The fun is in the details.

When I feel like doing something, and I have a free minute, I sew. It often seems like a trade off, that if I update my blog, then that's taking time away from sewing. I also tackled some projects that will be taking me a long time to finish, so I don't have much progress to show. I've been spending most of my sewing time hand quilting Maria's quilt. I am using the Thimblelady's thimble and I really like it. I ordered the plastic one, and it works great. I don't really have much experience with any other thimble, but I do like this one, and would never use any other.

But with all this sitting and quilting with the end just barely in sight, I started to daydream about the satisfaction of completion. This quilt was not going to be done fast enough to scratch that itch, so I started a new doll. She was going to be for a birthday present for a friend of the girls', but I had a change of heart. It took about 6 hours to do the hair alone, and the birthday was coming up too quick. Betsy named her Lucy Anna. Here she is sitting on the Maria quilt.

Here's more of Lucy Anna looking cold, because it is still freezing cold here in Chicago.

Maria did decide to go the handmade route for a gift. Every few months she tries to do some embroidery, but it has never gone too well. Too many knots and tangles for her to do it independently. This week it was different. Maria is no slacker when it comes to fine motor skills, attention span, and most importantly artistic talent. It's not that I'm bragging (it's my blog, I can if I want to anyway), but she really is something. So I set her up with some muslin, a hoop, and some thread to get started. She drew her design with a water soluble pen. She did all the sewing, and I threaded the needle and tied knots as needed. At one point she said, " If I make big stitches, it goes really fast." I said to her that if she makes smaller stitches it will look much better. She continued to work for a little more and then said, "If you do big stitches you miss out on all the fun of sewing." What a great attitude! We picked out some fabrics to go with her design and then made it all into a pillow. I totally tried everything to get her to keep the pillow, but she insisted on giving it away as a gift. She doesn't get her nice from me apparently. But look at how cute this pillow is! Not bad for a five-year-old.

Catching up

I've been quiet lately. There's been a few things I've worked on over the past few weeks so I'll try to bring you up to date.
There was Valentine's day, which involved over 60 cards that needed to be made for the kids to bring to school. I know it's a Hallmark holiday, but I love the crafting potential of Valentines Day. After Halloween, it is my second favorite crafting holiday. We made these fridge magnets to give out with the cards. They are made with 1 1/2" glass floral beads. I cut out little circles of fabric scraps and the kids used Mod Podge to glue the fabric to the back of the bead. Then we stuck magnets to the back. They looked so cute I wanted to eat them.
Mostly I've been working on Maria's quilt. I started this quilt to give to her for comfort during a time when she was feeling very afraid of the dark. I often try to find ways to craft my way out of a problem. She's long gotten over the fear, but it did help me feel like I was "doing" something about it. I got sort of fussy with the back and made these pieced panels to go across the top and bottom. I used every single last triangle scrap I had left over from the front of the quilt. I sewed them all together, and then I sewed them together, and then I sewed them together and then I sewed them to the back fabric. As easy as that. Except that it took forever! (This picture shows the point when I had them sewn together, but before they were sewn together.)

I am just starting to get comfortable with how long certain aspects of sewing really take in order for things to come out looking decent. You have to use pins. You have to iron. Basting is important. I'm a slow worker, so I often try to figure out if I could do something faster to speed things along a little. I'm never as happy with the results or I end up going back and re-doing things which only makes things take longer.

My hands have been very full with little Tess. She's all over the place now and her personality is growing everyday. She is such a charmer! Not so sleepy, but really cute. I'm trying to capture more of her on video than I did with the other kids. I have very little memory of when Betsy or Maria were this age. It is all such a blur. It all happened so fast. I was so eager for them to get just a little older, a little more manageable, that I didn't take the time to commit all these special moments to memory. They are probably there somewhere in the old photo albums. Remember photo albums? I never even get prints made anymore. In college I was a photo major for awhile. I loved the darkroom and black and white photography. I took all the large format classed the University of Illinois had to offer. The whole digital photo thing came on so fast, I think black and white printing is soon to be (if not already) a lost art. Here's a little memory I don't want to forget, because I don't think there is anything cuter than a baby in a sinkbath saying her first words.


