Twin Quilts

One of our oldest friends -- a friend of mine from band and ISCF in highschool -- has nobly kept in touch with us for years and years. He is in Fort McMurray now, and has a lovely wife, two older boys and recently . . . identical twin boys!
I decided that identical twins don't want identical quilts. The funny thing about twins is that they are genetically identical, but they are never the same.

I think it is because our personalities are this amazing mix between our biological make up and our soul. So, identical twin have one part the same, and one part different. With that in mind, I made these quilts sort of the same, but not.

Most of the fabric is from "On a Whim 2", along with some co-ordinates that came in a couple of Fabricworm.com baby quilt kits. I bought the dino fabric and the blue and yellow dots separately when I thought I had more time to make the quilts, and had a more complex plan. The first quilt is a little darker and possibly more expressive.

The other is a little quieter, and possibly more reflective in nature. It also has a David Walker fat quarter I had drifting around.

Two little play quilts for two little babies. The backings (as you can see above) are tone on tone birds from the On a Whim collection in two different colour ways. The darker quilt has a light beige, while the lighter quilt has a dark brown for contrast. I was in a hurry, so they are pillowcase flipped and then quilted in straight lines. Because they were already bound, this created a little bit of puckering at the bottom. Next time I think I will do what I did here and make the quilt the right size to just wrap the backing over and bind it on the front.

Anyway, they ended up at about 32" x 44", a nice little play quilt size. I think they're pretty happy and cute. I really do love this simple quilt layout -- these are my third and fourth quilt using this simple plan, and I think I'll be using it again in the future. It is such a nice way to display cute novelty prints and play with fabric.

Moments to Cherish

We got they boys new sleeping bags today. Of course, they had to try them out the instant they saw them, so they listened to their afternoon stories in the living room, in the sleeping bags. I told them "no snack in the living room", as this morning Aaron had taken strawberries into the living room and rather than putting the tops in a bowl, he had wrapped them up in a quilt (reminder to self: the next couch quilt needs to have less white). I was trying to finally get the dishes washed, and so I pretended not to notice when he snuck into the kitchen and grabbed the box of Corn Flakes. But when I peeked around the corner and saw this, I just had to take a photo:

I was taking photos of Emma making a mess of her food in typical baby fashion when Andrew asked if he could use the camera. He said, "I want to take a picture of you, Mom, because you're so beautiful".
As you can see, I'm actually rather tired and in need of a haircut, but it was sweet none the less.
We were eating chips and guacamole for an afternoon snack, and Andrew heard that Dave was on his way home to barbeque. He put together this "platter" for Dave to snack on -- a giant pile of ham (Andrew loves ham), the guacamole we had been eating earlier (Dave hates it, but I love it) and the crazy PC chips Dave brought home earlier (General Pao Chicken or some such silliness).
Emma is a late night kind of girl. She's a night owl, just like her mama. She loves to be up until midnight, and sleep until 10 or so. I love the quiet, just us time we get to have late at night. Often she's not even fussy; she just wants to play when there's no one tugging on her legs or sticking things on her head at random intervals.



It is sweet to watch her as she practices crawling, standing, sitting, cruising, sitting, crawling, sitting, grabbing, shaking, sucking, throwing, crawling . . . in that very deliberate way babies have.
Its usually cute until about 11:30. Then I start wearing thin . . .

Update

I have really been absent from this place lately, haven't I? I've made a few things, but I don't have the images here -- they're on my camera in Montreal. As for doing things, well, I just had to buzz out to Montreal and write an English test and check out a few things, and Dave is out there now finding us a house, and we've been trying to pack and clear stuff out a little at a time in between taking care of all the kids, plus I had my two end of the year youth group things, and a summer cold has been running through the family (Aaron's got a bad sinus infection at the moment and we're going to have to visit the doctor on Monday for some antibiotics if things don't clear up by then). Its been a couple of months where you think about something that seems like it happened forever ago and then realize it was only last week.

