Did I Ever Show You What I Did With Those Rail Fences?

No? Oh! I made this lovely little quilt for fellow Clever Mama , Kris. We have this funny habit of bearing children within months of each other. All of our kids have been born within 3 months of each other. Her little girl, Olivia, was 5 weeks premature, and she was in and out of NICU for quite a while. Since she lives so far away, I couldn't do anything to help, so I decided that what I could do was sew a baby quilt and send it as soon as possible. Sew I sewed away, sewing my prayers for Olivia's health and Kris' family's well-being into it as I went. And here was the result. I must say (I know, I almost always say this) its one of my favorite quilts so far. I'm glad I know it went to such an appreciative home.

Here it is all folded:
Here's the back, made in a moment of inspiration on a particularly dull snowy day :


The full view of the front.
Here it is all crinkled up. This is my first time free motion quilting a whole quilt -- finally worked out what why I was having so much trouble with free motion quilting (but that is for another post). I think it looks great -- just don't look too close, the stitching is a little uneven.


And the binding. It took me a long time to figure out what to bind this in, because the front and back are so different. I ended up choosing these oranges, which looked great, especially when contrasted with these brilliant purples and pinks.

This quilt also fits in with my new year's resolution. I took courage and cut into a bunch of my new fabrics that I had just bought for Christmas, along with some older fabrics I had been hoarding for a long time. And I used a simple pattern that I could finish quickly, instead of getting too complicated, trusting that it would still be loved, despite its simplicity.

So there you go. The quilt arrived at Kris' house pretty quickly, but I didn't hear about it for a few weeks (since the Thank You card, ironically, took 3 times as long to get back to me -- must have got caught in a snow storm). By the time I found out they had it, it had been so long that I never got around to blogging about it.

This moment . . . (a little late)

via soulemama .

I have much to say, but rarely the free hands to "say" it lately. We're having busy, messy, chaotic times here right now friends!

This moment . . .

It was one of "those" weeks -- full of sibling conflict and mama frustration. So glad it ended like this.

For more moments, go to soulemama .

Quilt Bug

Quilt Bug
Originally uploaded by pamelalong

Found this photo on the "Fresh Modern Quilts" Group. The photographer says its from a quilt show in Oregon. Isn't it fabulous?

This is What Happens When you try to follow "expert" baby advice . . .

So, at Emma's age its supposed to be good to put them in front of a mirror so they can look at the "baby" in the mirror. Well, I tried. She looked at Aaron

And the book crate

And the quilt

And the big white flowers
Ah well. Can't fault me for trying.

Well, I am in the midst of sewing Aaron's quilt blocks together, but at the back of my mind I kept thinking about this set of blocks sitting in my WIP drawer. So once I got all 90 sets of squares ready to chain piece, I threw this up on the design wall:

Great, isn't it? This is Emma's quilt. And the best part is that I didn't make a single block for it. These are all the work of the International Stash Busting Bee ladies. I sent out the floral fabric you see featured in all the blocks, and I got back this wonderful quilt! All I have to do is stitch them together and finish the quilt! This means I might get her baby quilt done some time soon!

The other thing I just picked up fabric for is curtains. I need to make some new curtains for our big front picture window. The boys finally destroyed our vertical blinds -- they won't open or shut anymore -- and it faces the street so eveyone can presently see in our house, especially at night. After an agonizing two and a half hours in the fabric store trying to find something I liked while wrangling three children, my eye kept getting drawn back to this fabric:

At first I thought it would be too bright and crazy, but I kept coming back to it. So, despite the skeptical looks the lady who cut it gave me when I asked for 8 m of it, I bought it. And when I finally got it home and draped it over the window, I discovered it just lit up our very drab living room. I am kind of relieved the boys finally trashed those horrible beige blinds, really. At first I thought I was going to do tab top curtains, but after considering the logistics of that on about 200" (that's 6m or so) of curtain, I thought I should look for some grommets instead. Anyone know where I can find some of those big, 3" curtain grommets? I'm wondering wether its worth another trip into the "city" to go to Fabricland, or if I should order some online.

