Dear God what have I gotten myself into: a story in pictures

It all started with a note from the daycare. A note that said, in essence, Many of the children are asking for pillows at naptime. If your child doesn't have one, can you please send one along?

It's one of those times when I am convinced that there is a secret, perfect store for all things child-related where lovely toddler pillows are sold. Because I could not find one ANYWHERE. Because Dear Heavens, a pillow for your child? You may as well feed them arsenic, pillows are DANGEROUS!!

And no, I couldn't send a regular size one, because the kids have these little cots. So I hunted and hunted and finally found, at some horrible big box store, a rectangular throw pillow that would work. But it had a white cover, With threads that would catch on everything. And it wasn't machine washable. So clearly not exactly daycare friendly.

So my only problem was a case.

There's a cloth shop -- mainly for quilting -- about six blocks from work. Two doors down from my favourite yarn store, to tell the truth, which is why I knew it was there. So I popped in -- it was convenient, and I could find some nice stuff there, end of the roll, to make a pillow case. And lo: here it is.

With the pillow:

And look, it even fits:

I brought all the stuff home and measured and cut and sweated and thought ... there is no way I am sewing this by hand. So out of the closet came ....

If this looks like a picture from another era, you wouldn't be far off. My mother gave me this a few years back, and it's been sitting gathering dust for some time. I've been too chicken to use it. I mean, come on ... it looks a tad intimidating. It is a tiny little thing, made for quilting bees, apparently, as it has a wee transporting case. Inherited from some relation or another, I don't know who. But it came with an equally ancient instruction book, so I loaded up a bobbin, threaded it through and ... insta pillow case. I was ... and am! ... terribly proud of myself.

Not so much for the pillow case, which after all is just two rectangles. But getting that machine to work was quite a feat. But work it does, and like a treat. Backwards, forwards, excellent tension, no thread breaking ... just excellent. I hope I work that well when I'm over 80.

It was in fact such a lovely experience to be sewing again ... despite the fact that my mother didn't teach me to knit when I was a child, she did teach me to sew, and I did it a fair amount. Clothes for me, on occasion, but mostly clothes for my Cabbage Patch Kids. I was only eight or nine.

And the experience was so nice I got to thinking. About sewing. And about all the nice things that there were in that cloth shop. And how much I like quilts. And how I've never done that before. And how bored I was with knitting. And how I'm sure there was some kind of small kit that I could learn from ... just something small .... to give me a taste of what quilting was like ....

And of course there was. I went back the next day and I bought the smallest kit I could find ... why not, after all, when I'm not even sure I will like it or be any good at it. And since I was up at 6 this morning, I got started, and before 10am I had:

Strips, laid out for sewing. And at this point I'm thinking ... GOOD LORD, WHAT HAVE I DONE??!

There was much aggravation. Much recutting, much frustration, much reading and re-reading and re-re-reading the pattern ... in the end I finally figured out that I had no idea what a 1/4 inch actually looked like, which was the seam allowance, and doing it half the size really does throw things off.

And by the end of the day I had:

Finished pincushion. A little less polished than I would have liked, but not bad for my first ever effort at quilting, and my first sewing project in 25 years. (GOD, I am SO OLD.) I'm really rather proud of it.

And then I got really inspired, and made for the child:

An assortment of beanbags. Just for fun. Leftover pillow case material.

Now I'm going to make another pillow case for the boy, so the starry one can be washed regularly, and probably some more beanbags from the other leftover material, and then ... well, you never can tell, right ... ?