Anyway, yes, I am still here, but I rarely have time to type -- someone is generally on my lap or in my arms or my hands are full of things to fold, pack, cook or clean. Its just one of those stages in life, I guess. When I get free arms to type (right now I have had two out of three of the littles on my lap in rotation, and the only reason the third one hasn't taken a turn is because she's sleeping) I shall, I promise, friends.

Stash Busting International Finale

I've got behind on posting about my Stash Busting Bee blocks. Fortunately I didn't get that far behind on making them! The last few blocks have been kicking my butt, but I've finished them all with only a few mishaps.

This was the April block. We were supposed to make one 12" block made of 1" finished blocks. Yes, that is 144 squares. Because of my new mommy status, I agreed to make two smaller blocks and someone else in the bee made two to match. Here's my two:


The next month was another block with lots of 1" squares. I was so worried about the strips not being big enough that I made the seam allowances scant. When you take away a 1/16th of an inch from enough squares, you end up with . . . an extra inch worth of fabric. So if you look closely you'll see that I had to cut off some of my fabrics to make the block work.

On the bright side, I love the colours I chose for this block, and I love the grey fabric and the design that Little Miss Shabby chose for this. It really is going to be a stunning quilt. I must find out where she got that grey.


For our last month of June we did the same block as in March, but we used all blues and greens. This block is pretty easy to piece, but I always find that putting all the blocks in the right place give me a bit of trouble, and some pulling apart and re-positioning is always in order. Anyway, I'm happy with the finished result.


Whew! So that's it. I'm done my Quilting Bee. This was a lovely group of ladies to sew with, and twelve really fabulous quilts are going to come out of this. I can't wait to see them all put together.

I think that's going to be it for me for Quilting Bees for a while. I really enjoy getting to know people and stretching my creativity. But I have a list as long as my arm of sewing for myself and my home that I'd like to get done, and that's not including anything I might like to make for the new house, or other personal projects I might take on. So as much as I have fun doing quilting bees, I think I'm out of that world for a while (unless of course a really fabulous offer that I can't refuse comes along . . . ).

In any case, thanks so much, Stash Busting Bee International Ladies! Its been fun.

Revisiting Narnia

Narnia has always held a special place in my heart. Other than Winnie the Pooh and Alice in Wonderland, the Chronicles of Narnia were my first introduction to the chapter book. I have fond memories of sitting on my Dad's lap as he read them aloud to me when I was young, and more fond memories of reading them again (and in some cases, again) to myself as I grew older. Not only did they start my life long obsession with all things both medieval and fantastic, but C.S. Lewis' picture of God, as expressed in the character of Aslan, has often guided my own ideas about God. "He's not at all a tame lion, you know." While the stories of the Bible, especially of Jesus, can be strange a puzzling to a young child, what young child doesn't want to visit Mr. Tummus, have dinner with Mr. and Mrs. Beaver, and get to ride on Aslan's back and nuzzle their head in his soft mane?

You can imagine how excited I was when Andrew decided he wanted to read them, and actually had the attention span and comprehension to enjoy them! To be honest, I did bribe him a little. I promised I would let him watch the first two movies after he read the books, and that we would go and see The Voyage of the Dawn Treader together at Christmas. But once he started into the books he was hooked.

He had to find out what happened to Mr Tumnus. He wanted to know if the White Witch would die and how the children would get back to earth. As we finished the first book, he said, "How do you think they get into Narnia in the next book, Mom?". He wanted all the books pulled down off the shelf and he has been walking around with them asking me to explain every illustration in every book (I only read the Last Battle once, so I don't actually remember anything about it, except being disappointed at how little Lucy was in it). So we're already six chapters in to Prince Caspian and he's begging for more.

Funniest of all, he decided to use his Playmobil to do a Narnia set-up. About five minutes in, after Peter and Edmund and Caspian had been properly armoured, and the plastic lion had been fished out of the animal bin, he complained, "Mom, we don't have any fauns or centaurs or minotoars. How am I supposed to do a Narnia set up without fauns? And we don't have any girls. Or dwarfs . .. ".

