First Pick!

I am excited to be done with the Map of the World. Very excited. In less than 48 hours I was already itching to start something new!

So the whole point of this blog is that I have created a lottery system to choose which of my many, many craft and sewing projects I will work on next. That being said, I have a confession to make: I totally started a project on the sly since I was hoping to give it out as Valentine gifts. You know those cute little Quite Activity Books (like here , here , and here - just to name a few)? Well, I thought I would make a few for the various toddlers in my life and I kind of wanted it to be a surprise so I wasn't going to mention it until I was all done. I got all the supplies, I made various templates, cut out lots of felt and even made a few pages. It looked cute but I hated it; I hated every single moment of working on it. I kept on thinking of all the other awesome stuff I could be doing (even cleaning toilets- that's  how much I hated working on them) and this was such a waste of my time. So, I scrapped it.

I haven't throw it all away--I just can't bring myself to toss everything out--it's just too much waste for me and I don't like wasting stuff. Maybe one day I will go back and finish them but on the giant list of things that I need to be doing that I keep going in the back of my mind, this has a giant line going through it.

Sometimes you just have to walk away from the whole thing. One friend asked how I felt walking away from it and I said I felt kind of free. That was another monkey on my back.

Moving on!

The first project I chose was to convert one of the first counted cross stitch projects I ever started -and never finished- into something other than the pillow it was intended to be. Here's what I started out with: 

I wasn't a big fan of this project. It was too outdated-my mom told me she bought the pattern in the 1970's. It was supposed to be a pillow and I didn't like the idea of committing that much time, effort and money into making a pillow that would look so out of place. The idea was thrown out there to cut the piece up and making ornaments or door hangers. I did just that!

I cut the whole thing into fourths, picked some extra Christmas material I had laying around and just made little pillows. People of the internet, this will blow your mind: I finished this project in an afternoon! That included spending an hour trying to figure out why my sewing machine was broken-it turned out not to be; the needle was bent and once I replaced it it worked fine. Here's what I made:

The best part is I LOVE these little pillows. I love them! I don't know why. They are the same patterns but now they are small, compact and cute. Plus, the kids had a great time helping me stuff them with batting; they thought we were stuffing them with either clouds! It was great!

I walked around the rest of the day totally dumbfounded that this little project had been languishing in my sewing box for at least 20 years since I thought it was ugly and now I can't wait until next Christmas to display them. Simply awesome!

Later this week: loving this lottery system.