Crafts can be a frightening thing...AKA The scariest thing I ever made.

In 2002 I bought my first sewing machine.  Consequently, it was also the day that I went to my first garage sale (not counting the one I went to when I was 6 and I bought a Monkees cassette tape and 5 tiny tubes of lipstick for 10 cents.) I don't typically do garage sales...I figure other people's junk is usually their junk for a reason...though that particular day I hit the mother load.  It was a neighborhood sale so there was lots to see.  I came home with a $20 mountain bike for my husband, a random assortment of VHS tapes for my toddler, a plastic play scape for the back yard and one, very old, very heavy sewing machine.
Since then I have upgraded to the cheapest model sewing machine that Target has to offer.  In recent years I feel I have proved myself talented enough to upgrade once more but let's not get too ahead of ourselves.  This Christmas I may have moved myself a couple notches down on the sewing-talent scale.  I was at a loss for what to get our second daughter...you know, the cute one with dimples.  I picked up things here and there that I knew she would like but I just didn't have that golden one, that gift that she really wanted.  Then, two days before Christmas I remembered that she wanted a "Bed Buddy".  She regularly makes the claim that she "can't sleep unless she is touching someone." You see, she has issues with staying in her bed all night and we had decided that making her a cuddly friend, about her size, would help her to feel more secure.   I know what you are thinking, kinda creepy, right? You would be very right in thinking that, my friend.  Nevertheless, it was the only thing she had asked for, for Christmas (besides a Barbie...and after standing in front of that section at the store I just couldn't bring myself to go there.)  Anyway, being that it was two days before Christmas and I had already reached the limits of the Christmas budget, I dug into my fabric bin.  I was trying to find one fabric that I had enough of to complete this one project, roughly the size of Abby.  I grabbed the next closest body, Mia, and made her lie down on the fabric that I had pieced together like Frankensteins body.  (It involved undoing a pair of ill-constructed maternity pj bottoms I had attempted two years ago.)  I traced Mia's little body and I was off.  Well dear readers, the result wasn't pretty.  It wasn't even cute.  I threw on the red, felt heart thinking that it would give her character, something warm and fuzzy.  Abby said that it was creepy.  All I kept thinking about when I looked at her was the aliens from the Mel Gibson movie "Signs". 
When I first completed her I was scared, and then I couldn't stop giggling...I may have even wet my pants a little.

We named her BB (aka Bed Buddy) and set her out on the couch Christmas morning anyway hoping that Abby would be endeared to her uh,...quirkiness.  I recall her using the word "freaky".
But in my mind, it nearly ruined Christmas...this demented form made of polka dots infecting the otherwise pretty pile of presents by the tree.  How in the world did I arrive at that shape from my dear, sweet Mia? One may never know...short, the skinny limbs, broad and uneven shoulders, elongated head, freakishly tiny bun feet.

The funny thing is, after we all laughed ourselves silly (nervously covering up the real terror we felt in her presence) Abby actually liked her.  She played with her during the day but at night would bring her to our room because she was scary...we thought that maybe that would solve the problem.  You know, set BB up at our door like some kind of sentry that would deter Abby from climbing into bed with us.  But one unfortunate day, a couple of weeks ago, BB was involved in a dancing accident.  Her dancing partner was being too rough and wouldn't you know it, tore her at the armpits.  I decided in the end that corrective surgery should not be the answer to fix this little problem so she retired.
She is now stuffed in the back of my closet until I come across another project that requires salvaged material from an old project gone awry.  I have only had a couple of moments of panic when I reach back to my "little worns" and see her standing alone and squished by my beaded sweater from Mema.  She is in a happier place I believe...as is Abby.