Making stuff

My family seems to think that I can sew anything.   I seem to be making all sorts of strange things lately.  
Princess wanted a new teddy bear and she wanted to make it.  She drew out a pattern, cut it out, traced it on fabric and then had me sew it together for her. 

Now she has a new teddy bear, complete with button eyes and a pink smiling mouth.  I think it looks a little creepy, but the fabric is leftover from her quilt, so it matches, and she loves it.

Daddy is having me construct a backpack for him.  After he designed it and cut out the fabric, I assembled and sewed the waistbelt.  I haven't taken a picture, but it is pretty ugly and I don't enjoy working with Nylon and foam.  I even put a needle through my finger while working on the waistbelt.  I know there are more parts of this to come, but I am going to procrastinate on his project as much as possible.  My sewing projects are much more fun.

When things go wrong

When things go wrong, it is usually not just one thing.
The light cord fell off when Daddy was putting breakfast on the table one busy morning, plus the ceiling fan switch broke a few days earlier. We had cereal by candle light.  We finally took the time to fix it, 2 days later. 

While standing on the table to reach the light, the table broke.   After 3 trips to the hardware store, all is fixed and back to normal. 

But for a little while, our dining room looked like this:

Quilt #4

Actually this quilt was finished before the wine quilt, but I forgot to take a picture of it.  This is Princess' quilt. She cut out all the pieces, she sewed some of them together and then Grandma and I finished it.  So the assembly is much better than Munchkins, but the quilting is horrible.   Thinking I was better at this, I did not baste it as much as I should have, so it has LOTS of puckers.  The glitter fabric on the border is stiff, and the minkee on the back was not quite big enough, so it was a challenge to put together.  

It is FAR from perfect, but a little 8-yr old loves it and sleeps with it every night.

Child labor

We are firm believers of child labor, and even somehow manage to draft other neighborhood children into our labor. 

 We have one child scraping paint in a tutu and another one supervising all the work.

Spring Break Bouncing off the walls

The kids had an early spring break and I decided to take them to one of the jump house places for a morning.  We brought 2 friends, so the van was full.  But it burned off lots of energy and they had a great time.  However it is really hard to get pictures there.  The kids don't stop moving.

 This is the only picture I could get of Buddy, he just never stopped moving.

 Even Scout got to explore.

Washington DC

We spent some time during spring break being tourists in Washington DC.  Buddy has been learning about money in school and wanted to see the Lincoln memorial.  (it is on the penny)   We went there plus saw some other fun stuff and even wandered around the American History museum before the kids figured they were too tired and too sick of walking to continue.  It was a fun day.

 We also found the Boy Scout Memorial for the 1st time.  It was Constructed at the 50th anniversary of scouting. They didn't add to it for the 100th anniversary.  Daddy thought is was funny that there was a sculpture of a fully dressed scout with 2 partially clothed adults.  Seems kind of strange.

Quilt #3

I have finished the 3rd quilt, it is a kit that I bought at the quilt show and then assembled and machine quilted.  I like this one.  It is an improvement over the ones I made for the kids, but it still has room for improvement.  I will never make a perfect  quilt, so they will all have their challenges, but I am improving. 

I was going to give this to some friends as a wedding present, but then we got the invitation and they have requested we give donations to charity rather than give them a wedding present.  So now I am debating what to do with it.  I would like to give it to them anyway, but maybe I should make my other kit quilt and donate that one to the Linus Project or the Children's hospital and give them this one with a note explaining that they got one and one was given away in their name.  I have started the other kit quilt and don't like it very much.  I will see how it looks when it is assembled. 

The Dolphin swing is amazing, this is the second one we have. The 1st one was purple and was taken from the park near our house, (where we left it)  But my amazing family found another one and sent it to us.  We love the Dolphin swing and all of the kids have used it.

Scout- 10 months

 Buddy - 9 months in California at the park across the street.

 Munchkin - 11 months in Virginia in the back yard.

