No T-Shirt Quilting for Me!

 A while back, I decided I wanted to try and learn to make t-shirt quilts. So I bought a bunch on 25 cent day and cut them to make squares. I bought ten yards of fusible interfacing in order to stabilize the knit fabric. 

The other night, I finally got them out and tried to iron on the fusible web. It just wasn’t working. I tried a couple different things.  I did a damp cloth. It wasn’t working, and my iron phobia was starting to take over. 

I suffer a little bit of iron phobia due to an incident with my abusive aunt when I was a teenager. My mom was in the hospital at the time, and she stayed with us to “help”, even though she was actually the opposite of help. She was ironing my dad’s shirts and didn’t like something I said and blew up at me in a rage. I mouthed off to her a little I guess and she pulled the iron with her as she lunged at me to try and strike me with it. Of course it came unplugged from the wall, but of course was still hot. I started running all over the den and kitchen, and she ran after me, constantly yielding the hot iron. I was jumping up on furniture and knocking things over to get away from her. Eventually I got to the front door and just ran down the street to a grocery store about four blocks away. The store manager brought me into his office to call my dad at work. My dad ended up leaving work early to come and get me from the grocery store and take me back home. When we got home, the cops were there. My aunt called them because I ran away. I told the cop what my aunt tried to do and he didn’t care because I didn’t actually get burned. 

Being a seamstress requires ironing. There are some projects that I’ve overcome my iron phobia to do, like minor patchwork where you have to iron after every seam. I can iron new fabric purchases if they are small, but if they’re larger than half a yard I’ll either cut them or ask my mom to iron them for me. 

Fusible interfacing and this t shirt project just isn’t going to happen, and that’s ok because I have a lot of other things to work on. It’s perfectly ok to let go of something that’s not for you, even if at one time you really wanted it.