10 things that scared me

I have been tagged by Mary at Passionate Perseverance to tell you 10 things that scared me the most.

I am going to be brief, because I need to log in and get some work done, but wanted to "play along".

1. I got lost walking home a different way from school in 3rd grade. My mom and brother did find me and had a Hostess "snowball" treat for me. Funny what you remember!
2. I was a 9th grade cheerleader. Yuck - we only 1/2 knew what we were doing. Very few people came to the 9th grade games, you had to wear your uniform (with name on the back) to school, so all these creepy boys could yell things at you by name. I did try out again, but didn't make it, so I must have thought it was ok at the time. Retrospectively - no so much.
3. I taught swimming lessons/life-guarded for 2 years during PE class. Again - not scary at the time, but now I think about the fact that we were responsible for people in a pool who could have drown. Scary. I am going to steer my kids away from life-guarding!
4. I went to the University of Iowa for Band camp. Another yuck. I was lonely and it wasn't a very friendly camp - more like college for 8th graders.
5. I went to the University of Iowa for college. It wasn't that scary, but I am only at number 5 and running out of things. Someone did tell me that your GPA drops an average of 2 pts from high-school at college - that thought did scare me - but was really an urban legend.
6. I worked in the Dept. of Otolaryngology during undergrad and part of my job involved running cochlear implant subjects on a battery of tests. Some of the older models of cochlear implants involved direct connection to the skull - it was a bit scary knowing you could shock the patient if you weren't careful.
7. I went to the University of MN for grad school. It was a bit more scary, because I left the U of I campus where I felt comfortable AND I had to drive around the Twin Cities. That still scares me (to be honest - so does St. Louis).
8. I worked on the Cochlear Implant team at Boys Town Hospital in Omaha. It was scary when a patient called to say they couldn't get their implant to work. Unfortunately sometimes it was because the internal part was broken. I guess that was more sad than scary.
9. I have 4 children - something scares me on a weekly basis. Especially the thought of them driving or someone being mean to them.
10. Going into a haunted house - any. I always keep my eyes closed the entire time.

I realize these are pretty lame. To be honest, it is because I am such a conservative (+ easily scared) person that I stay away from frightening things!

September VQB (virtual quilting bee)......Practice makes......hmmm....

perfect may be too strong of a word.

First - here is the final product.

I didn't want to show my first practice, lest SS have a heart attack. The assignment for September was to create a quilt-block self-portrait.....oh no! There would be no way around machine quilting this block. Thus far I have escaped machine quilting by paper piecing and hand applique, but neither would work for this block. You know this is a unique assignment when there are almost NO self-portrait quilt blocks on the Internet. Don't get me wrong, there are extreme works of art shown out there, but only one that was at my level of sewing ability. Also the lady at the fabric store said, "quite ambitious" when I mentioned what I was doing......oh no!

Like I told Matthew this morning when he took FOREVER to get something done that he thought was boring......"If you have to dissect a frog, don't look at it all day." Really - if you have something hard to do, or something you dread, (or in Matthew's case, something boring).....JUST GET IT DONE. It wasn't that this quilt block was something I dreaded, but it did bring a little fear into my heart! I had never done anything like it and now I was doing it for someone else. If you mess-up something of your own, who cares? But if you have to give it to someone else - OH NO!

First I practiced with complete scrap materials:

I did like doing this with crazy colors, since it made it seem like I was trying to look artsy, rather than unskilled. Carolyn and I thought this practice-fabric was fun, since it did say "sewn with love by Betsy". Of course the fabric manufacturer meant Betsy Ross and not me, but still cool. I love doing projects with Carolyn around, since she thought the original practice was great and wanted to do her own.

Here is Carolyn's self-portrait. She designed it, cut everything out and created the face! I did the machine quilting, so I could have a 2nd practice before my "real thing". Way to go Carolyn, it looks just like you!


One nice thing about quilting a picture of yourself is that you can give yourself as many face-lifts as you want. Lipo - no problem! In my portrait, I added a garden and wore a University of Iowa T-shirt, to make it a bit more of "me". (also, I really liked the gold fabric and didn't have thread to match, so the black and gold color scheme worked for the materials I had on hand). After I sewed on the eye-brows I added the fabric adhesive (so the pieces don't slip while sewing). While ironing the adhesive, I accidentally gave myself wrinkles around the eyes....I guess you can't escape crows-feet, even when sewing!

I am glad that I learned all I did while creating this block, but I am RELIEVED to have it finished and mailed off! I can't wait to see what the other ladies come-up with because some are applique artists (well not professionally, but you know what I mean) :)