 Princess - 8 months in Hawaii, hanging in the car port.

Some days I think we may need a bigger swingset, but they manage to get 3 of them playing on this one.  The big one on the left used to be that little baby... not so little anymore.

Baking

I have a little helper who loves to help me bake and cook.

Maybe Because I let her lick the spoon, and the bowl and her fingers.

Window watching

How do you entertain a little one. 

I like to put one child inside the door and another one outside.  They entertained each other for at least 30 minutes.

Maybe I should wash that window now, I am sure it has plenty of drool and fingerprints on it now.

Kids

I haven't spent all my time sewing lately.  I still spend the majority of my time taking care of the little ones.  I do thing like put an empty rum box on the floor and leave it there for days at a time.  It makes the best toy.

 The best part of the toy is the inside part.

 Buddy loves to make this face at me. I keep telling him his face might get stuck that way, so he just does it some more.  At least he can make loud noises while making this face.

 This little guy is also getting much bigger and into everything possible.  He has hit a growth spurt and seems to eat constantly.

Pie

Lest you think I am the only one who takes pictures of my creations. Daddy is on a pie making frenzy.  We have had lemon merangue pie, 2 apple pies, 2 pumpkin pie, an Ohio lemon pie, and  a blueberry pie.

He can make some great pies!

Mid-Atlantic Quilt Show 2012

I thought I would post some of the inspiring quilts we saw at the quilt show.  (Click HERE for my picts of the 2011 Quilt Show.)  They are pretty cool.  Since my mom was in town for the show, some of these pictures are for her. She would nudge me and say "Take a picture of that one. "  There is no real rhyme or reason to these, other than they sparked an interest.

This one had pre-printed panels, but had spots at the bottom to embroider, 1st tooth, 1st steps.. it was cool.

This one was very cool, it looks very realistic and is thread painted.  Thread painting is something that we saw a lot of this year.

This was a winner, and was a crazy quilt with a defined pattern. The embroidery in it was amazing. 

This one just made me laugh, it is actually painted and then quilted.  Very cool look to it.

I think this one was thread painting too, but the topic was totally different from almost every other quilt it was fascinating.

This quilt was made by a friends mother in law. It shows her husbands deployments and a lot of his patches. She photographed his patches and then printed them on fabric. She also embroidered the path of his deployment on maps, along with the ship info.

 This is my mom's new work.  It is called Sashiko, and she bought a kit for one quilt.  I am interested to see how it turns out.

This is thread painted and just makes me smile. 

Quilt #2, Camper

I finished another quilt, and actually I have two more that have the top finished, but have not been fully assembled yet, but I let those ones sit and wanted to work on this one. 
I went to the Mid-Atlantic Quilt show and was inspired.  I bought 2 quilt kits, and then fell in love with a paper pieced pattern. I finished one of the kit tops (post coming later) and then started on the paper piecing.  I think I like it.  It is exacting, and kind of tedious, but the end result is pretty cool. 

To really challenge myself I also hand quilted it.  I am now in awe of my mother for doing this and for having perfect exact stitches. This is a lot of work for my tiny little quilt.  I can't even imagine doing this for a queen size.  It is a real labor of love.  So here is the back.  My stitches are not toenail hookers, but they are not even close to even in size and it really made my fingers hurt.  I could only quilt for about 20 minutes at a time before I needed a break.

There are tons of mistakes, but I am not going to point them out.  I will let my sister do that for me.. :) 

I am happy with it, and I still haven't finally decided what to do with it yet. 

Boys Wallet

I like small litle projects that I can finish quickly.  This one was perfect.  I have a suit jacket that we bought for cheap and then after having it cleaned discoved some challenges with it. Daddy couldn't wear it so it became a great source of fabric for me.  I made this wallet, great for a little boy.

It was a simple project, and turned out  great.  My own little boy already has a wallet, so I don't know who this will go to, but I will add it to my gift pile, so maybe it will be a birthday present for the next party we attend.