Sewing

Okay, so if you know me, you know that my sewing skills extend pretty much to banging on the sewing machine and weeping uncontrollably (especially when the bobbin runs out, oh my).

Nevertheless, last Black Friday (why, yes, that was quite a while ago), I found myself in the aisles of JoAnn Fabrics. They're a little bewitching, those aisles. You start believing that, sure, little ol' you can do a little ol' sewing project. And, ooooh, look at that, it's so pretty.

I was in JoAnn's to pick up fabric for a church service project. I also ended up with several yards of extra fabric. I decided I wanted to make these tablecloths featuring maps of the U.S. and the world. Also, I had Elizabeth with me. She decided she wanted to make herself a pillow case, and maybe some for gifts too. Oh, and she wanted to make herself a dress. I told her that might be a little beyond my skill set, but she assured me that she would do the designing. How reassuring. Anyway, we left with several different types of cat-themed fabrics and one very bright rainbow striped one. These, Elizabeth planned to piece together into her dress.

That December we made the pillow cases, which I was pretty much crazy proud of in that they were a) rectangular and b) fit pillows. By my book, that's a win. Elizabeth thought so too.

That January I got on with my map tablecloths. I ended up sewing them onto existing a few of our old fabric tablecloths as the maps weren't really big enough to stand on their own. What I got was pretty mediocre, but definitely usable.

Unfortunately, while ironing one of them on my floor (because we all know that ironing makes things we've sewn crookedly no longer crooked, right?), I also did this:

The iron fell onto our carpet for less than 10 seconds--I grabbed it immediately. But it was long enough to melt this lovely decoration into our bedroom carpet. Which now needs to be replaced. Okay, really it always needed to be replaced because, in case you didn't notice, it's ugly. Although we haven't replaced the carpet yet, I can't help but realizing that--had our carpet been pretty--my $6 project would have cost us a good $300. That spot still bothers me every time I look at it.

And so I wasn't exactly eager to continue with my life as the worst seamstress in the world. But this summer, Elizabeth started pestering me about her dress. She drew me a design, which I will post later when the dress is finished. The point is that with the extra fabric and some elastic that I actually owned, I made these little cat skirts (yes, the bottoms still need to be hemmed; we'll see if I get to that):

They were cute. I was proud. And the bobbin didn't even run out (bless it).