My mother is quite the seamstress. She sews quite a few of her own clothes, and when my brother and I were young I believe she sewed all of our clothes. She has been on a quilting spree for many years now, rendering bits of fabric into beautiful quilts of all shapes and sizes.
I have wanted to learn to make quilts for many years now. I like the idea of sewing. Unfortunately if I sew anything by hand, I need a blood transfusion soon after. If I try sewing anything with a machine, the most unusual results come about.
In 7th grade I took an Home Economics class.(I wanted to take wood shop, but girls were required in those days to take Home Ec.) In this class, we were required to make, among other things, a shirt. The pattern for the shirt was (as I was told) a simple, straight forward pattern. I carefully followed all the directions as I understood them, cutting, putting together and sewing it all together. When it was complete, it had three arms. I have NO idea what I did wrong. The teacher had no idea what I did wrong. My mom had no idea what I did wrong. Fortunately my cooking skills kept me from having a failing grade in the class.
To this day I approach a sewing machine with trepidation. What will be the end result of the fabric I hold in my hands?
I have since then successfully made two quilt-type blankets. One for a new baby of some friends, and one I designed myself for my niece. I am particularly proud of the one for my niece, despite the mistakes I made on it. It was a screaming pink lap quilt with yellow check boardering it. Centered was a Tweety bird on one side. Tweety's features were painted on with fabric paint and that is where the mistakes came in. For future reference, I will never again wear grossly oversized shirts while applying fabric paints.
On the bright side, Hunkka-hunkka Hubby's drab gray oversized sweatshirt now has some beautiful red, blue, white and black splashes on it!