest (maybe second hardest next to knitting) craft I’ve ever attempted. Thank goodness I had a pro to watch at each step. Every time I thought we were close to done, Karel would tell me like 50 more little details that needed to be included. I just had NO IDEA was involved. I literally though it was pick the fabirc, cut the squares, sew them together, add some batting and sew to big piece of fabric as the back. Did you know that isn’t even quilting? I learned that the part that makes it “quilting” is when you go over the whole thing and sew the three layers together. Karel wants to had a fancy edge to mine, too. I said that wasn’t necessary, but I am going to LOVE it and she said it wasn’t worth all the hard work if we (and by we I mean she) didn’t finish it right. The steps I listed above are the most general basics. Your measurements have to be exact. You have to iron the whole thing, sometimes more than once, there’s a pinning process involved (which is what we did on Saturday morning), and well, the steps I did know about were just way more intense than I’d thought. I mean I KNEW people who quilt worked hard on them, I just didn’t realize the degree.

What I learned from working with Karel on my quilt:

Quilting is HARD.
I’m a moron for thinking I knew anything about the process.
All the little details & lots of sewing jargon.
How to use a sewing machine.
How to recognize a bad quilt.

Here are some pictures to this point. I realize it is not the most stunning quilt ever, but I LOVE it and that is what’s important. It is totally ALL me. Karel is finishing up the quilting part and adding the fancy edge (which will be in the apple fabric). I had so much fun doing this! I can’t wait to have the finished product.

Last weekend I attended a great afternoon shin-dig at Kelli’s house. She had gathered some gals to learn to knit. My shoulder (see below) was hurting, so I just watched. But, I did get inspired. I found some great fabric and learned what I was doing by watching others. The next day, I picked up some knitting needles and got started on making myself a new scarf for my first winter in IL. I got this far before my arm was hurting too bad. I will work on it in a week or so when I am sure that I’m all better.

This weekend I am going to Kelli’s mom’s (Super Quilt Queen Karel) house to get some help putting my old t-shirts (that I’ve been lugging around in a plastic tub for 3 years) into a quilt. I had to go buy some fabric for it and while I was there I found this adorable fleece dying to be made into a quilt for my friend’s new baby.

I am excited to have found this new fun hobby! Thanks Kel, for introducing it all to me