Within this post are roughly 7 facts about me. Janet Clare tagged me in a recent post, so I thought I would play along. The catch is that I should tag someone else. What she did not realize when she named me, was that I think I might be the very last person in all of blogland to get the tag. Or am I? Is there someone out there who has not done this AND is reading my blog, well I'd love to hear from you. Consider yourself tagged!

Before my very eyes

Each day at home with four young children can be monotonous and seem the same, but at the same time they change so fast. It is hard to keep up. Look what's happening this week. Patrick and Tess are so much alike. When I look at these two pictures I see so much sweet pride in each of their eyes. They have no idea how proud I am of them.

Fun WIP

I mentioned this quilt a while back, and I thought I would post a WIP shot because it is fun to see it come together. Everytime I make a few new blocks I spread it all out to see how it looks. Each block will be 2 1/2 inches square. They are rather fussy, with some taking me 30-40 minutes to complete (yes, I do time myself when I do this stuff). In the end there will be 96 total squares, but not all of them so fussy. Can you tell what it is going to be? I looks very obvious to me.

wool sweater slippers

Would you like a warm pair of felted wool slippers? Let me show you how to make some real fast. Some of the things you will need: felted sweater, old jeans, embroirdery floss, paper backed fusible webing, sewing machine and basic sewing things (like scissors, thread pins).
Start with an old wool sweater. Run it through a hot wash then a hot dryer a couple of times to get it good and felted. Turn sweater inside out and stick your foot into the sleeve with the cuff around your ankle.
Trace the outline of your foot with a pencil, marker, chalk or whatever you have that will show up on wool. I used a chalk pencil. Then pin on both sides of the lines to hold everything in place.
Cut the sleeve off of the body of the sweater and sew along the line you just drew.
Trim close to the sewn line with pinking sheers.
Turn right side out and repeat all these steps with the other foot in the other sleeve.
So now you have two sock/slippers and you could stop right there and get your feet warm. But let's keep going and make these a little more durable. Take a sheet of paper backed fusible web and trace your feet. Cut these out roughly and iron to the wrong side of some old jeans.
Cut out along the lines and peel the paper off very carefully. Put the gluey/webby side of the denim feet against the bottom of the wool socks. Spray with some water and press with a hot iron.
Now, the glue of the fusible web is not going to stick so hard to the wool, so get out some embroidery floss and buttonhole stitch all the way around denim.
Boom! You're done.

"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.)

Christmas Angel

Phew! Christmas is done! What a fun, exciting holiday, but I have to say the day after was the most enjoyably relaxing for me. Waking up and thinking that there was nothing that I "had" to do was a pretty good feeling. With all these kids, the holidays start about 3 weeks before Halloween and don't stop until now. I love it, don't get me wrong. There were so many things I wanted to do, but just didn't get to. Maybe next year, or some other year. You don't have to do every holiday "tradition" every year, some traditions will have to be rotated.
I didn't make a lot of Christmas presents this year, but I knocked myself out on the few that I did make. For my parents I made this angel. Dolls are so much fun. When I started getting close to finishing her I realized that I would have to put her in the mail and send her away. How sad! She might get cold, or worse, lost! So I prolonged my stay with her for as long as possible by making her a little doll quilt to keep her warm. All the material I used for her I had on hand from other projects.

I used white linen for her dress that was left over from a dress I made for the girls this last summer. I did a quick little embroidery around the hem with a herringbone stitch and some french knots. It looked so pretty that I wanted to keep doing more embroidery on the dress, but sometimes less is more. The buttons are actually beads sewn down to conceal snaps.