In any case, I'm glad to say that as an adult, Lewis' writing still mesmerizes. He really was a master of creating just enough drama and suspense to keep children interested without being too scary. He often describes things carefully, but in just enough detail so that you have to fill in with your imagination. They are wonderful books, and I'm glad to be reading them again.

Bittersweet

Watching my oldest boy and his best friend walk hand in hand on a school outing, and knowing they will not be together in two months.

Seeing my baby learn to crawl, and realizing that my youngest is moving away from me, slowly but surely, already.

Enjoying joking with my youth group kids at the last youth event I will do with them.

Clearing out the supplies I have gathered from four years of Art Camp, and putting them in the Sunday School closet for future teachers to use. Telling parents whose kids have attended for 4 years that, no, there is no Art Camp this year.

Sorting through baby clothes and giving away those I know I won't use.

Giving books back to friends.

Andrew's last day of Kindergarten.

Aaron's first day riding his brother's old bike.

Boys playing outside, without me, for most of the day.

Packing up, moving on, saying goodbye, planning for the future. Leaving this certain, present moment for an uncertain, uprooted future.

Breathing. Focusing on the present; on that next step forward. What must I do now? And now? And now?

Just In Case you were Worried . .

no, I'm not in the part of Saskatchewan that has had all the flooding. Yep, we've had a lot of rain here, but I'm further North. Its not quite so flat here, so we're not as bad off.

I'm just busy, busy, busy. And also I just got Project Runway Season Six in the mail. Which Dave and I have been watching every night and has been seriously cutting into my blogging time. Quality couple time, I tell you. Really.

Little bit more Girl Sewing

I decided that Emma needed a mama made dress. For no reason other than that it made me happy to make it. I started out just wanting to make some bloomers for her to wear under some of the dresses she already has. But once I had the fabric cut, I realized I had enough to make a matching dress. Well, obviously it was all downhill from there.

This is the simple dress from Lotta Jansdotter's Simple Sewing for Baby. I shortened the pattern about 3 inches, since she's little, and started sewing. I decided that this yellow was going to be too busy and yet not busy enough by iteself, and I happened to have the pink floral sitting there for another project. I realized that it would match, sort of, and add some interest to the dress. But when I laid it on top of the fabric, I realized I needed something else to make it pop.

So I pulled out this magenta fabric, and once I had finished the applique, I decided that the magenta needed to re-appear. I decided to reverse the bias binding so that it was on the outside of the arms instead of tucked inside the arms. I had originally planned to do the same on the neck, but once I had the arms on, I thought that would be too much magenta, so I put the binding on the neck properly, and I think the bit of magenta peeking out is just right.


I think it looks adorable, Emma has had many compliments on it, and she loves it because it is so comfortable and easy to move in. So everyone is happy. And I am definitely sensing a new sewing addiction coming on . . .

Emma's Quilt update

So, in the end I decided that the magentas were too busy and not matching enough with the front of the quilt. There is so much going on in all the lovely blocks in the front that I didn't want to take away from it. I'm sure Emma has years of magenta sewing requests ahead of her, so I'm not too worried. Instead, I opted for using big cuts of three fabrics:

The green is my favorite print from the Lantern Bloom collection, and this is the only metre I have. The purple is by one of my favorite designers, Tina Givens, and I can't remember the name of the collection. I actually ordered this piece to make a purple, tuquoise and green picnic quilt, but I loved this fabric so much I opted to keep it instead. The pink butterflies are from MoMo's Wonderland. I have a few half yard cream cuts, and this is one of my favorites. Anyway, it is still bright and colourful, but it works better.

