This month, it's quilts.

Yep, it's true. Crochet has been put on hold for a while as I indulge my love of fabrics. I've always looked at quilts and thought, "Wow I'd love to make one of those...but it looks hard!" I guess that's because I hate measuring and calculating and blah blah blah. I'm not so fantastic at maths but I go all right, it's just that for some reason I seem to screw things up when I'm trying to be precise. You know that saying, "Measure twice, cut once" (shut up, it IS so a saying!) well in my case it's more like, "Measure thrice, cut once, measure again then swear like a sailor since you're just that little bit under as to make a total hash of it". Ok that saying will never catch on but eh, that's what happens around here.

Anyways, it all started with the quilt that I gave my mother for Christmas:




I'd cut up the squares for myself originally, with the intention of making a queen-size quilt for my bed. Ambitious for a beginner, I know, which is why it landed itself in the "unfinished objects" pile after I sewed together about 20 squares. There it stayed for the best part of a year. Then with Christmas approaching I thought, "Hey that'd make a nice little lap quilt! I'd just have to back it with something..." and not long after I saw a polar fleece throw at Ikea for about $6. So I bought one, sewed it onto the squares with some shiny metallic thread, and before I knew it - I was in love with this little guy! Of course, from that love was born a new crafting obsession.

So my brother-in-law's girlfriend got one for Christmas too. As did my son, his was different - my first attempt at a proper 3-layer quilt with wadding. He chose colours, I just put it together:




I went with a simple pattern for ease, yet somehow I managed to screw it up too. The squares aren't all perfectly square, I blame my hand-cut fabric for this. I have now invested in a rotary cutter, a few quilts too late I think, but my "slicie" as I've been calling him, is my new friend. He helped me create this quilt for my best bud's birthday:



I really like this one! Originally, I didn't like it so much. There was none of the black sashing and all those fabrics together just looked way too busy. So in the fashion of pretty much everything I make, I had to change something at the last moment to rescue it from the brink of ugliness. I think I achieved that goal.

Very little of what I make ends up like I originally planned. I think in this way, my crafting has helped me to adapt better, and go with the flow. I'm usually an all-or-nothing kind of person, where it has to be a certain way or I want no part of it. Control freak, I hear you say? I'm not so much of a control freak, as someone who has a vision and can't rest until it's realised. But making something with my own hands...I guess it shows me that even when something is in my control it still doesn't always go how I expected. A very good lesson that translates into life.