oh no i didn't

i should not be left unattended for longer than 2 hours. on wednesday nights jesse doesn't come home until 9 because of youth group so after judah bug does down at around 6:30 i have nothing to do. sure i can catch up on my tivo, watching last night's biggest loser and so you think you can dance episodes, but i am working on TV not being my go-to thing. i much prefer it as background entertainment rather than the black hole of all my attention.

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i don't even know what got me started down this road but that night i decided to take a step up in the sewing food chain from burp cloths...which i have made 2 more of since i last showed you and which were awesome. i am about ready to declare mastery over sewing two squares of fabric together without it managing to look like something our cat vomited up. so are you ready for this?

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i decided to start quilting. oh yes i did *3 snaps in a z-formation!*

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i think whatever perkiness was left in my boobs just gave up the ghost, saying, "why bother? she clearly wants to be 73." but seriously, i never really had "quilter" on my list of aspirations for my life as a 27 year old. but it's not super hard and i have a sewing machine and i like making stuff and it's not TV. so if you think it's lame, suck it. i think there are so many connotations of old lady that go along with the word quilting that i need to make up a new word that captures my cutting edge (pun), youthful, devil may care way of taking on this hobby. we'll go with "patchblasting."

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ok, um no we won't because that is, A: totally lame and i would never make up something lame, and B: for some reason conjures up images of my post-partum perineal stitches being blown out by an aggressive BM*. yikes. sorry for writing that. it never happened and it wasn't even a patch, but that's what i think of. thanks for stopping by during your lunch hour!

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*jesse just informed me that this was too far for even him to read without being sicked out and that he is the one person who it maybe wouldn't disgust and it still very much did. so my sincerest apologies if this has gone too deep into the realm of shocking. as always, i am just being honest. sheesh. censored by my own lifemate.
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so i watched a few videos of blessedly charming little women in missouri teaching quilting, did some research and ordered a few very basic tools from ebay that i would need and i bought them used so that if i give up i won't waste a ton of money. i decided my first project would be judah's christmas stocking. jesse and i have matching monogrammed ones but they don't sell them anymore and anyway jesse's and judah's would both be red with a J and then i would be all green and K and it would look dumb.

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so i am gonna make christmas quilted stockings for him and all subsequent kids. this may be the one instance of the future kids getting nicer stuff than the first one since i am bound do crappy on this one. i am being ambitious thinking that this will be done and hanging on christmas. perhaps a valentine's stocking would have been better. oh well, he'll be 7 months old, i doubt he'll be too hurt. we'll staple some candy to the scraps of fabric and hang them over the mantle to be sure he's included.

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before my real official patchblasting tools arrive (which are really important and necessary for keeping things measured and therefore all square and even) i wanted to try some basic stuff i had learned in the videos with some old scraps i have just to get the feel of making blocks and doing seams and junk. this is my first attempt:

it's a pincushion and it's stuffed with cotton balls. its horrible and i adore it. if you make fun of it we aren't friends anymore

ok, in quilting you are supposed to make sure everything lines up just right and all that. but i was hand-cutting all my strips and making edges only a drunken badger could follow rather than the straight lines that my nerd-tools will produce when they arrive. so clearly that was lacking and that's why the grey stripe isn't in line. the skill was there, i was just working with shoddy materials. uh-huh, definitely.

. can you feel the reverence with which i am holding my second-born labor of love? this took a good hour and a half.

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another surprisingly important part of quilting is ironing. you have to iron every little piece you sew at each step so that the seams lay down and set correctly. however, like a true resident of our household, our iron is completely cracked out. when you first turn it on it is perfect and lays down the crisp clean folds of a new jersey laundress. however the longer you leave it on the less hot it gets. i don't know if all "shark" brand irons suck, but ours does. it never fully stops doing its job and goes cold, but by the end of the night i had an iron that was plugged in, turned on, and on max that i was rubbing all over myself because i was a bit chilly. it was quite cozy. great, i have a $40 skin-warmer in my laundry room. circulation issues? swing by and we'll take the shark for a joyride all over your epidermis.

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shewing (get it?) off my equipment. yup, i am hardcore. and yes, those are precious little stickers decorating the sewing machine that her previous owner adorned her with.

wish me luck. and if you never hear about this little endeavor again, don't bring it up because i have quit and am embarassed and am using my rotary fabric cutter to make quesadillas.