My dear friends, I had an anxiety attack yesterday. It happened at the dining room table just as my Grandmother was entering the front door. My mother, worried I would fall out of my chair told me to lay down for a minute on the living room couch and instructed my Grandmother to give me a cookie to get my blood sugar back up. Then they started talking about me and what caused said anxiety attack. Yes, dears, I had a Shelby moment.
What could have caused me to begin hyperventilating enough to bring on such an attack? I, my friends, was making a quilt. Not just any quilt though. It was a quilt I had been working on for BB since October of last year. This stinking quilt was riddled from problems since day one and had plagued me for the last week as I attempted to finish it. First I measured half of my quilt blocks incorrectly and had to re-cut and size all of my 280'ish squares. Then I started sewing them together into nice little neat rows. Or so I thought. When I began sewing the rows together it was pretty clear I either didn't re-cut all of the blocks properly or I just suck at sewing those buggers together properly.
I was determined though! I'd continue on and it would just be a little wonky which totally gave it the handmade look I was going for (that's one of the lies I told myself to get through this process). Then I cut the darn backing too small and had to improvise. Again I was determined to continue on.
I pinned the quilt top, batting and backing together with the help (not!) of BB and my Mom (God bless this woman) and began sewing the quilt closed. After sewing one side together I realized the quilt had shifted which meant I needed to use the seam ripper and undo the entire row. After undoing my mess, I re-sewed it closed and began the quilting which resulted in more frustration since the darn thing shifted *again* and I had extra fabric that had to be semi-hidden with my Mom's help at the edge of the quilt.
By the time I was able to begin sewing the binding on the quilt, 3 days had passed. 3 days filled with frustration and migraines. After I sewed on one side of the binding ... I realized I had done it wrong. That's when I started to hyperventilate, tears filled my eyes and I felt light headed as everything around me started getting brighter and brighter. And that my friends, is when my I turned into Shelby and my Mother & Grandmother came to my rescue and helped me finish BB's quilt. My friends, without my little heroes I would probably be in a deep quilt depression right now, hiding in the corner with a mug of hot tea and muttering about binding and quilting blocks.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a pretty tough cookie most times and can usually take things like this pretty calmly. But this quilt ... it broke me. I'm so thrilled that it's done and despite it's wonkiness, I love it and BB loves it too. But I can guarantee you that I will not be quilting anytime soon again. At least not until I can think about quilting without getting a knot in my stomach. Ugh, time for another cookie.
Don't talk about me like I'm not here!!!
This one was not bad, not bad at all!!
That movie is so quotable. It's like six degrees of Steel Magnolias....
Sorry for the "breakdown" The quilt looks great though. When can we start placing orders?
Posted by: Frank | 01/18/2010 at 02:28 PM
You're right, SM can be applied to all sorts of situations!
As for quilts, I think my mind requires a nice long break from them :)
Posted by: ThePhantomMoon | 01/18/2010 at 03:44 PM