Jamboree Trading Patches

Thing 1 has been working hard for over a year from attending meetings to fundraising to be able to attend the National Boy Scout Jamboree that happens only every 4 years.  There is just about everything a young boy would want to do from archery to gun ranges, skate board parks, to mountain biking, rock climbing to scuba diving.  With all of these wonderful activities to do, one of their favorite activities is to patch trade.  Scouts come from all around the country and even a few from around the world to jamboree.  Each troop designs a set of patches that represents their area.  For instance, a set of patches from Detroit is all about American built cars.  Being from the Northwest, our patches were Native American artwork.  Scouts meet other scouts from all over the country and trade patches with each other.  As soon as we found out about this activity for Jamboree, I knew Thing 1 would be interested in this in a big way and managing the patches could be a messy thing if he was just throwing them in his duffel. 

What's a quilter to do?  Design a bag of course!  I designed this bag to be large enough to hold all the patches but small enough to be able to throw in his day pack.  It had to be masculine so he would actually carry it.  It has just a simple zipper on the top with a ribbon tied to the pull.  Inside there is one divider.  One side stitched with KEEP and one side stitched with TRADE so he could keep his council patches that he wanted to trade with others separate from those he had already traded for.

When you give a hand-made to a 14 year old boy, you have to accept the fact that you might only get a "thanks mom" type of response.  You know the one.  Small voice, no inflection, no emotion.  It's the same response you get at the end of a school day when you ask how was their day.  "fine".  Thing 1 surprised me by being super excited about it and gave me a genuine "Thank you Mom" with a hug!

Bag front

Bag back

Bag inside with divider

Ninja!!!





Sometimes you get to make a project that is just fun.  Okay, so this is "fun"ctional.  Thing 3 loves to carry around his Lego mini's and needed something to carry them around in.  Honestly, I was tired of stepping on them and finding random dudes in my purse, so I decided to make him a little carry case.

 

Online coloring pages have become my absolute favorite source for embroidery patterns.  You can find just about anything you want to stitch for kids.  I found this coloring sheet for Ninjago to use for the top of the box.  The pattern for this box can be found at Sew Sweetness.  I love the embroidery on the original design as well but let's face it.  That wasn't going to work for this project.  The dividers were a bit cumbersome to place inside the case once constructed.  If I was to do this case again, I would measure out the inside of the case first and adjust the dividers to fit.

 

The Lego mini's now have a home!  Now if I can just get him to actually use it, that would be the true victory.

 

Travel Bag

When we decided to take a family trip this summer I started giving much thought to the logistics of course.  I'm a planner and list maker.  The logistics of traveling with 5 boys and 4 adults was the first thing that needed my attention.  How to pack for 3 boys ages 13, 8, 3 plus two adults was at the top of my list. 

Since we were flying I needed to figure out how to consolidate items and pack only the necessities. One of the easiest to combine was my purse and the all important diaper/snack bag.  After perusing the closet of bags I realized all the backpacks were, well, manly.  Most of them are logo'd bags from work so they are designed primarily for men and to hold a laptop.  All the other bags were tote bag style.  Anyone that has traveled with a three year old boy will know, you absolutely must have both hands free.  Not one hand free and the other trying to hold your tote from swinging and hitting your kid in the head. 

What's a designer to do?  Make your own cute backpack of course!

I found this lovely pattern for the backpack.  I did add the side water bottle pockets for mine that a drafted.  There must be a spot for the sippy cup after all.

I made this matching clutch for my wallet and lipgloss. 

Cute and functional.  Win win!

First Day at Market

Every experience in life is a learning opportunity.  No matter what the experience is, there is always something you can learn from it.  After many long nights, we pulled together a decent showing of items to sell and at 1am the morning before market, the quilt was completed. 

 There were baskets of candles, a small assortment of soaps and a few beautiful beaded golf counters my mom put together for us to sell. 

Lessons were learned on the logistics of loading up all the gear we needed to take, what gear we needed, how to set up and tear down the canopy, etc.  The main missing ingredient was customers.  The weather was less than perfect, but was dry.  It was the first day of market.  Schools are still in session.  There were many reasons the turn out was light, but it was still dissapointing to a 13 year old that has large ambitions of making money to attend national Jamboree next summer.  Many times thru the evening I reasurred him that things will pick up when school is out, the weather turns around, etc.  It was still a bit dissapointing to make a grand total of 9 dollars in 4 hours. 


Other lessons were learned around what we have to offer and how it showed.  There were two other vendors with candles and one other with soaps. 

