The one where she fails. A lot.

This is a story about failure. The picture doesn't give the impression of the spectacular downfall that I experienced when making it, but rest assured it is a failure in every sense of the word.

I started with good intentions. I decided I would join in Rachel's Scrap Attack Quilt-Along at Stitched in Color.   I don't actually own many scraps, but that seemed besides the point. I vowed to "take opportunities" in 2012, and this was a great opportunity to sew along with clever guys and girls. I could see a project through from start to finish in a short time frame, even if it meant cutting up brand new fat quarters and pretending they were scraps. I'm telling you, best intentions.

I signed up on the flickr group. I posted that I would do something with strings or circles and decided to forge ahead from there. I looked at my stash and found the closest thing to a "scrap" that I could.  A small piece of special fabric which in fact had a little Tangerine Tango on it. A girl and her dog. A good place to start. I felt like a rockstar. I was sewing with the colour of the year. All good, I had vaguely settled on a string quilt. I decided to eat lunch first and then start in the afternoon.

A few hours later, I set off to research assorted techniques. I studied half a dozen different ways to assemble quilt-as-you-go quilts. This took three hours. There are a lot of great QAYG techniques on the Internet. (Have you spotted the problem yet?)   I settled on Penny's technique because I wanted to avoid sashing. Then I started sewing. Penny had given me the small girl in the center of my block, so it seemed like kismet that I should use her tutorial. I motored away. Things were going well. I ran out of bobbin thread, I replaced it. I sewed some more. I got bored. I began to wonder if I had the mental fortitude to commit to a big quilt-as-you-go project. Would my attention span hold out? Could I keep up the charade that I was using scraps?  I'd only finished half a block. I needed to make 56. This is a lot of sewing, Amy? *Bling* The light bulb went off and I remembered that I had, in fact, signed up for a scrappy-look string quilt. Not only was I questioning my commitment to the project, I was working on completely the wrong project. Well now, that's just embarrassing.

I decided to stick with it and finish the block. Maybe I could repurpose it into a small pillow? It'd make a nice pillow right? So I did just that. I added the backing. I sewed it up square and turned it inside out. I didn't have to look closely to see that I'd completely missed a seam. In real life, there's a giant wad of well... wadding sticking out in the upper left. It's still that way now.  It can be salvaged by making a much smaller rectangular pillow. That's exactly what I set out do to right? I meant to spend my afternoon making a minuscule pillow that did not match my couch. I'd deviated so far from my Scrap Attack path at this point that I was willing to convince myself of anything.

First though, I needed to take a picture of this awesome failure of a pillow for the blog and pretend it was perfect. I needed a quick picture before I flipped it inside out, cut off three inches from one side and turned it into a smaller, functional version of itself. A good picture could fool the masses. I needed to show you that I was indeed a crafting rockstar, not someone who fails. Frequently. As I mentioned my camera is in the shop, but I found my old SLR in the cupboard. I took a picture. I think it was a good picture too. I'm not sure because the drivers weren't compatible with Craig's laptop. Never mind though, he was bringing my Sony home last night and I'd be able to upload it soon enough.

He brought it home. I plugged in the camera with the truly awesome photo on it and it didn't go. I didn't have the drivers either. I own the CD for the camera but the laptop has no CD slot. So I scoured the Internet only to learn no drivers actually exist for the newest version of Windows or Mac. Two days on this project with nothing to show for it. I thought of using a card reader, but neither laptop could cope with compact flash. Nearly thwarted, I conceded that my camera phone would be my best option. It was out of battery juice. Tethered to a power socket, I stretched to squeeze out the less awesome photo for the post. I'm not sure I'd even call it marginally good.

So there you have it - my scrappy string quilt, which instead looks like quilt-as-you-go log cabin pillow with seams busting apart. But because this is blogland, and people only say nice things... particularly about failures... I'm sure some of you will have the courtesy to say "looks great, Amy" while you're quietly chuckling to yourself.

There's always tomorrow. That's when I'm going to start on my Scrap Attack project once again. Will you join me?