When I got this fabric home, I realized it must be a colour scheme that's on my mind, since it co-ordinates with these three metres of organic duck cotton I bought to make fabric baskets:


I have more to say, but I think I may be out of time. I'm not getting a lot of free hands for typing lately. If you want to see the awesome quilt I made for Kris (my fellow Clever Mama )'s new daughter Olivia, you can check it out on Flikr. I may get around to posting about it eventually, but with the way things are going I might not.

Thanks for hanging in there, friends.

Ug, how did this happen?

I really try to only do one major project at a time. In the midst of a big project, I will stitch some mini quilts or quilt bee blocks or soft toys just to break up the process, but I try not to have too much going on, or I start to get scatter brained and feel like I'm overwhelmed and going in too many directions at once.

Right now, however, I have a baby quilt top that needs to be stitched to a backing and a stack of quilt blocks ready to be assembled for a quilt to go on my wall (to brighten it up in the winter, although the winter will be done before this quilt is at this rate)

Plus two stacks of virtual quilting bee blocks waiting to be assembled (these are my lovely Stash Busting Bee blocks -- think I need to make three more to balance them out)

Plus this hanging on my wall, ready to be sewn together before the boys knock it all down. This is Aaron's I-spy quilt. I promised Aaron that his quilt would be next, because he kept asking, "Is this MY quilt, Mommy?" every time I've finished a quilt in the last 6 months. So finally, I am doing his big boy quilt, even though Emma doesn't have a quilt yet.

I think it needs some red, but I don't have any red novelty fabrics, so I'm thinking I'll bind it in red.
Plus, since I've been sewing like mad, but not having time to tidy up between projects I have a giant pile of scraps to sort through
And a few fabrics I've pulled out for various projects that need to go back where they belong:


I just remind myself that one day I will have more self sufficient children and more time. But by then I'll be back to work and embroiled in the kids' lives, so I'm not sure if it will be better or worse than it is now. Ah well. I'm abseloutely NOT going to start anymore major projects until I have these all done . . . except maybe a baby quilt for Emma.

I Think My Head Is About to Explode . . .

I just got all three of these in the mail today. Oh, the projects I want to make! Oh the mind-blowing Japanese goodness -- new techniques and great style! Oh the amazing applique floor pillow! Oh the simple wrap skirt and blouse!

Now, if only I had time to finish all the other things I've started . . . .

This is some little toes peeking out of baby legwarmers snuggled inside my sling. Emma is not a huge fan of the sling, but she does like to sleep in it in the afternoon -- once she falls asleep in my arms. She would prefer for me to just carry her for her two hour nap, but I do have a few other things to do.

We made it through February and the dark is receding. This afternoon the light was warmer and less harsh, which is a first sign of spring around here. The weather has been extra warm, and there are signs of grass, but I'm trying not to take it to heart, since we don't usually melt until mid-April.

Now the goal is to make it through March. March is always hard for me, since everywhere else I've lived it is turning warm and melting, but here we have another month of winter ahead. I think the key is to find a warm hat that Emma is comfortable in (she's not fond of hats -- finniky little thing) so I can take everyone outside.

Our other computer died a few months ago, and Dave is needing quite a bit of computer time these days, so forgive my long absences. I have things to say, and photos to show, but no time for either.

I guess when you're out of energon cubes, Cheerios are the next best thing.

Winter Break

Warning to Kris: the last photo in this post will partially spoil your quilt surprise, so don't look if you don't want to know.

We've been on Winter Break here, which means I've had Andrew home from school for the last week and a half. I was kind of dreading this, since he and Aaron can have their fair share of conflict, and he tends to get antsy and bored when we're home a lot. But Emma is fussy at night if we go out too much during the day, so we've been mostly home bound. The weather has been great, but I can't really take Emma out for long in it, and the boys have decided they "don't like the cold", so we've been essentially hibernating. So what have we done, you ask?

