Quilting for Quitters

Several years ago, back when I was already a Mrs. but not yet a Mom, I worked in an office. With numbers. All day long.
Yup, just me and my boring old left brain.
I needed a creative outlet. Bad. Before I dried up and turned into Ben Stein with boobs. Small ones, but still…
I decided to try my hand at quilting.
“How lucky for me”, I thought, “that I know a woman who lives to quilt. She can teach me and soon I will know what a fat quarter is how to use it.”
I called the Quilt Lady and asked if she could teach me. She enthusiastically agreed and gave a me a not-quite-small list of suggested supplies. I arrived at her home the following Saturday brimming with excitement, but several dollars poorer.
Things started out well. We went to her quilt room and perused her library of patterns. There she helped me to choose a really easy one. It was pretty. I was still excited.
I did not know that really easy for Quilt Lady would prove to be unbearably hard for me.
Because really easy for her had stripes and nine patches and gazillion patches and I don’t know what else.
We took the pattern to a fancy-shmancy fabric store because cheap fabric from Jo-Anne’s or Wal-Mart would ruin my project before I even started. She chose the colors. I could not be trusted. My quilt would have a lot of yellow.
I hate yellow.
So far I had learned that quilting is expensive. And very. very. serious.
My right brain fell asleep.
Back at Quilt Lady’s house, I carefully, nervously cut my fabric and began to sew. My lines were not straight enough. My points would not match. It would be less disgraceful for me to appear nude in church. She handed me a seam ripper.
After the third rip, Quilt Lady (or as I now thought of her: Quilt Nazi) suggested I practice sewing straight lines for a good long while before attempting quilting again.
She boxed up my strips and sent me home. The box sat untouched or about a year before I gave it away.
I vowed never to quilt again.

Except…
My cute niece Ashley, got married. (Calm down Chelsea, you are cute too.)
And then my cute niece Ashley got pregnant.
And Ashley loves Elvis. Loooooves him. (She and my Girl Wonder have that in common.)
I had to get her an Elvis quilt. This was not a want, it was a need.
The deep need for me to keep my place as the cool aunt.
Unfortunately, I could find no Elvis quilts, only super cute Elvis fabric. I took a deep breath and googled “easy quilt patterns”.
Hmmm, these patterns looked…easy.
There were no stripes.
There were no gazillion patches.
I decided to try quilting again.
I finished my masterpiece in two days. And it was really fun.
My niece? She loved it.

And guess what, Quilt Lady? My points didn’t match.