Voila!

NEED...MORE...TOOLS...

SO, here I am trying to sew these slipcovers and I realize that I am missing some basic sewing tools. (Never mind that I had to borrow the sewing machine from Diana, in the first place!) What a difference a tape measure and a pincushion make!
Then, I did it! I finished my slipcovers. I fought myself hard in order to do it, but they are FINISHED. And they don't really look like I intended, but I am moving on. Each cover ended up being 2 pieces and the skirt has both pattern and color. Mark thinks I'm nuts...I added ANOTHER PATTERN and ANOTHER COLOR. He doesn't realize that I'm working toward layers (like on my scrapbook pages!) It's just that we can't do it all at once for the sake of a budget and he can't see the "effect" that I see inside my crazy head. Oh, well. It's not like he's going to decorate the living room, so he pretty much has to trust me!

In order to pacify us both, though, I did need to move some color and pattern "up" because it has concentarted on the floor so far (with the rug, ottomans and chair skirts.) Hence the little pillows which were fun, instant gratification. And to dress things up a little, I got out the embroidery needle and floss and free-handed a little design on one of them. I'm so tickled with how it turned out.

An additional benefit has been to my ego. Neither Mark nor my good friend Helen knew that I had these basic skills and they seemed quite impressed. (I'm not used to impressing anyone at this stage in my life!) Anyway, it made me reflect a little on the fact that I'm not a superb specialist, but I really haved turned into a fantastic generalist. Honestly, it's useful to be a generalist in my current occupation =) Furthermore, it is a pretty natural outcome for someone with my short attention span. I'm learning to embrace that part of myself. Say it with me...I AM A QUITTER! I quit more pursuits than most people will ever start in a lifetime =) As a result, I know a little bit about a lot of things.