We've made "computers" out of orange boxes


Watched excessive amounts of the olympics (this is Olympic bedtime - Dave's idea)

Set up a restraunt in the basement
Built and rebuilt innumerable lego robots

And, what is bound to become the new perennial favorite game around here:
Pestered our sister.

Discovering Joy, Part 2 - Parenting and Perfectionism

I have never really been a perfectionist. "Good enough" has always been my motto. In my better moments I have striven for excellence and achieved it. In my worse moments, I have done enough to get by and had a lot of fun in the process. I generally have pretty high expectations of myself, and at a young age I realized that I could spend my life anxious and frustrated because I couldn't be perfect, or I could enjoy life, learn to laugh at myself and work enough to get the job done well.

All this changed when I became a parent. I was married 10 years before I took the leap and had children. This was partially because I got married at 18 and wanted to finish university and get a few years of teaching in before I had children. And this was partially because I was terrified that I would be a bad mother. And equally terrified that I would become one of those women who never really recovers from the rigors of motherhood, and goes a little bit odd after having children. I wanted my children to be parented differently than I had been parented, though I wasn't sure exactly what that would look like. I wanted my children to mature into adulthood with no "issues" left over from their childhood, so that they could approach life with a confident attitude and a strong sense of well being and identity.

The problem was figuring out how to do this. I knew several people whose parenting and children I admired followed the ideas behind attachment parenting. So I started researching these ideas, and they seemed sound. When my oldest son was a high needs baby, I was happy to have the skills and ideas I needed to gradually mellow him down into a child who we could all live with. As a baby, this worked pretty well. He was still intense and demanding, but we could all survive.

As he grew, and discipline became important, I started to research a lot about discipline methods and parenting styles. I didn't want to be overly authoritatian, but I didn't want to be too permissive, either. What I seemed to run across a lot was a theory of parenting that essentially asked you to manage the child's circumstances to help them behave, rather than insisting on good behavior and enforcing or allowing consequences. To this end, I spent a lot of time managing Andrew's environment. If he started to misbehave, I figured there must be something wrong with his situation. Did he have to go to the bathoom? Was he hungry? Was he over or under stimulated? What was causing the mischeif? Because he was a very sensitive child, I began to assume that all misbehavior related to his sensitivity, and that if I could just make him comfortable, he would behave perfectly well.

As time went on, however, I realized that this didn't work. First of all, it was making me responsible for his misbehavior. If he was grouchy or demanding, it was my fault for not presenting him with ideal circumstances. If we went somewhere that I could not control when he ate or how much was going on around him, he would be terrible. When he did not get his way, he would purposely act awful until I gave him something to make him feel better. It was a downward spiral. My entire life was wrapped up in making the environment perfect for my child. No time could be spent on my own needs or desires, as that might interfere with my son's needs. And when Aaron came along, I discovered I had created a monster -- a child who had no ability to amuse himself, take care of himself or do anything by or for himself. I had monitored him so closely, he was not even self aware of his own hunger cues. When he went to preschool, it was even worse. He was not used to having to do anything that he didn't want to do, and simply ignored any requests his teacher made that didn't fit with his ideas about the world.

Not only that, but I was stressed out and frustrated when he didn't act the way he was supposed to. After all, I was sacrificing everything -- my career, my social life, my individual interests, my right to sleep, personal space and basic hygene -- for this child. How dare he not respond in the way I asked him to. I was angry and resentful that he would take all that I was doing for him and throw it back in my face.

I had several realizations that helped to free me of this anxiety and perfectionism:

1. Andrew and I are separate individuals. I needed to give him some space, and he needed to give me some space. As two highly sensitive people, we are both very empathic and easily fall prey to enmeshment with other people. I needed to let him be, and teach him how to let me be. This will help him to do this with others later in life.

