We added a pool fence to keep the boy out… Now he can run around the backyard without one of us chasing him constantly!

The garden is producing! This is our very first harvest of beans, but we’re wondering if anymore are coming. The bean plants don’t look so hot. But the tomatoes are taking off! I can hardly wait for them to ripen.

April’s Do. Good Stitches block. Lindsay chose the knee socks block but using colorful solids and prints. I can’t wait to see the quilt!

And this:

Became this:

March was my month to be the quilter for Do. Good Stitches, and I chose Ashley’s String block. Though, I also chose to lay them out in more of a herringbone pattern. I have the whole thing quilted now, but I am stuck on the binding. If anyone has suggestions, I’m open!

And stay tuned… I have a bit of my Mendocino Madness planned for Sew Mama Sew’s May 2012 Give Away Day!

Alexis is nine and a half, and has never been the recipient of one of my quilts. They are always gifted (usually baby gifts) to other people’s kids. So this summer I finally swore to her that the next quilt would be hers. Well, the next big quilt anyway (as I snuck in several mini’s and a tree skirt).

So she picked some colors and I headed to the LQS for some solids. At the store, somehow a Moda Sugar Pop charm pack snuck in.

I thought I was only going to tie this quilt, which is something I’ve never done, but in the end it is partly machine quilted (4 horizontal lines on the ditch between each row of blocks) and hand quilted using the “big stitch” technique and 3 different shades of variegated cotton perle floss.

When I started the hand quilting, I thought I would only do every other “row” of white squares, but ended up hating that and didn’t really think it was enough quilting anyway, so all the other white squares were outlined as well. Unfortunately that still didn’t seem adequate as the centers of each windmill block were still completely unquilted, so I added small “x”s to the center of each block.

The back is also from the Moda Sugar Pop line. I had considered adding a border to the finished top, but there was just enough of the backing fabric to cover it as is, so no border. Which means this quilt is a little shy of a twin size at about 80 x 60ish. But that’s ok as Alexis’ bed is a loft style bed, and it doesn’t need to hang over the edges when made.

The binding is yet another Sugar Pop print. I love the binding. It’s not quite polka dotted, but close enough to make me smile when I see it. And the turquoise is Alexis’ favorite color at the moment.

This is also the first time I’ve added a hand embroidered label to a quilt, but I knew that the occasion screamed for it. So I included a simple message to remind us how long she actually waited for this quilt. She loves the label more than you could imagine. Go figure.

Originally I had hoped to give it to her for her birthday at the end of the summer, but that didn’t happen, obviously. Around Thanksgiving I decided that come hell or high water, she would get it for Christmas. I know she thought it would never get done because the squares would sit untouched for weeks on end. I know she was really surprised when she went up to watch TV in the loft one day and found a basted quilt folded in my spot.

I was wondering how I was going to pull off “surprising” her when she already knew what state the quilt was in at any given moment. On the 23rd of December I took the finished quilt down to our room and wrapped it up. I thought for sure she was going to notice it missing from my chair upstairs before we left for my aunt’s the next day.

I gave it to her Christmas Eve night, and as you can see, she was so excited when she finally figured out what it was. She was fighting with the tape on the box so hard for so long trying to get it out.

I’m so glad it was so well received. I know she will treasure for years to come… even when she hits those teenage years and wants a room entirely shrouded in black.

Linking up with Fabric Tuesday at Quilt Story.

… and silly boy.

Considering I did the entire book off the cuff and with nothing but scraps, I’m super happy with how it came out! (And oh! my! god! could I use any more exclamation! points?) The front cover is just machine appliqued letters that I blew up in Adobe Illustrator to something like a 500 point font. They’re not quite satin stitched down. I don’t have the patience for that, but I did use a very narrow and short zig zag. Pretty awesome for a first time if I do say so myself.

So that’s the cover — and you can see a little of the handle there too — but I agonized over what to put in the pages. I knew I would do a buckles and latches page. The boy is really into hooking and unhooking things. Well, more into the hooking and then screeching eh-eh-eh until one of us undoes the clasp and he can start again. I suspect rides in the grocery cart will be less than fun soon.

But I digress — again. I saw some neat ideas for an I-spy window and I already had the little clear pellet thingys — what are those called? — and the plastic sheeting, so Alexis and I scrounged up a pretty good pile of little odds and ends to include in the window. I finally settled on just a few buttons and “jewels” and I’m glad I did. I think this is one of those cases where less is more.

And I really wanted to put something on every single page including the front and back covers, so you can see the satin stitched rainbow rectangles on the front cover in the previous picture. Yes. I am that into rainbows.