I had a few thoughts about quilting this. First I thought I was going to follow some of the squares in each block, but so many of them are wonky (at my request) or pieced out of lots of lovely little bits, that I decided against it. Then I was going to machine quilt it in straight, narrow lines, but again, I didn't want to take away from what's already there. So I've opted to hand quilt it -- my second attempt ever. I tried it for part of this quilt way back in my early quilting days, but it took a long time to hand quilt around all those fish, so I haven't tried again since.
I chose this nice, bright blue thread. This colour looks great on Emma, and it really pops against the oranges and pinks in this quilt, which I think is fun. So far the hand quilting is half-done. I'm quilting this to Victorian-themed movies. Last night was Alice in Wonderland, tonight (or possibly tomorrow night) is The Young Victoria.

Speaking of which, why is Victorian England so cool all of a sudden? Not only those two movies, but also Sherlock Holmes this year in the movies, plus Steampunks, and all those ruffles and high necklines drifting around . . . I wonder what is resonating with people about Victorian England? A return to propriety? A fun era to make films about subverting authority and structure? Cool fingerless gloves? The last era where men looked really dapper? A flowering of arts and technology? Is Victorian England pre- or post-industrial (I can't remember)? What do you think?

Blogger's Quilt Festival -- Star Play Quilt

Hi! Welcome to the Blogger's Quilt Festival! If you've made it all the way to my post -- number six hundred and something -- your fortitude is amazing (and you should probably go to bed now)!

I'd like to show you all my favorite quilt of the year -- this star quilt.
This quilt started as a test star block for a virtual quilting bee. I hung it on my inspiration board and looked at it for three or four months. I loved the colours and the pattern, so eventually I decided to gather some of my favorite scraps and make some more.

I worked on the star blocks in between other projects, pieced here and there over about two months. I really liked this quilt by Jaquie and so I framed my blocks with some lovely chandalier fabric I had been saving for something special. Then I was at an impasse:

What to do next? Lay them next to each other? Put more brown and yellow around them? Sash them in blue? White? Straight? Wonky? I put the call out on Flikr and a few of my Flikr friends chimed in. I decided to lay them unevenly and sash them in white. Then I added the borders -- I didn't have enough to use any one print for my borders, so I improvised and made a double thin and thick border in a log cabin style. I didn't realize when I cut this out that this would involve some tricky set in seams, but I thin it was worth it for the effect. That red peony fabric is one of my favorites ever, and I used up all that I had to make the border.

This quilt is special to me for several reasons. It is my most original, improvised large quilt so far. I usually just play with mini quilts for swaps, but do simple, safe designs like squares or rectangles for my larger quilts. This was my first time taking a lot of inspiration from different sources and making them my own, and I am so happy with the results.

The other reason this quilt is special is because I did most of the stitching during the last three months of my pregnancy with my daughter. I made this for us to snuggle under during late night nursings on the couch and for her to play with on the floor. I finished it about four days before I gave birth to her, so the timing was perfect. All through the long winter when the sun is low and cool in the sky, this quilt kept me feeling warm and cheered.

And this quilt has been our living room quilt, making it the go to quilt for everything. As I was looking through my photos of the last year to choose a quilt for this quilt festival, this one kept appearing everywhere:

We all use it every day. And that is the main reason why I enjoy quilting. I like to make quilts for my family and friends (and once in a while even for me) that can become a part of the fabric of their daily lives. Quilts that will bring warmth and joy into people's lives. I want to make quilts that they will use until they are threadbare and well worn.

So that is my favorite quilt of the year. My happy quilt. Hope you like it as much as I do. To see over 500 other great quilts, go here:



Enjoy the rest of the festival, everyone!

New Pants!

What do you do when your three year old wakes EVERYONE up super early, including the baby, and her clothes are wet and you only have the energy to grab the nearest tank top to put on her, and discover that it is this ridiculously cute ruffle tank? Make baby pants, of course!

These are just right for Emma right now! I hemmed them a little shorter than the pattern, and they just hit her ankle when she's sitting. This means they will protect most of her leg from the bad spring mosquitos.
She seems pretty happy with them. You can sort of see in this photo, but the repeat on the fabric ended up being just the same size as the pants pattern, so the fabric repeats all the way around the pants. Yay for big Amy Butler prints!


