I wish I was.... crafty.

I try. Really hard. I have all these great ideas, but then, when I try to create those ideas in real life, I tend to come up short. Sometimes my "vision" morphs into something that I can be proud of even if it doesn't look like what's in my head. When that happens, I just forget my idea and pretend like what I actually made is exactly what I intended. Like that wreath that I posted about last week. I didn't mean for it to look like that, but that's how it came out. It works because I like it, but it isn't quite what I had in mind. I'm dealing with it.

In other crafting news, I started another adventure because I wanted a "thing" to be mine. You know, a "thing" that I do for occassions. My mom's thing (is pretty much anything, she can do it all) is making bows. Give her a little ribbon and she can pack a wrapped gift look like a million bucks on top of a box. She also makes jewelry like nobody's business. And meals. And weddings. She can do it all. She may not vacuum in a dress, but she's the ideal mom. Seriously. Okay, now that I've gotten all gushy, back to my "thing." It's baby season. As in, the season in my life when my contemporaries have babies. I've got baby gifts coming out of my ears. Store bought baby gifts. Granted, I had a lot of fun picking out those gifts and some of them are absolutely-stinking adorable, but they are store bought. The kids will grow out of them within three months and then the not-exactly perfect onesie that I fell in love with as soon as I saw it, will go in a drawer or a box to be used on the next baby. I want to be able to give a gift that means more. So I decided that my "thing" would be baby quilts. Do I sew? Eh, so-so. (See what I did there? Pretty cute, huh.) I took Home Ec in high school which gave me a refresher course after learning the basics from Mom and Mamaw. Since then, I've puttered.

Oh, that needs a quick hem? I can do that.

Need a button? Hand it over.

Make a blanket out of nothing but cotton fabric? Never.

Well, I guess that saying is true. Never say never.

For my birthday this year, Matt gave me a few start up quilting supplies and got me set up to take quilting lessons from a friend's mom. He even got a friend to go to those lessons with me so we could be crafty together. The problem? The DIY gene skipped a generation. I have no natural talent. None. So, I'm forcing it. Kind of like how I forced basketball all those years ago. Kind of how I force public speaking. I'm forcing myself to be crafty. Thanks to Pinterest and my imagination, I've got all sorts of ideas. So, armed with my ideas, a mission (to have a "thing," come on, keep up), a sewing machine, and a Margaret, I started the quilting lessons.

Proof:

Here are my pre-first lesson materials.

At the first lesson, we learned how to make squares. Think this is easy? Think again. I have two degrees, including a friggin' doctorate, and still had trouble.




Notice that this white-looking-but-actually-cream-colored-fabric wasn't in my pre-first lesson picture. I decided I didn't like that other brown and used some scraps. I like how it turned out, but may not even use these green and cream squares. Or since the quilt that I'm attempting is dark brown and mint green (like mint chocolate chip ice cream), maybe I should call them green and creme squares.


There. that's the piled up beginnings of my quilt. 36 big squares of 144 little squares to be sewn into to 9 squares to make one rectangle. I can never remember - is it true that a square may be a rectangle but a rectangle may not be a square? Or is it the other way around? Maybe that's one of the reasons that this whole craftiness thing doesn't always work out for me - I'm not the best at math.

Oh well, I'll keep you updated with my forced crafting. Perhaps, like how forcing a smile can cause you to smile maybe forcing craftiness can cause me to be crafty. Only time will tell.