I think it was last Thursday I saw a blog post about the Modern Quilt Guild coming to Nashville.  Well I’ve always seen these things but they’re usually in some place that isn’t convenient to me…so I was like yes!  I could go to that!  Then I saw it was $600 to go…boo..and that’s because I’m a local!  If I were coming from out of town and wanted a room alone it’d be $1200!!!! (Ho-Lee CRAP!)  But then I saw that if you were a quilting guild then it was like $120 less….so I was like well I guess I need to join in one of these guilds.

The first thing I think of, is World of Warcraft.  I couldn’t get into WoW because the way my husband tried to teach me to play was not fun at all.  That and I don’t play well with others.  I am a solo-gamer type.  That’s why I like games like the Sims.  No one is barging in and saying “hey you need to put an extra bathroom between the kids’ bedrooms” or…whatever they would say.  But none the less, my husband was trapped in the World of Warcraft for a while.  While in there, he was in a few different guilds from time to time, and he’d tell me about guild drama, and I would get so tickled.  Who are these people…playing this online game, joining groups to pick fights with other people…just silly.  So I’ve taken a look at the Modern Quilt Guild in the Nashville area and they don’t seem like the type to cause ruckuses.  And it’ll give me something to get out of the house and meet people.

So, besides my guild joining, my mom came to visit me this weekend!  My mom’s been trying for over a month to come visit me.  I know, it shouldn’t be that hard to plan a trip, but it is.  We had some plans to work on this weekend.  Namely, doll clothes.  And my mom wanted me to show her how to sew and stuff…and I’m the best daughter so… 😀

My mom saw all these listings on eBay for (in her words) crappy doll clothes going for big money.  And I looked at them, and I did agree, they were not exactly top quality doll clothes, and she said we could do better than that.  So she went on the search for the doll/model.  I found a American Girl dress form, and she found a doll which…needs a little TLC but she’ll be a great model.  It’s also really cool because when I was in elementary school I wanted one of these dolls (okay not one but all of them because they were so cool) but I didn’t get one because they were like, $75 for JUST the doll and everything else was like….a billionty dollars.  And now they’re like $120 or something, which is just crazy if you ask me.  So I’m glad I didn’t get one when I was younger because I would have played with her for like, a month or so, then moved on to something else, then she would be sitting in a box somewhere being unloved.

I got us a seemingly easy pattern for these American Girl doll clothes off Etsy for like, $5 or something and printed it out and took it home for us this weekend.  And we also made a trip over to Hobby Lobby (my preferred shopping destination) and ended up with a McCall’s pattern….packet…envelope? Thingy.  I told my mom we need to practice, so we’re going to get “junk fabric” and test out with one, and we’ll go from there.  We also got some real steals from the remnants bin. (there was OVER A YARD of yellow and white CHEVRON COTTON!!!!)

Well I learned my mom and me are exactly the same and we don’t want to practice and “waste time” and we want to do the whole shebang and it’ll be perfect.  Well, I talked her into at least doing ONE practice dress.  And she kept asking “do you really need to iron it again?” and I said “yes, as a matter of fact I wrote an entire blog post about this.”  I also told her we were going to use a thread that REALLY stood out from our fabric so we could see any mistakes easily so we could correct them for next time.

So after we did our “easy practice dress” my mom thought this other pattern seemed to look “much simpler” which…I knew couldn’t be true but we gave it an honest effort anyhow.  I think it turned out pretty well, even with our last minute decision to ditch the sleeves.  (they were a disaster.)  My mom then said “well that was harder than it looked” to which I said mmmhmm…(which means yea I know! I knew that already!) but it was all very fun.  My mom also said it would probably be easier to make real people clothes because doll clothes were so small and had such tedious pieces.  I’m sitting there thinking well why do you think I make blankets ‘n stuff!?

But I digress.  It was very fun and it was a great learning experience.  And now I have little doll clothes patterns to play with and possibly make a little cash with.  I’m very happy my mommy came to visit me, all the way up here in Nashville.  I’m also happy we got to spend time together just having fun and playing around with sewing stuff.  And we must have not done so bad.  I mean even my husband said “that looks really great, you could actually sell this” which, he almost never says!  So I was pretty excited about that too.