They are also just slippery enough for scootching / crawling (we're just figuring out the former and hopefully she'll be slower than Aaron was) without being too slippery.
And they just fit over a cloth diaper. I was a little sloppy with the elastic casing, its actually supposed to be higher. But I guess if I need another pair to be a bit bigger, I can always add a gusset.

I think there will be a lot more of these in Emma's future. What's not to love about cute, hand made pants in 20 minutes?

I-spy quilt

I finally finished Aaron's quilt! And I must say I am rather proud of it.
Here it is decorating the tree house. Aaron really loves this quilt. He just found the jungle print and the owls on the back:

which led him to exclaim, "Oh, I like you Mom. I like you most of all. Thanks for stitching everything together on my quilt mom. I like it. I like you the most." This was accompanied with many hugs and face pats. That stripe is from Heather Ross' famed Lightening Bugs fabric line. It is ridiculously soft and light, and I picked it up before everyone started going crazy for this fabric on clearance for $4 a yard. The jungle fabric was snatched in a quilting shop closeing sale for the same price. (Although there is nothing more depressing than discovering the most awesome quilt shop on the prairies two days before it closes). Anyway, I had been saving them for this quilt back for a long time, and I'm glad I did because they are a nice mix of cute and soft and snuggly.

It is 5" finished squares laid out in diagonal rows, inspired by this lovely quilt on Flikr. I was a little worried about the lack of red squares, especially since there was so much red in so many of the fabrics. Binding it with red seems to have been the perfect solution -- it really makes the red in the squares pop, but did not require the accumulation of lots more red fabrics or a change in the layout of the quilt.

It is 60" X 75" and will be just the right size for quite a while. It is also the right size to share with all your friends while watching a movie, even if your mom isn't quite finished binding it yet.
Boy, its nice to finally have this one done! I love the satisfaction of making things for my own family.

Dear People of my Town:

Yes, it is true that I am moving. Yes, I am excited. No, I don't know where I'll be living or what kind of job I'll be doing. Yes, I do know that there will be traffic and I'm actually not worried about it. No, I don't know all the details of how we are going to move -- it is two and a half months away. Yes, I have moved across the country before and I know it is complicated. No, I don't need you to talk out all the details with me and "help" me figure them out or "remind" me of details I may have forgotten. In fact, it would be best if you just moved on and stopped obsessing about how I am going to move. I can handle it. The move, the city, the kids. Really. Its okay. It is possible to move somewhere else. Honest.

This and that

Well, there haven't been many craft photos recently, because I'm sort of in the middle of several big projects. The first is this quilt of Aaron's. You see, every time I've finished a quilt for the last eight or nine months, he's asked, "Is THIS one for me, mom?" And I've had to say no. So after Olivia's quilt, I promised him that the next quilt I finished would be his quilt. Of course, I've also been playing around with Emma's quilt, and I also promised my friend a picnic quilt in time for the nice weather (that would be last week) so I've gradually piecing that one, too. So instead of working on one or possibly two quilts at a time I find myself working on three quilts plus quilt blocks for my quilting bee, plus curtains. This means when I go down to sew in my precious few moments of sewing time, I spend about 20 min. deciding what to work on, about 10 min. sewing, and then the baby wakes up / gets bored / a fight breaks out / someone gets hungry or has an accident and that's the end of my sewing time.

Fortunately, Aaron's quilt now looks like this:
All basted and half quilted. In fact, last night I finished the quilting, so I just have to bind it now. This is such a cute, cheery quilt and he loves it and keeps asking, "Can I sleep with it now, Mom?"

I'll show the picnic quilt when I'm done it (only ties left to do now), but the other things I'm slowly tinkering with is putting a back together for this:

Isn't it a beauty? Made by the ladies of the Stash Busting Bee International. I was supposed to get 12 blocks back, but a lot of generous people sent two, so I was able to make it 4 blocks by 4 blocks and even had to leave one out (sorry, Shannon, but I included your funky 5-sided one) and I shall use the extra block and scraps to make a doll quilt.