2. Not ever single, tiny thing I do is going to effect my son for life. One thing that frustrates me about parenting books (which I have generally stopped reading) is that they make your every act as a parent seem so important. If you don't use just the right words and techniques in every situation, your child is destined for depression and failure. I am just not that important in the long run. It is our societal obsession with blaming everything on our circumstances, our parents, and our society rather than taking responsibility for ourselves that has led us to this over-parenting. I needed to help Andrew take responsibility for himself and his emotions and responses, instead of trying to take them on myself.

3. I needed to get my needs met so that I was in a head space to enjoy my children. When my own basic needs for sleep and cleanliness, and the needs of our house to be orderly and run well were not met, I could not really attend to my son. I was in survival mode, and even the littlest thing that went wrong could push me over the edge. I needed to allow myself to take care of myself.

Giving myself a break as a parent, letting myself be a "good enough" parent, was very freeing. It gives me the freedom to enjoy my children, and my life. I know that I am a better parent when I have had a shower and let the boys watch extra tv while I have had a nap. I know that I am happier if I am creative. So I take some time to sew or bake during the day, even though it means the boys have to entertain themselves. I forgive myself for my parenting errors, and take them as lessons on what not to do next time, instead of obsessing about how they will effect my children 20 years from now. In short, I accept that I should approach parenting the same way I have approached everything else: enjoy life, laugh at myself, and work enough to get the job done well.

This is what happens when you try to get a few cute photos of your kids in the morning . . .

Will you be my Cyclops Valentine?

Its Aaron's fault, really. At playgroup last week we were supposed to make a card with one heart on it, with one set of googly eyes and one pom pom nose. Instead he asked me to cut out lots of hearts in various sizes, and put tons of eyes on each one. Then he bent pipe cleaners into assorted sized smiles (think tiny hearts with giant smiles) and glued them on. Unfortunately he destroyed the evidence before I could get a photo.

Andrew was so enamoured with this fantastical work of art that he decided he wanted to do a whole set of googly eyed heart people for his class. So we spent several days this week doing this:


These are Aaron's -- I suggested he make robots, but he just wanted more eye people.


I love the cyclops ones with eyebrows instead of smiles:


Andrew decided that he needed to make "proper" ones for the girls, because they like things to be done right. So all the nice, smiling hearts with the pink and purple pom pom noses are for the girls. All the bizarre heart monsters are for the boys.

I can't wait for the next time I bump into one of the moms of a boy in Andrew's class . . .

Oh, the Whiteness

The snow is white.


The roads are white.


The trees are covered in thick snow -- also white.


The sky -- is it blue? Is it grey? Nope. White too.

Our walls? White.

Our carpet? White (well, theoretically).

The only way to combat this? Playing with some scaldingly bright fabric. Think this will do?

Been Meaning To Mention . . .

Will Scarlet hat
Originally uploaded by davenjilly

these awesome hats I made for the boys for Christmas. I showed them the 1930's version of The Adventures of Robin Hood starring Errol Flynn a few months ago. It is one of my all time favorite movies. This semi-innocent act started out a huge Robin Hood obsession at our house. But seriously, how can you be Robin Hood or Will Scarlet without a proper hat? So the handmade holidays request of the year was medeival hats. I invented these on Christmas eve, and quickly hand stitched them out of wool felt -- this one is out of some purchased wool / acrylic blend, and Andrew's is out of an old green sweater. They are super awesome in person, and have already been out to the grocery store and to A &W. There are a few more photos of Flikr, if you're interested. Just click in from my sidebar.

Which brings me to something Kris commented about on my last post (and one of the reasons I rearranged things on the blog): I often quickly throw some photos on Flikr, meaning to do a full blog post about them later, but then never get around to it. So there are all kinds of odds and bobs over there that never make it here. The Flikr uploader is just a lot more user-friendly than Blogger.

Discovering Joy, Part 1 -- Where I Started.

So, as promised, I'm going to share part of my journey towards joy that has taken place over the last few years. What I've found is not really revolutionary, but rather those sorts of things you tend to forget, and need reminding of.