The raffle quilt certainly set us apart and was the main draw of attention, so this weekend I will start working on a few other items that will be unique to other vendors.  Patterns have been poured thru and printed from the web to make some table runners and placemats to add to our inventory.  If nothing else, everyone will be receiving homemade candles, soaps and table runners for the holidays this year.

T-minus 1 Day

Candles, tags, quilts, signage, displays, soaps, oh my!!  The house has been bustling with activity for our first farmers market for the past several days.  The quilt needs it's binding sewn around the edge.  Tags need to be attached to the candles.  The soap base and molds just arrived.  Display baskets need to be found around the house.  Just a few things still to do before our first farmers market on Wednesday.

Boy, the lengths we go to for our children.  To teach the value of a dollar and working hard for something you want.  Who's learning these lessons...him?  Or us?

Quilt Day - Giving Back

There have been many quilts and projects completed in my sewing room thru the years.  Quilts to celebrate weddings, new babies, special milestones, and some just because I felt the urge to sew something.  There truly isn't anything that compares to making something in service of others.  In my sewing career I haven't experienced many of these projects.  There always seemed to be a birth, wedding, etc. that took priority, and frankly, comes with a deadline.  This past weekend two projects were started in service of others.  My bestie has begun a quilting journey I'm not sure she ever thought she would take.  A very close friend of hers passed away recently that was quite sudden.  I believe this has weighed heavily on her heart.  In her friend's memory and honor she has begun a quilt project that captures the heart of her dear friend.  She is enlisting other quilters to join her on the journey to create Hawaiian quilt works of art that will be shown and sold to benefit the Brain Aneurysm Foundation http://www.bafound.org/.  Take a moment to visit her blog where she captures the journey of the project and provides details for others to join her.
Taking on the challenge of making a Hawaiian quilt is not for the faint of heart.  It takes precise workmanship, a steady hand, and a leap of faith...or maybe the naivete of not having a clue what you are getting yourself in to.  I blindly jumped into the realm of Hawaiian quilting years ago when I made one for my mother-in-law.  After several years of hard work, putting it away for a year at a time, I swore I would never make another one.  Well, you know I can't let my bestie embark on this amazing project without me!  I will be joining her in a few weeks with my own creation to be donated to the cause.

My quilt day wasn't spent entirely helping my bestie with her project.  There was another service project happening this past weekend.  Thing 1 has been accepted to attend the national boy scout jamboree next summer.  You would be right to ask what this has to do with quilting.  Thing 1 has the daunting task of funding as much of the costs as possible to attend.  One of the grand ideas he had to raise funds was to set up a table at a local farmers market for the summer to raffle off a hand-made quilt and possibly some hand-made candles and soaps as well.  This was quite a lofty idea.  In an effort to not automatically shoot down his idea, I reached out to a local farmers market about doing this.  Certainly this idea wouldn't be accepted.  About two weeks ago we received the call.  Low and behold they LOVE the idea!  They love the community effect this will have.  Needless to say, our house has been full of frenetic activity trying to pull everything together for opening day.  Thing 1 has very limited sewing experience so there was a lot of education at each and every step of making the quilt.  I seemed to spend quilt day floating between advising on the Hawaiian quilt and teaching Thing 1 how to operate my machine and sew a straight line.  Although I did very little sewing myself, there was great progress made on both projects. 

The feeling of doing for others is truly a wonderful feeling and one I plan on repeating.

Cupcake Royale

I don't necessarily enjoy giving people gift cards as gifts, but sometimes it's the best sort of gift.  When giving a gift card you want to make it special.  Dress it up a bit.  A few years ago I found THIS online tutorial on how to make a cupcake gift card.  My oh my, this is perfect!  I've made several for teacher gifts at the end of the school year and they have always been well received. 

The gift card slides right down into the slit you create in the foam ball.  The binder clip holds onto the card so you can easily pull it out of the cupcake.  I had to use a larger binder clip than in the tutorial because it was the only size I could find in the house.  Always make do with what you have.

My mother-in-law's birthday was a few weeks ago.  What do you give someone who has everything, and is currently downsizing to a smaller house/condo?  A spa gift card of course!  I had a cupcake holder almost completed from the previous school year so I put the final touches on and voila!!  She loved it!

Of course, Mor Mor always needs new picture for her birthday.

Star Quilt

Sometimes things are just as good, if not better the second time around...and 15 years later.

When I was just starting out as a quilter, I made this pretty green star quilt for hubby's buddy from the Marine Corps as a wedding gift.  After putting it together, I realized it was just too plain and needed borders so I removed the outside rows of star blocks and added borders.  Well, you certainly can't throw away completed blocks.  Surely there will come an occasion to use those blocks in another project

15 years later, there they sat.  In my sewing closet.  Never have been used in another project. 
Enter a reason to give them new life.

