"Go to Sleep Baby" baby doll

I've had this idea for a baby doll for Tess, the baby, for awhile. I put her up for a nap and she spends about 20 minutes talking to a stuffed bunny in her crib. Either the bunny or her blanket, but I think it's the bunny. I have no idea where the bunny came from. My best guess is a garage sale this summer. You should hear her, she goes on and on talking to this bunny. It's quite a friendship Tess and this bunny have going. But, if she is going to have a lasting relationship with a toy, I'd rather it be with something that I've made for her. I know it's silly, but whatever. I've had this doll design in my sketch book for about a month decided today to give it a go. I tried to go fast and not get caught up in to many details.
I considered giving her a little heart to hold, but then I thought she might pull it off, stuff it in her mouth and suffocate. So I didn't add the heart.
Quick project like this are always fun because I have so many helpers around.
I hope this sleeping baby reminds Tess what she's supposed to be doing when I put her in her crib.

All I've got is time.

With my new found enthusiasm for Maria's quilt I have decided to add a lot of applique all around the border. I'm also thinking of trying to hand quilt this one. If it is too slow I can always put it under the machine later, but I really like the look of hand quilting. I saw the Thimblelady on Simply Quilts once, so I'm going to try her technique for hand quilting. I even ordered one of her rubber thimbles. Has anyone ever tried this? So this will be a longer project, but that is OK. I have a few projects in the works right now, so I can switch around if I get bored. I also have plenty of laundry to fold if I run out of things to do. Really, the laundry is ridiculous!

quality verses quantity

Comments? Not so many. Quantity of comments are low here on the blog. Nonetheless, what really matters is quality right? Lucky for me that's what I got. "Jan in Nagasaki" came in with a late comment to this post which put me on a whole new path with my quilt. I really was stuck and down about how this quilt was coming along. Jan said red. This did not fit in with my original idea and I would never have thought of red. I took about a week to think about red. I started to like it more and more. Soon I was running to the store to get the red for sashing and borders. It's gonna look so cool! It looks so cool! So that's really all it takes sometimes, a few good quality comments. Thanks.
January light also falls into the quality category. It pours into the house in the middle of the day at the most beautiful angle. No leaves on the trees to filter it. Snow on the ground outside makes it bounce around like it does when you're by the ocean. So pretty. Here's Tess playing on the floor in a shaft of light. I was talking on the phone with my mom at the time trying to tell her how pretty it looked. So soon Tess will be up and moving around, but for now she still stays where she's at.

Old ideas coming to life

With so much free time on my hands these days (ha ha!), I thought I'd take on some elaborate projects for 2008. One thought I've always had since starting to quilt is that anything can be made out of a log cabin square. I've started this new small quilt to put this idea into action. I'm just using left over linen from other projects and I really like how it is coming out. It's a very fussy idea and will take a lot of time to complete, but whatever, no rush.
Another idea that I've had for a long time is that it would be really cool to upholster a chair with a quilt. I popped into the local furniture consignment shop last week and found this chair, so I got it. I'm gonna give this idea at try. Jim asked if I know how to upholster furniture. Great question. Do you really need to know how to do something before you do something? Can't I just learn this off the internets? The other thing about this chair is that it will need about 6 yards of fabric. That's a whole lotta quilting. Lots of ideas on how this can be done. I will think on it more while I work on the log cabin quilt.

Painting is NOT flying away

Maria is a little creative machine. She's constantly making, drawing, building, doing something. Shortly before Christmas she was asking if she could do some painting and I was saying "No". Which is pretty much what I've said to this request for a very long time. So messy. I tell her to do painting at school. She said they don't have much painting there. She thinks for a minute and says, "Mama is painting flying away from me?" OK, that's horrible. No, painting should not fly away from anybody, and it really should not fly away from Maria. So, we were very lucky on Christmas morning to open these beautiful paint sets with large canvases sent from my brother. I sat with each of the kids and worked on these for a long time.
Patrick and Maria each spent about 2 1/2 hours on their painting. I helped with mixing the colors, but they did all the painting. Betsy kinda did hers on the fly. Hers was really looking great. See the girl, the apple, the tree? Great composition and movement. Great capture of her drawing style right now. This photo was taken just moments before it "rained". I turned my back to freshen up the water and it "rained" blue spots all over the whole painting. She did it so fast. I wanted to get mad or something, but what was there to get mad about? She loved it. I forgot how narrative kids are with their art at this age. It is never just a painting of a thing, but of events.

New Years Eve Quilt

I finished this quilt late last night, just minutes before midnight. This was my gift for Jim for Christmas. He took a few days off before Christmas, so I was not able to finish in time without him seeing it. I had shown him many of the parts of this quilt, but I don't think he knew that it was going to be put together as a quilt for him.
I used many left over pieces from this quilt. I found the blue linen on clearance at Joann's, and I think it makes the other fabric seen more masculine. About as masculine as lot of floral prints can be at least. In any case, it is a beautiful blue linen with a lot of depth and shine to it, and it is so soft. I went with a design sort of similar to the Stacked Coins quilt in Last Minute Patchwork. Everything went pretty smoothly on this quilt. I tried not to get too fussy or over-think things.

Happy New Year to anyone who has taken the time to stop by and read my blog. It has been fun to share the things that I make and the events of my life here. I've also loved seeing all of the wonderful creations so many other people make and share. It is hard to find people in my real life who share these interests, so starting a blog has been fun. The past few years have been full of many changes for us with moving back to Chicago and having a new baby. It is hard to imagine how our life might change over the next year, but of course it will.

(I was looking for an arty photo image to put here, but I couldn't find one, so I'm going with "kids in the city". This should be resolution #1, take more arty photos.)