I considered some different face ideas, but I decided to go with an embroidered face like I used on these dolls. Those dolls have become such familiar part of our everyday life, that I thought it would be nice for my mom and dad to have a doll so similar. The hair is done with yarn sewn down to the head. I must say, I think I do a really good job with hair. I don't know how other people do it, so I've figured out a way on my own and it looks great. If anyone is interested I could do a step by step explanation sometime. Let me know.


The wings were made from silk left over from a Halloween costume. I have made wings so many times, but I always spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to do them. For these, I wanted them to have a feathery look, but real feathers weren't right. I used some funky, furry, feathery-like yarn and crocheted a long strip. I made a sandwich that went silk-feather strip-silk-batting. I sewed them together, leaving a small opening, and then turned batting to the inside. Again, less is more, and I decided to not try and quilt feather patterns on the wings.

The quilt is made from more of the white linen and some vintage fabric that might be feedsack, but I'm not sure. I embroidered a small heart in each white square to quilt it. It looks super cute all together with the doll. Sort of Christmasy, but hopefully not so much that she can't be enjoyed at other times of the year.

I worked on another Christmas gift all month, but it is still not done. A quilt for Jim. It still needs to be quilted. I need to go in and clean up the living room with all it's wrapping paper, boxes and presents everywhere and turn the room back into my sewing room.

I'm an idiot

My only excuse is that I've been really, really tired. That is still totally lame and this is something that will keep coming back and bothering me. I left Maria's name off of our Christmas cards. How stupid is that? Very! And embarrassing too. As if Maria could ever be forgotten. I was so impressed with myself for even getting the cards done. Thinking I had everything under control. I suppose it comes as little surprise to anyone who reads this blog that I have very poor proofreading skills. But really now it's like I've just sent out this card to everyone I know making it perfectly clear that I'm an idiot. So I'm hiding the cards from Maria because I can't bear to think of how she might feel if she sees one without her name on it. It could make a five-year-old girl feel pretty bad I think. If anyone would like to share an embarrassing story, I would love the company.

I've got some really great crafty things to put up soon, but they're not ready yet. I'm also thinking of doing a little recap of the year from a family perspective sometime after Christmas. I think this blog, over time, will make a nice record of some of the things that go on in our lives. I really want to do a better job of keeping up to date with the posts. As I look back over them I see some holes that I would like to fill in. So I think a recap might be nice. Stay tuned.

It's not always easy.

I've been struggling with my crafting lately. Probably why I haven't been inspired to post much. First it was this quilt I'm working on for Maria. I need to learn that if I am not going to follow patterns, then I need to deal when I'm not happy with the outcome. So far the pattern, or lack of, is looking bad. We have 16 windows in our house that look like this. They are beautiful old wavy glass windows and I love the "on point" diamond. So unique. I thought it would be great to make a quilt that kinda reflects that design. I like that it would add a layer of meaning to the pattern choice. All I see when I look at it, though, are Y seams that would be hard to sew on my sewing machine. Then I thought I could break up that middle diamond into 4 triangles sewn to the corner of 4 squares. I think the general idea is maybe ok, but the fabrics don't pull it off. Solids would work much better, maybe. So, I'm a little stuck and am trying to sew my way out.

I needed a quick project. I decided my big headed baby girl needed a new hat because it is getting cold. I wanted to knit. Could I crochet a hat very quickly? Yes, but I wanted a knit hat. Could I find free patterns online for knit hats? Yes, but I wanted to create my own idea. So I stormed ahead without a clue what I was doing. I pulled out many attempts for many reasons. Here is one try where I thought that this shape would make a bonnet if I sewed those seams together. Well it didn't.
Finally I got my head around how to do the back. Decreases. Duh! It still didn't fit because her head is so big, so I add more around the bottom and made the I-cord for a tie under her chin.
Finally it fits!
I know it may sound like I'm complaining as I work through my thought process. I usually don't tackle my projects because they are easy. I want and enjoy the challenge of trying to do things my own way.