Here’s a page for matching shapes and colors. I sort of wish I had done the shapes page in colors other than the movable parts to emphasize the shape matching, but oh well. I mean, the kid isn’t even 14 months old! He’s lucky if he can get the velcro to stick. Speaking of velcro, if I did this again, I would put velcro centers on both sides of the movable pieces, just to make it that much easier.

The latch page. The one I gave you a sneak preview of. This is the only part of the whole book where I bought something. I have tons of zippers, and a few catches, but they are all very hard to maneuver. Even more so for tiny fingers I’d think. I spent a small fortune picking out different clasps. Unfortunately, they’re all packaged in such a way that you can’t see how easy — or difficult — it is to use them until you get them home. So if you’re planning on making a whole bunch of backpacks or shopping cart covers or anything else you might need to buckle shut, let me know.

Alright. This page was my brain child. I spent hours rocking the baby and dreaming up just how I was going to make this work. Each of those HSTs, spins so that different patterns can be made. So far, Sean is just interested in trying to pull them off, so I guess all that time thinking of how to make them spin without tiny parts (read: buttons) coming off really paid off.

Wanna know how I did it? Actually, maybe I should patent the idea first… ok, no. You read it here first. My genius idea!

Each of the tiny quilted squares has a backing with a grommet in in. I sewed a button to the back page with the grommeted square underneath. Then I hand stitched (after ironing and cursing for burning my fingers a thousand and one times) each of the HST blocks to each grommeted back. I’m pretty sure that made no sense, but the idea was to have the square spin around a button hole, but if I used a button hole, the pieces would come off easily. with the grommet, even if the piece does eventually inevitably come off, the button will be trapped inside the square. Voila! No choking.

And the back cover. I’m not sure what inspired that page, but I thought it would be neat for our pictures to all be in there for Sean to look at. I think it’s his favorite page after the clasps and the page where he gets (to try) to rip the HSTs off.

I sort of forgot to take a picture of the pages of textures. Ok, I didn’t forget, I just couldn’t get a picture that portrayed the different fabrics I used. That and cuz it’s kind of an ugly page. You can see a tiny bit of the green minky that is one of the blocks up there in the bottom left corner.

The back of the back cover. I told you I wanted something on every page. So there’s mommy’s love. I thought about stitching “Love, Mom” or something equally cheesy on there, but decided against it. Mostly because I just wanted to be done with the damn thing.

The scrappy binding shows up pretty well in this picture, too. I was very disappointed to find that I did not, in fact, have any Kona coal left over from the firebird quilt. I had envisioned using that for the binding, but well, we like scrappy too. I doubt Sean cares at all. He was just screaming for me to give him the damn book while I was trying to furiously sew the binding on. He grabbed it so fast when I was done, that I about didn’t get all the pins out of it.

I think he likes it.

The new quilt for Alex’s bed has been sitting in this state for weeks. I think such a large stack of squares is putting me off as far too daunting. How long exactly is that going to take me to not only make all those HSTs, but also then piece them together into blocks and then a twin sized quilt? Yikes. She’ll probably be 14 before I finish.

Another project sitting neglected in a pile on my chair. I started the quilting on the firebird quilt — I really like how it’s coming out — and it was going pretty quickly, so I told myself that I could put it aside as I have months before I would even need to think about finishing it for the spring auction.

Here’s one I haven’t showed you. I’ve been working on a busy book for the baby. He’s way into hooks and latches at the moment, but by the time I finish this project he may well be a world class lock picker… and I’m only slightly exaggerating. This is a project that I spend tons of time daydreaming about while rocking the boy to sleep, but then don’t have the energy to tackle it once he’s down.

Then there are the clothing projects. Chris and I got rather ruthless a couple of weeks ago and cleaned out our closet of most everything. So now, I have even less stuff to never wear. He was going to pitch these two shirts, and I snagged them with the hope of applying Simplicity 3835 to them.

I’ve cut the seersucker with no abandon, and now I might have a few issues on my hand…. like the sleeves are too small, and the hemlines don’t match up. Ahem, maybe I should have planned before wielding the scissors. Has anyone else successfully altered an old mens shirt in a similar fashion? What is the correct way to approach such a project?

Not shown are the first quilt, and the collage for Sean’s room. Both of those are collecting dust as well. Never mind that I haven’t touched ANY of my works in progress since, oh, hmmmm… last Friday. I suppose if I quit blabbing blogging about them, I could actually work on one or more of them… There’s a novel idea.

Oh who am I kidding? Is it time for bed yet?