Playing with scraps..

I recently signed up for my very first block swap.  The swaps we were making were scrappy string blocks. We all used the same tutorial from Bonnie Hunter, who is amazing.  The string blocks were paper pieced, another project we jumped at trying.  I love them

 I can't wait till I receive mine in the mail.   The best  part is I get to send 2 of these all the way to Australia.  Now how cool is that. Scrappy String Blocks  are the coolest way to reduce your stash.  If you decide to make some, I would love to see the pictures.

I am not Martha Stewart

  but I want to be!  I would love to be the queen bee of crafting and have tremendous ideas with gorgeous results. I want to have a billion dollar craft business.  What a dream if my real life full time job was to craft all day long? In reality that is not the case. I do more  fails than successes , in-completes vs. completes and have to have a real office job to pay my bills.  For instance, I decided to make a clay impression of my grandson’s hands and feet with salt dough.

 That was an epic fail.  The dough didn't set correctly and the foot prints were recognizable.  It was a waste of salt,flour and time.  The only lesson I learned was maybe this is not the craft for me. Do you have an epic fail?  My list of craft not’s is a lot longer than my list of Yes, I did it’s.  My list includes Mosaics, glass etching, glass painting,  anything involving dough or plaster is not the medium for me.  My completions are a much shorter list to date, how about yours.

The point I am trying to make is that while I am not a Suzy homemaker, I am a crafty queen with ideas that sometimes turn into successes and some days even amaze me.   I ask you to come on the journey and dig deep, create and find your Crafty queen.  

We didn't know!!!

It amazing how you can complete something when you don’t know that you can’t.  For instance, we didn't know how to quilt and we did.  We didn't know that Free Motion quilting was hard and we did it. We didn't know that sashing was supposed to be difficult but we did it.  We didn't know all those things but did them and ended up with a very impressive quilt.  There are still something’s to be done, but I feel it is gorgeous and will be loved by my niece, I hope for her whole life.

The binding still needs to be completed, which is not something I am a big fan of or enjoy doing.  I think that is because I have not figured out a easy way to do it.  To this point I have only machine quilted binding.  However on the majority of blogs, I see that a lot of quilters, hand bind.  This may be something I do next.  So let me ask all you out there, do you machine bind or hand bind.  Which do you prefer and why? 

I am also honored that my NON crafty daughter, said to me the other day .”Mom, I think I might want to make a quilt, on my own.”  All because she doesn't know.