DeCollared and Quilting

Remember when I got ambitious about quilting? I would look at Land of Nod and Pottery Barn catalogs... drooling-  there are some pretty beautiful quilts. (I was particularly fond of this one- gee thanks, A'Dell) However, I always seemed to balk at the $150 price tag. Especially for young children (who ruin nice things) and double that to over $300 for the twins. (the joys of buying in duplicate!) Well, I talked myself out of that rather quickly, hurriedly clicking out of the window with two adorable quilts in my checkout cart. With a shiny new sewing machine sitting in the corner, my mind started talking to my crafty-self once more: "I'll bet I could just MAKE one for a fraction of the cost, and! Even better! They will have a "handmade" heirloom quilt! I could tuck them in and add, yep I MADE THAT FOR YOU."

How could I resist that?

You know where this is going, don't you?

It was not even close to being that simple. I found rather early on in the process that there is no way I could make these quilts by myself. The "just sewing a few straight lines" idea was foolish, indeed. It became apparent I needed to call in a professional. Luckily, I know a lady who does long-arm quilting out of her home. I met with her and she gave me the news that I had enough fabric to make exactly one AND A HALF quilts. Not two. (Foiled again by you, MATH!) So I would have to purchase more fabric- at full price, double what I'd paid the first order- plus whatever lovely quilt-lady is going to charge me to make these bedspreads a reality.

People, I have already sunk way more than a measly $300 into this foray- and all I have is a ton of fabric- heading over to be quilted in the next few days. (but still, it's just a pile of fabric right now!)

 It is a situation in which I just have to keep throwing money at the problem... and that doesn't feel great at all. So if you happen to have grand ideas like mine- I beg you... just buy the quilt, and you'll have saved yourself money and stress. JUST BUY THE QUILT.

Ok, so I am clearly not going to be quilting... ever again. What to do with a new sewing machine?

Enter an old shirt I got for free: 

Thinking this project was doomed from the start... or at least would take longer than an hour, I did not get properly prettied up, sorry

I can never pass up a good henley, so when a friend offered it, I took! It's actually a men's shirt, but I love some of the details and I know The Husband would never wear it.  But it has this HORRIBLE collar. It looks so stupid, and it's made out of icky men's suit shirt fabric, and looks SO DUMB. 

I got a little feisty and take a seam ripper to this shirt.  It would not be worn with lame collar, anyway. So if I totally ruined the shirt... no big loss.

After ripping out some seams, becoming befuddled by the construction of this darned collar, I got out the scissors and got aggressive: 

Finally I got to hack away at the innards of The Ugly Collar:

After removing the offending fabric, I was left with... what I wanted! + a bunch of threads hanging everywhere.

All I had to do was sew a top stitch re-connecting the folds together. It took five minutes. 

Confidence: RESTORED. 

Small steps, refashioning things where most of the hard work is done, really might be more in my "skill" range.