January 2009 - Had just received Alicia Paulson's Stitched in Time for Christmas 2008, and decided promptly that I would make not one, but two memory game sets for my niece and nephew.
March 2009 - Declared the month of March's Holiday Handmade Crusade Theme "Making a Memory" and think that I have cleverly created motivation for myself to finish the memory game sets. However, I had only just begun. I purchased the inkjet printer photo fabric, chose prints from my stash, and cut out 52 squares to the measurement of four square inches. Keep in mind my rotary blade is dead, and my self healing mat is quite small. These squares, and many to follow were essentially painstakingly measured and cut out, one by one...
September 2009 - After months of hiatus on this project, I cut out the felt squares that were to be sandwiched between the photo fabric, two per game piece, total of 104 pieces of felt...cut out one by one.
October 2009 - Spend many hours uploading and formatting my family photos to the satisfactory size and spacing. Fighting and formatting, fighting and formatting. Finally finished and discovered that my printer has no color ink. Waited to have money to purchase said ink...
November 2009 - I got ink! Printed out inkjet photo fabric, discovered I was one sheet shy of being able to print out my photos. Purchased one additional packet of inkjet photo fabric...
December 2009 - Printed last inkjet sheet of photos, removed all of the backing and ironed the pieces flat. Cut all of the photos out, 52 in all, one by one.
Yesterday - Against my better judgement, I followed the directions in the book to add a dab of fabric glue between each layer to keep the layers in place for sewing. I have worked with inkjet printer fabric before, and you cannot get it wet, but I figured that if Alicia Paulson thinks that a little dab of glue is okay, then it must be...So I happily glued layer after a layer after layer...
20 minutes later I realized with horror that my little dabs of glue were making the ink in the photos run. At best it looked like my family members had a severe case of rosacea:
At worst my sister-in-law now looked like a domestic violence victim:
My nephew's forehead bore resemblance to Manson family members:
And the ultimate, my mother-in-law's face looked like the top of Mikhail Gorbachev's head:
At this point, I was upset, but decided to forge on, consoling myself with thoughts such as "They are just kids, they will never notice..." and "It's a homemade gift, it has character!"
However when Matt came home and I showed him what had happened and fished for back-up and consoling thoughts he offered, "I would do it over again. Wow, that's pretty bad. Can't you just re-print the bad ones (over 3/4 of the photos)?"
"No!" I retorted "the inkjet fabric is too expensive and I don't have enough to reprint all of the bad ones!" Now I was definitely angry, and continued to sew my maimed family members together with a vengeance. "It'll be fine, it'll be fine..." I kept saying to myself.
Then I hear my cat, Cassie, licking something.
I look up to see that she is licking one of the cut out pieces of inkjet fabric.
This is when I started shouting expletives and chased my cat around the room. I'll let your imagination fill in the dialogue here.
To give you a clue, many sentences started with the letter "F".
I picked up the poor little scrap of fabric, a photo of my nephew Thi.
Matt called from the couch, "It can't look any worse than the other photos!"
"His nose is gone!" I cried "She licked off his nose!"
Matt starts laughing...I start laughing...Then I start sobbing.
AND SOBBING AND SOBBING AND SOBBING.
So that brings us to where yesterday's post began. I've decided to scrap this project entirely for Christmas. I am going to try and salvage it for their birthdays. I haven't the money, or the mental health to try and fix this one in two weeks time, so I've opted to make them both quick gifts from my stash. Not as cool as the memory game would've been...but sometimes you've just got to let it go.
I'm still in mourning...sniff sniffle.
13 comments:
Oh my goodness, I can only imagine what this had to have felt like. You know, it is terrible, because you did such a good job writing this post, that I had no idea if I should laugh or cry with you. I mean, to have so much happen, and then the cat, and the nose issue. I know that it never helps, but I think that everyone goes through those major moments where you just want to sob, throw your project out the window, and curse yourself for every having decided to make hand made gifts. At least you have the ability to write such a great post after such a horrible experience
Oh how funny, the cat licked off his nose!! I think I would have peed my pants laughing if I had been there too, hehehe!!!
