#NaBloPoMo – Let’s DIY unless you want to DIFM
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I love to DIY (do it yourself). I often take a look a quilts on display in magazines and think “I can make that.”Then I sit down with a pencil and some graph paper to figure it out, or come up with my own variation on the design.
You may have seen this before on the blog, when I designed my own take on the Triangle Quilt for the #TriangleQuiltAlong.
I’ll even paint up an old frame and make my own jewelry holder.
But there are some things that I know I’m just not good at. When I want a custom side table for my living room, I am not going to do it myself. I’m going to call up my friend Dave and say “Can you DIFM (do it for me)?”
Fortunately, the answer is usually “yes”. My friends are some of the best people ever. That’s how I got my custom letterpress side table, stained a beautiful dark cherry to match the rest of the wood in my living room.
Of course, sometimes there are projects I can’t do myself that my friends don’t have time for, or don’t do either. That’s when I take a little trip to Etsy and see if I can support other artisans.
Do you make things yourself, or ask others to do it for you?
Few of my friends do any kind of craft. Some are real “going concerns”–they’re always “going to” do this, or make that, and seldom do. Or they get started and don’t finish. A friend promised to crochet me one of those little bags with a drawstring used to finish up odds and ends of soap…only took her about a year to get it to me!
I’m the one called on to patch or mend the clothing brought to our church clothing bank. I set zippers, patch holes in sweaters, etc. I’m a charter member of the Not Terribly Good Club, but I do try my best. Lately I had a hooded sweatshirt and a nice wool sweater brought to me, each with a cigarrette burn on the chest about pocket-height. First I applied a little Fray-Check, then used fabric adhesive to apply a star-shaped patch which I appliqued down. Then placed another star so that it didn’t look quite so “this is second hand and I just threw the patch on.”
Also have been taking up the bottoms of 2 new pairs of pants for Himself–a good 3 inches, as the younger generation is much taller than he! I couldn’t see paying 5 Euros per pair to the shop for something that would take me less than an hour. (If they shortened sleeves, now, it would be worth the money!)
You are one busy lady. I avoid patching things like the plague. But inevitably, the hubs will come home with a hole in something, or inform me that he’s traded my labor in patching something to get himself a better deal getting a tractor worked on. Figures, right?