Make Me a Quilt

I have to be honest.  Scrapbookers and quilters have always intimidated me.  No rhyme or reason to it , really, but here are a couple of thoughts.  I have tried my hand at the scrapbooking thing, in a, I-want-to-make-a-cool-birthday-card kind of way but stopped shortly thereafter.  Scrapbook stores are also really awesome and they intrigued me.  When I walk into one, I am so joyously overwhelmed by all the beautiful colors calling my name (and saying, "Pick me!") and pulling me in all sorts of directions that I think for a split second that I should turn my whole apartment into a handmade invitation-crafting factory.  Scrapbooking to me is an all-or-nothing hobby.  It's totally wonderful and gorgeous; it's the interior decorating of photo albums, but I just can't handle it.  I've always thought that about quilting as well, you know, all those crazies out there collecting fabric scraps like fiends until they have just what they're looking for, yada yada yada. 

Here's the thing.  I love love love making jewelry and have been making it for years.  Lately though, I've been trying out several new things in order to find a new niche in the realm of super cool and exciting projects to overtake my crafternoons besides jewelry making.  I took a pottery class last fall, and while that was fun, it wasn't for me.  I'm better for taking the class and I appreciate flawless pottery now more than ever, but molding earthenware in an attempt to make it as thin as bone china doesn't really work (for me, at least).  I wanted to make utility items, not chotchkies that would take up room in my cluttered apartment, so I made a lot of dessert plate sets, most of which I gave away as Christmas gifts.  That was the end of my pottery stint.

The four cream plates in the middle are the ones I made for my friend J. for Christmas (and I made the napkins too).  As a side note, I'm pretty sure I sold her that table for $4 at a yard sale...Back to the plates, I think this is the only picture of the pottery that I made this past fall (photo taken by my friend J.):

Back to quilters.  I got The Brother for Christmas and started some really simple sewing.  The napkins above were my first sewing project besides trying out every single stitch that my machine could wow me with on fabric scraps.  I work with a lady who loves quilting and we're always chatting about fabric and local fabric stores.  I've also been finding some awesome bloggers out there who are whipping out quilts faster than McDonald's can get Big Macs out the door; it's totally amazing to me.  I feel like I could never do something that wonderful, but these blogs are scaring me into thinking things like, "I could probably do that," and the infamously naive (and sometimes rhetorical), "How hard could it be?"  So thank you to Film in the Fridge for some great inspiration:  the Kaleidoscope quilt. I think it's gorgeous, fun, super cool, and there's something about it that screams heirloom.  Like if I made one of those, my great-granddaughter would have it hanging on a wall one day and saying that I was born before the millennium (or maybe it would be collecting mold in a trunk in the far corner of the attic).  Scary.  Anyways.  I want to make one now.  As a side note, I'm starting a knitting class next week; I am excited about trying it out.  I will report how the endeavor fares.  Happy Thursday!