What a bummer about the glue... I would let the girl who wrote the tutorial know about this post so maybe she she can update it, and this won't happen to someone else??
Ok. I need to apologize right off the bat, because I read this through the first time, then with "David Sedaris" reading it in my head, with the requisite interludes of coffee house jazz between paragraphs. Holy NPR Batman, this is worthy of a few good minutes of airtime!
Poor Sarah!
I know you'll succeed with the project eventually; and when you do everyone who sees it and the love you put into it will remember these gifts as the best gifts ever.
In the meantime, just remember you are officially the best Aunt on the planet.
oh no!!!!! i can completely feel your frustration and disappointment! i'm so glad you were able to find the humor in it though (your post was very engaging!)
i'm sure one day you'll do it again with just the results you want!
Sarah-bebe I'm soooo terribly sorry this happened. However I have to thank you profussly for saving me a little sanity!! I was giggling through your whole post feeling your pain and frustration. BUT BUT BUT once the nose was gone!! I lost it....
Anyways it will work out once you decide to do it again and it will be awesome because you are. Glad you can still make so many people laugh in the midst of such a craft crisis!!
Love, Evelynne
I think I would have wet the box before mailing and blamed it on the post office.It would have been worth a try.Loveya
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!
All that work, ...but you DID save your photo files, right? so ALL the work won't have to be done over, will it?
And the next time maybe you'll have a new rotary cutter that will be fresh for this job so it will go faster for sure, right?
And maybe, just maybe, the red blotches will fade, and you will be able to use some of them?
I feel your pain...
but getting your nose licked off, now that's really something else!
Oh wow, you certainly should have brought this to my attention, but I am glad I had a peak at your always so entertaining geek and nerd site! I appreciate the effort and it will most definitely be a story to tell and someday laugh about! Hope you are enjoying the craftmaking! I wish you could come visit so I could take you to "the flea market" in longmont - I bought a perfect kids desk that I am making into a vanity table for maggie. Ho Ho Ho! catherine
My cat does the same with paper, so I can feel the pain, as well!
It sure must have feeled good to let us know about youf crafty disaster. I almost laughed & cried outloud while reading this. I had to hold it in as I'm in a public place. :-p
Try to focus on the next projects, now. It cannot go more wrong than this one. :-)
Oh my, this sounds AWFUL. I have to admit that the cat licking off his nose made me laugh...but the rest of it was awful. What a rotten way to wrap up a loved and long-term project!
Maybe you could write a polite/distraught letter to the publisher and see if they could reimburse you for the cost of the photo fabric & ink? It's worth a try.
Aww no. Craft fails are so painful when you've put so much time into them aren't they?
I did some fabric gifts this year but couldn't afford the printer fabric so I tried making my own iron-on transfers and they were surprisingly not as plasticy an alternative than I'd imagined them to be.
LOVE your idea~ Sorry to hear about the...er....injuries your family suffered.
I made a pillow once, cleverly printed on fabric. I washed my hands and must have dripped on the photo fabric and suddenly my granddaughter had a raging case of measles or something. I tried to rinse the whole piece of fabric in a sink of tepid water and the entire picture faded to mere ghostly images.
After some research, I found a product called "Bubble-Jet Set" that I use to pre-wash my fabric before I print it. There's also a special rinse for the fabric that sets the ink once it's printed. No more melting faces!! It's relatively inexpensive but would work beautifully for your project.
Best of luck!
just reading this and loved it. oh how many projects like this have gone awry for me. the $ for the fabric paper is terrible too! but the most infuriating part to me would have been "it can't look any worse than the others" AUGH!!! my husband always says those things at the worst possible moment. ; )
Post a Comment