Tess is not feeling well right now and we are not getting any sleep. I feel so tired all the time. It makes it hard to stay focused on what I need to be doing to get ready for Christmas. I feel all guilty that so many people are making so many of their gifts. I just can't do it. I can't even think of gifts I want to buy. My brain is mush.

She'll thank us when she's older.

Fall Quilt

Wa-hoo! I've been working and not working on this quilt since the end of summer. I came across the Martha Negley fabrics at Reprodepot and I loved them. They looked like the colors of the end of summer. They looked like fall, but not in the regular fall colors. I loved the oak leaves with the blue background. It reminded me so much of looking up through the scrub oaks in Cape Cod. Most of the fabric is Martha Negley, but there is also some Joel Dewberry fabric, a little Fresh Cut fabric from my last quilt, and maybe a few others. The solid color is a natural colored linen/cotton blend.

It's a wonky flying geese design. I was inspired by this quilt that I saw on Flickr from a quilt show in Japan I think. I mean that quilt is crazy beautiful. Way beyond. I've always liked flying geese and so I thought I'd give it a go in my own way. I drew the designs on foundation paper and pieced the quilt that way. I don't know if this is any faster or what, but it worked for me and it is what I'm comfortable with. I became very familiar with foundation paper when I did this quilt so I often come back to this technique when I want to try something new. I had made a pieced border to go all around it, but I didn't like the way it looked. I almost put it on because it was always in my plan, and I felt like I was wimping out by not using it. It really didn't work though. Made it look too hippy and that is not what I was going for. I still have the border and have a whole new quilt idea for it which I think is going to be cool.

Speaking of wimping out, the quilting. I really just wanted the quilt done. The weather is getting cold and I want a blanket to put over me at night on the couch. Simple machine outline inside the triangles and inside the long blank panels. I don't know if this minimal quilting will come back to haunt me later on down the road. I hope it all stays together. The way I figured was that if quilts can stay together with ties, then mine should be fine. I also thought I could finish it now and then add more quilting later if I wanted. Again, I don't know if this is a good idea or not.

I'm really tired right now. Tess is not sleeping too great at night and so I don't feel like proofreading this post at all.

Don't throw away the PB catalog that is coming in your mail today.

I saw this wonderful idea for a dollhouse here the other day, and I couldn't wait to try it with my girls. We do a lot of magazine cutting and glue sticking, so I knew this would be a fun and do-able project for us. I was so tempted to go way over the crafty top with this idea, but the beauty of the project is in it's ease. We made two small houses, one for each girl. We cut 4 strips of cardboard about 18"x 11". Then we cut a slit from the center of the long edge to the middle of each board and then slid them together like a cross. I gave each girl some catalogs and let them start cutting for about a half hour. We had the best luck with the Pottery Barn and PB Kids catalogs for images. Then we started gluing. If you have ever wanted to decorate a home like Pottery Barn, this is a strangely satisfying without the price tag. This was a "do together" activity with my four-year-old. It would have been a nice "do alone" for my five-year-old, if I weren't so over-bearing and wanting to "help". I should have just made one for myself. Very fun! Thank you Elsie Marley.

And now for some thoughts on the baby. She's rolling. She has been able to do it for awhile now, but it is much more frequent now. I pretty much find her on her belly every time I lay her on the floor. When I watch her do it, though, it is hard to tell if she wants to roll over. It kinda seems like her muscles start contracting and arms flailing and the next thing she knows, she's on her belly. And then she usually starts crying, but not always. See :)

Halloween is fun.

Here's my enthusiastic Halloween fans. What a fun holiday for the kids. It was just all fun, games, parades, candy, parties and more all day long. All four of the kids held up great and had a great time. Jim is the one in the big red "star trooper" outfit. We didn't really know what to call him, but it was a lot fun for the kids and adults alike. Yesterday Tess went with the flow for all the festivities, but she is not dealing well today. I need to go tend to her. The glass in the house might shatter if she cries any louder.

This is just a short cliip of the flower fairies in action. It was very hard to keep up with them.