Sometimes I wake up and stare at my computer screen for a full 30 minutes before coming up with what I want to write for my MMU post. Actually, scratch that, sometimes it’s a full hour to hour and a half. I don’t know why it’s so difficult to get these started in the winter- maybe it’s because life is going at a slower pace and I don’t always have some crazy “you won’t believe what happened over the weekend” sort of story to start things off with. So instead, I just go downstairs for my second or third cup of tea to delay the writing process. And then we end up with paragraphs like this that make you wish you could have the last 30 seconds of your life back. :).

As it turns out, my weekend WAS pretty eventful! We made the four-hour drive down to my Granny & Pawpaw’s house to spend a few days with my grandparents, and I decided to bring along a new sewing project that I was hoping my Granny could help me with. See, for Christmas, I received the most perfect blush pink tulle skirt, and I wanted to take a crack at making one of my own, but this time I wanted it to be cream-colored and a bit shorter. My Granny, being the excellent seamstress and quilter that she is, said to go ahead and bring the fabric and such with me and we’d do our best. I was of the mindset that the design seemed simple enough, so how hard could it be?

I comPLETELY overestimated my own capabilities when it comes to sewing, and it’s only thanks to my Granny’s mad skills that the skirt we produced came out as perfectly as it did. Thank the Lord I didn’t attempt this on my own because I would have wasted at least $40-50 in fabric. In the end, we managed to create one heck of a tulle skirt with no real pattern to go off of, and I’m pretty sure I’ve turned my grandmother off from ever using either satin or tulle again, due to it’s inherent nature of being difficult to work with. (Sorry again, Granny!)

So, in honor of our weekend of fabric-related challenges, I present: lessons learned/things that transpired over the past week:

• If you’ve decided to sew something you’ve never sewn before and your seamstress skills are novice at best, don’t fool yourself: you’re going to need a pattern. “Just freehanding it” won’t work. Even if your sewing partner/Granny is a boss when it comes to needlework.
• In the event that you proceed sans-pattern anyways, you may end up needing your TI-83 calculator. Remember that time you told your 6th grade math teacher you’d never need to use Pi in real life? Lies. I used 3.1415 this past weekend to calculate measurements for our homemade pattern!
• …which we traced onto wrapping paper with a homemade compass, comprised of a pencil with a ribbon tied to it. It worked surprisingly well, by the way.
• It is absolutely necessary to have a large glass of wine ready at the end of the day, due to the stress incurred by all of the aforementioned points.

I’ll be you’re hoping to see a photo of the skirt we made, aren’tcha? Well, you’re in luck- here’s an Instragram I posted yesterday!

Here’s to my Granny, the best grandmother in all the world!