No Pins, No Pattern and No Clue: Dorisa Makes a Quilt

Well, that is a bit of a lie. One: I did use pins at the end to finish up the edges and two: after years of deliberation I realized I didn't need or want another quilt and didn't want to learn how to quilt, so I will I will now call it my patchwork mess.

Let me paint you a picture: It’s spring 2012. The trees are budding, there’s a warm breeze in the air and I’m feeling ambitious. I think to myself; time to start making my camp quilt. I cut up my t-shirts and make a rough pattern on some graph paper that I’m not at all happy with. My ambition was then thwarted by a parasite that made me too sick to function as a human person for nine months and a move to the last frontier. (If you judge me for calling my beautiful baby a parasite you have either never had a baby or your pregnancy was fun and easy. Good for you.)

Two years later, we are about to move again and I conclude that making the blanket will cut down on the volume of stuff we need to move. This is true, but I still didn't know what I was doing so I just went for it. Luckily it all worked out. It even made a rectangle and everything!

Tying the ties on my patchwork mess was one of the most frustrating things I have ever done. After getting all the pieces sewn together I thought this would be the fun and relaxing bit. I was wrong and more wrong. Struggling to pull the needle through with the yarn on the end, I watched a tutorial online hoping to learn a thing or two. I was doing it correctly; I think those old broads are just stronger than I am. This made me sad. Tools! I thought. I need tools! I got a pliers to help me out. Did not work. Went to the store to get a variety of sewing needles and more sewing machine needles (I had already broken two). I opened the cheaper standard set of needles and picked the one with the biggest eye. I got the yarn through the eye with ease so I got foolishly optimistic. Stuck it through the blanket. Couldn't get it through. Got the pliers again. Definitely… well I don’t know exactly how to describe the myriad of events that followed but this is what happened to the needle:

Hint: It is supposed to be straight.

I ended up using what can only be referred to as civil war surgery needles and wearing nitrile coated work gloves (generously donated to me by my former employer) to pull the yarn through. Traditional? No. Effective? Extremely. 

Dan often calls me sneaky domestic. Mostly, I'm resourceful and stubborn. 

I learned an important lesson about my sewing machine. Needle size matters. I broke 4 needles during this project. Pretty sure someone who knows something about sewing machines would have figured this out. But, now I know, and luckily when a needle breaks, all it does is make a big noise. This is followed by a cacophony of verbal abuse. Still haven't figured out where that came from, but it happens every time a needle breaks. Weird.