I think I'm going to try hand quilting it, so I can have a pick-up-and-put-down project upstairs (and also because I think season 6 of Project Runway must be out of video by now and so its time for another PR marathon). So I've been playing around with what to put on the back. I had a selection of nice soft, cute pinks and greens and browns picked out, but I decided to get Emma's opinion.

So I brought her down to the ironing board and showed her the fabrics, hoping she would grab at a few and give me a hint. She completely ignored them. Not even a glance. She was more interested in my Ikea mini-drawers. So we went over and looked at those, and then I started thinking about something else I needed for a different project and I pulled out one of my bins and the moment I did she reached out a grabbed . . .

my pink and purple Good Folks. And Amy Butler (which didn't make the cut in the end). The girl has a mind of her own and vibrant, expensive taste already. Which is okay, even though I JUST found those Chocolate Lollipop purples (the pink and purple swirls at the top and the big flowers at the bottom) and those Mendoccino prints are highly coveted and out of print. Because I'm trying to be all about using my fabrics, right? Didn't I buy them to use? Isn't a quilt we use every day a better place for them than a bin where they just get patted and then carefully folded away again?

Its just that once you use something it no longer has all the possibilities . . . and I do so love possibilities. Oh well, there will be scraps. And it will make a fun, if mis-matching back for Emma's quilt. And she was cooing and chattering away while riding on my back as I put these on my design wall, so me thinks she will like it.

And I do need to use up some fabric so I have room for all these:
because I have 3 baby quilts I've like to make (twin boys and a mystery baby) so of course I need new fabric. Isn't it ridiculously cute?

You know you've been married a while

when your dish colours start coming back into style. They had the stone-ish colour too.

Have any of you other Canadians seen these babies yet? They are 70% corn starch and apparently biodegrade in one year. I got them at Extra Foods (aka Superstore, Lawblaws and, I think, Zehrs (?)).


I figure this makes them better than regular plastic, although I could be wrong -- the other 30% could be pure toxins (polypropylene?).


In our house this means that when they inevitably get left in the back yard over the winter, we won't find them in the spring.

Treehouse!

Andrew has been bugging Dave forever to build a treehouse. So finally, when we had a nice day, Dave pulled all the scraps out of the shed and built two little platforms and a few steps. I know he's in the middle of thinking in this photo, but he really did have fun.The boys quite like it. Andrew wants to paint it, and we compromised with me painting just the top of the platforms for them, so that the entire tree and lawn don't end up painted as well.

We have big news around here -- we are going to be moving to Montreal in August so that Dave can attend McGill in the fall. Unless we are very, very lucky this is going to be our last summer with a back yard for quite a long time. We will dearly miss our wonderful patch of grass and trees and sand. But on the upside, we will enjoy having all the challenge and action and adventure of the city.

Its funny, because Dave and I are just kind of city people -- one of our favorite activities is people watching, which is hard to do in a town where you know everyone. But as a crunchy sort of person I feel like that is somehow "wrong". Like everyone who is sort of crunchy should dream about having a farm and living completely off the grid. But we care about buying ethically and making our own things and living frugally and leaving a smaller environmental footprint, but we also want to live in the middle of lots of other people who are thinking and talking and engaging with one another and expressing their cultural similarities and differences all around us. I don't think living conscientiously is exclusively a concern of people who enjoy rural lives.

And I do think its still possible to get your kids outside and enjoying nature in the city -- there are lots of big parks to explore, after all, and lots of walking to do. And in the city we can also explore different cultures and kinds of food that we wouldn't encounter in a smaller town. I think that can be part of learning to think globally and care for others, too.


Anyway, all that to say that we will miss our back yard and our freedom to have the kids run in and out of the house as they please. So Dave has built a tree fort for the boys to enjoy this spring and summer while they still have a back yard.