I wish I had some fun event to blog about, but March has been rather quiet around here. Minus cheering for BYU Basketball, which has been quite loud :). I'm still on my crafting kick, though, and I've been thinking about this a bit lately.
Most of my crafting time has been sunk into this baby. Basically, my mother gave me the center fabric a year or two ago. She found it somewhere, thought it would be wonderful for our cabin, and bought me a few yards.
It is so pretty! But everytime I looked at it, I couldn't think of anything else do to with it. It has to make a quilt. I've never made a quilt before, but I don't usually let that stop me. So I bought the blue fabric you see above, later found the brown for the back, and got to work.
My mom used to make quilts when I was in high school (until Arthritis got to her), so I figured I could handle it. Unfortunately, I think I dissapointed her when I told her this is the first and last one I will ever make.
The thing is, I am a bargain girl at heart. Some crafts, like my hairbows, come about because I am too cheap to pay for them at a craft show. I look at the price and say "I could do that myself!"
Some crafts, like my costumes, come about because I want something I can't find anywhere. For example, when we were expecting Tyler, Daddy was set on naming him Rocky. I told him I only wanted that as a nickname if it fit his personality: he said that Rocky Skarda was the coolest name he had ever heard of. So since Daddy lost that battle, I decided Tyler could be Rocky Balboa for Halloween. They don't make that particular costume in size 9 months (what a shock), so I made it myself.
But one thing I learned back in my calligraphy class in college has stuck with me in all this. "You'll never beat a computer at it's own game," my teacher mentioned on the day she taught about selling our artwork. "For centuries, calligraphers were employed because no one had any other way to reproduce text. Once the printing press came about, they were the only beautiful option. But now computers can make wonderful things. If you want to suceed, you have to do something a computer cannot." Bringing that into sewing, to me that means doing something that isn't mass produced cheaply in China.
Some crafters don't feel that way. I've been enjoying the recent "Celebrate the Boy" month on a couple of crafting blogs, but some of their ideas make me laugh. For example, one day they had a tutorial on
how to make little boy underwear.
Seriously? I mean, I am all for repurposing old shirts into something useful, but . . . do you know what happens to this after you lovingly sew it for hours? They had other tutorials for homemade shirts that I felt the same way about. Sure, I could buy the fabric and make a cute top for myself. Or I could buy a new top at DI for $3. I've spent hours and hours making myself something only to have it not fit or not look quite like I hoped it would too. If I'd seen it in the store, I could have kept walking.
And as for selling what I do . . . nah. I adore the cute people who tell me I could, but . . . nope. First of all, something I quickly learned in the three weeks I sewed in a "sweat shop" sort of place is that sewing isn't fun anymore when you make the same thing over and over again. Second of all, I make $20 an hour when I tutor a math student. Let's take . . . my bags for example.
Fabric is $5 if I get a good deal, and they only take an hour or two to make. So I am very happy to make them for myself and some friends. But if I sold it, I would only get $15-$20 I bet. That makes a little over $5 an hour. And for that price, I would rather spend my time with my kids.
Not to mention, I am a very crafty person, but mostly because I am an excellent copy cat. I can take character and figure out how to make it into a costume.
I can
see something online and reproduce it.
But none of these are my original ideas. So I'd feel a bit odd making money off another person's idea.
So why do I craft?
So I can make something my kids love to play with. And so far, these little fold-ups in my bag have gotten a lot of mileage. I love having something to pull out whenever the kids are bored somewhere.
So I can have fun with friends while we make something cute together.
(We made these a few days ago at a friend's house. Aren't they fun?
Just scrap bits of ribbon. I think the Easter Egg is the best one, because the "stripes" look really fits.)
So I can put to good use something we don't need anymore.
But the quilt? Wow, what a project. I got the fabric on a really good sale, and since my mom gave me the best fabric that means the quilt will "only" cost $50. I didn't have to do nearly as much work as the average quilter, since the top was only 9 pieces. But that still took a lot of engineering and work to figure out. And yet, every step I finish makes me realize how far there is to go. I was so happy when I finally finished the top - but then I had to still make the bottom and cut my batting and iron them together. And now I am just starting to quilt it all together. Thank heavens my machine will do it, but . . . I can only imagine how many hours this will have taken when I am done! And, let's be honest, when I am done, it will look like something you could have bought at Wal-Mart for $30.
So what about you, fellow crafters? What do you make? And why?
