Of Quilts and Beer

Last night as I was working on another project for my sister’s baby shower, which, by the way, is tomorrow, I realized that part of the instructions were, well, not in the tutorial I was using. Thank goodness I know a thing or two about sewing!

The project I’m working on requires handles. The tutorial I’m using shows how to cut the pieces out for the handles but not the actual process used to get them from a semi-raw state to semi-finished product. Instead it simply says “Attach handles over such and such area” and magically shows them completely ready to go. They didn’t look like that before? How do we get from quilt-sandwich to handles? Alas, previous experience needed to come into play. Or the ability to read ahead in the tutorial for another similar but not the same type of handle.

Anyway, so I know what I need to do and begin sewing down lengthwise on the pieces I cut out from my quilt-sandwich (pieced top, batting center, backing, all quilted together before being cut into various sized pieces) with the right sides facing. I then attempted to turn the piece right side out. Let’s just say this is easier said than done. After a half an hour of trying to push through small sections at a time and breaking some chopsticks in the process I resorted to beating the living daylights out of the poor tube. I didn’t say that my previous experience was based off of anything I read out of a book or the internet, but rather a simple deduction of what will be the easiest way to make the damned thing right side out.

So here I am, shoving a little bit of the handle into a small portion that I’ve already gotten right side out and then holding onto the bottom edge of the piece while I whack it against the futon frame over and over again. This took a good thirty minutes. One handle down. Yeah. Instead of starting the next one I go to the kitchen, peruse our beer selection, grab one, open it, take a long swig, and return to my craft room to begin the torture all over again. I swear the beer made the second handle go by much faster, but the clock on the wall said otherwise.

After all was said and done, the handles were completed and attached where they needed to go without too much fuss. Now all I have to do is put the rest of the project together, bake, frost and decorate some cakes, wrap everything that needs wrapping, go to work, come home, finish everything I didn’t get done, go to bed, go to work in the morning, come home and finish whatever I didn’t the night before and pack it all up to go to the baby shower. Exciting. That and all the bruises up and down my right arm and index finger should prove to start some interesting conversations.

“Oh my! Were you in a fight?”

“Only with my latest sewing project. I wouldn’t have gotten through it without the help of beer.”