Quilting, My Crafty Nemesis

I want to be a quilter.  An honest to goodness real quilter. The reality though is that when I try quilting, in the end somehow, it makes me feel a bit like a little kid playing pretend.

I can sew (obviously) and supposedly I can measure and cut things, but somehow when I put it all together it never works out quite right.  There's always something just a little bit off kilter about the finished product.

I have made a few quilts over the last few years.  The first was for Little Man.  I was bound and determined that he was going to have a quilt and actually, that one turned out pretty well.  There's a few glitches here and there, but really not too bad all things considered.

Then I made a quilt for Baby Boy.  That one also wasn't too bad.  Except it ended up teeny tiny.  Sadly it barely got used because it was so small.  Plus I messed up the binding on it, didn't notice until after the fact and have never had the heart to unpick it all and fix it.

Then there was my Summer Mommies Friendship Quilt.  OK.  That one I love.  It's on our bed year round.  But don't look closely.  Oh boy!  Some of those pinwheels just refused to line up and the actual quilting is a bit crazy too.  I don't see those mistakes too much though, because mostly I'm just darn proud of finishing a queen sized quilt and one that I figured everything out for by myself and didn't use someone else's directions for.

Of course there was G's Memories of Paris Quilt too.  Not too bad - but again with the wonky squares.  What happens between the measuring, cutting and sewing???  I'll never know!

Rag quilts are good.  I've made two of those! One for Baby Boy and one for a gift for one of (BF)G's co-workers.  I don't think it's possible to have anything go wrong with a rag quilt.  They are truly the easiest quilt ever. I've even got a tutorial on how to make a rag quilt it's that easy!  (It's almost cheating they're so simple!)

Anyways.  I'm rambling here.  All this is in light of my latest sewing project.  A simple little mug rug.  I decided that since I often make them for gifts, but have never made one for myself it was high time I rectify that.  So I started searching for a design I liked.  There's about a million and one snowman mug rugs that I'm dying to make, but I didn't want to really do a seasonal one right now.  I wanted something more... quilty. Is that even a word?  Likely not.  I digress though.

So I perused quilting sites.  I perused Craftsy.  I perused Pinterest.  And finally I found one I thought I liked, and followed a link, that led me to another link that led me finally to The Happy Zombie site, which I promptly lost a few hours of my life to - it's a great site!  The Happy Zombie had a tutorial for a "Magic Hourglass".  I was smitten.  I'd found the mug rug for me.  And it looks so magically simple to do.  I followed her instructions to a tee.  I measured everything so carefully so each one would be identical.  I carefully pressed with steam as I was advised.  I even used pins. I NEVER use pins.  And yet? Wonky. Three out of four are not lining up. One is way off in left field not even pretending that it can behave and line up with the others.  What on earth happened?  Where did I go wrong?

Oh well.  I'm just going to cover up the big spot that went awry with a cookie or a doughnut or something and put my mug over top one of the others and pretend it's a perfect little quilt block mug rug.

I refuse to be beaten by this whole quilting thing and will conquer it someday.   In the meantime, I'll be eating snacks, drinking tea and dreaming of making one of those quilts like I see all over the blogosphere where all the blocks behave properly and all the points meet where they're supposed to.

Do you have a crafty nemesis that you refuse to let get the best of you?