I realized I had lost my joy one January morning, as I was towing my boys to the library in a toboggan. Although this may seem like a simple enough circumstance, let me give you a larger picture of the scene. Andrew was three and a half, and Aaron was one year old. It was a mild January day, and I didn't have the car, but I wanted to go to story time at the library and get out of the house on the warmest day we had had in weeks. As I set Andrew down in the sled, he got excited and ready for the journey. He was perfectly happy, until I set his brother down in front of him. As soon as I set Aaron down, Andrew decided that he didn't want to sit and hold his brother. He wanted the sled all to himself. So he started to scream. I ignored him and started walking. We got up the road to an intersection and I stopped. I looked back to see that Aaron had stretched himself out, knocking both himself and Andrew over in the sled. Andrew was laying, stiff as a board, screaming. Being an agile one year old, Aaron takes advantage of our lack of movement to roll himself out of the sled and almost onto the road.

I prop the plastic grocery bag of books behind Andrew, hoping to support his back, sit him up in the sled, sit Aaron up in front of him, look both ways and cross the street. As I start down a less sheltered street I realize that although my thermometer says -10, it is more like -18 with the windchill. I think to myself, "These children live in Saskatchewan. They must learn to handle the cold." and keep walking.

I hear a "thump", and the screaming starts again. I turn around to see that, like dominos, Aaron has pushed Andrew over, who has pushed the bag of books out of the sled. The books are strewn about on the snowy ground. I stop to pick them up, and Aaron rolls out of the sled. I sit on the snow, put Aaron on my lap, and start picking up the library books.

I sit Andrew up in the sled, put the library books in front of him this time, and lean Aaron against the library books. Andrew complains the books are too heavy, and starts screaming. Aaron, fortunately, is happy and sits up looking around. It starts snowing. Not those soft, fluffy Christmas movie snowflakes, but the little, sharp ice crystals that are blown into your face by the cold wind. I stop to adjust everyone's scarves to cover their faces. Aaron flips himself out of the sled. Andrew kicks the library books out of the sled . . . and so it goes. All the way to the library. And all the way home.

By the time we are leaving the library, I am furious. I am screaming back at my three year old. I feel like shaking my one year old as I put him in the sled for the ten thousandth time. Tears are freezing on my red, windblown cheeks. I wonder why other parents can just pile their children into a sled, throw all the books on top of them and hike 10 miles through a blizzard and I can't even make it to the library and back.

Thinking back now, I wonder why I didn't just laugh to myself, realize it was a ridiculous situation, and turn around when I was a block from home. Why was it so important to get my kids into the fresh air and off to the library. Why did I feel like it was critical to their future well being to be able to ride together in a sled? What made it such an important test of my motherhood?

I didn't used to be like that. I have always been a fun loving, adventure seeking person. I chose my major in university because it was my passion (English Lit) and my minor because it sounded fun and had less reading than History (Theatre). When I was 20ish years old, my friend Grace and I took turns pushing each other, in a shopping cart, through all the drive thrus in town, just to see if they would serve us. I had a girl at work once tell me, "You don't drink because you don't need to get drunk, Jill. You don't have any inhibitions." I have always been known for my good nature and keen sense of the absurdity in life. And although I also have a serious side, it has never been a facade. I have always enjoyed finding the joke in the midst of the most serious situation, and savoring every moment for all it is worth.

But somehow, when I needed those traits the most, they seemed to have abandoned me. Motherhood had sucked all the joy, wonder and fun out of my soul. In the midst of a time when most people rediscover the wonders of childhood joy, I was grumpy, tired and fed up.

Snow Day

Outside:
The digging out was taking place, so we could stock up on groceries before Dave left.

For reference, Dave is 6'3".

The snow fort building started.

Inside:
I took advantage of this

to do this.

I must say, I haven't done strip piecing since my very first quilt. It is very satisfying.