I have been wanting to do something special for a friend of mine for a while, but every time I think about it.  Every tax day.  I already have so many sewing projects going on I just can't take on another project.  This year was different.  See, my girlfriend in Texas is a lovely woman with two adorable children who I actually met thru her ex-husband, but I won't go into that story.  Every year she graciously does our taxes and wont accept a dime for her work.  When you have lovely people like this in your lives, you want to give something back.  A token of thanks.  Not only for the help with our taxes...I would rather eat dirt than attempt to do taxes...but for the years of friendship.
Of course I have several projects going on right now, but none with a deadline.  So all the other projects were put aside and I started digging thru my sewing closet for ideas.  That's when I heard it.  The star blocks called to me under the piles of fabric saying Hey lady!  What about us?  When are you going to turn us into something fabulous?

The next quilt day I pulled these blocks out, laid them on the floor and my bestie and I stared, and stared, tried different arangements, and stared.  Finally we came up with the layout and I went to work.

My hope is my friend will love, use and abuse this quilt.  I hope she feels the friendship and gratitude put into every stitch.  I hope.

Another Quilt Day

Every time I see Quilt Day on my calendar I get a little excited.  A day dedicated to quilting, conversations with my bestie and no kids.  Days like this don't always work out as you picture them in your mind.  In an effort to let hubby work in the garden building me those beautiful planter boxes, we did quilting day at my house again.  We were able to get a bit of quilting done but the conversations aren't the same with little ears listening in.  Then there's always the inturruptions.  Someone needs a drink, or a snack, or asking where their favorite toy is, or a diaper, or wants to play outside.  It's the challenge of a parent to balance the daily requests and squeezing a little time in for yourself in the cracks.

My bestie finished up this stunning baby quilt for a friend of hers that is expecting their first child.  As most quilters can appreciate, she finished it a day before the baby shower.  Just in the nick of time.

I just love the little bunnies in the open spaces, don't you?

I managed to finish the quilting on this star lap quilt I'm working on for a special friend of mine.  Hopefully I'll be able to squeeze some time in the cracks of motherhood this weekend to get the binding on. 

Progress in the flower garden

It's so exciting to share this project as it's very near and dear to my heart.  My Granny was a special woman.  Truly a one of a kind.  She was a quilter, among many other things, and the one that brought quilting into my life and into my heart.  At age 18 I decided I wanted to make a quilt to take with me to college for my dorm bed so Granny offered to teach me how to quilt.  I'll save that story for another post at another time, so back to the flower garden. 

Granny passed away a few years ago now and I think of her every single time I quilt.  About a year after she passed, my mom showed up at my house with an envelope for me from the last sifting thru Granny's house.  To my surprise, inside the envelope were Granny's quilt templates, her pattern books, and a handful of precious fabric scraps from the last few quilts she made.  The quilting templates were cut out of old magazines, sand paper, you name it.  There were a few tried and true patterns that she stuck with when she was quilting.  Lone Star, Double Wedding Ring, Rail Fence were among her favorites.  As I carefully flipped thru her templates and patterns as to not damage a one, I found random notes written in her handwriting.  It brought such joy to see her messy handwriting again and to feel the love she put into every one of her quilts thru these pieces of paper. 

The stack of scraps was truly tiny.  Just a handful of pieces, but I remembered each of the quilts they came from.  My double wedding ring she made for hubby and I when we married.  A scrap double wedding ring she made for my cousin Katy.  A lone star made for another cousin.  They were absolutely precious to me but such a small amount was left, what would I ever be able to do with these pieces?  Every few days I would pull the fabric out, look at it, think about it, then put it away.  I would lay templates on the pieces to see what I could get out of them, then put it away.  After months of this, I decided the only thing that made sense was a Grandmother's Flower Garden.  This is one of the patterns from her stash that she never made but it just felt right.  Several of the scraps were just big enough to get 6 hexagons from them.  Of course, there wasn't enough to make much so out came my scrap bins.

Slowly I have been cutting hexagons and piecing them on the bus, in the car, wherever I have just a few minutes to do something.  I keep a small ziplock bag in my purse with a few flowers ready to piece so they are always handy.

As I watch the pile of completed flowers grow, I think of her and all the beauty she brought to this world and especially to our family.  I think about all the quilts I've made since that first Rail Fence I took to college.  Each scrap holding a special memory of the person, birthday, birth, wedding in which it was made.  This quilt is truly a work of love, holding special memories I will cherish for my lifetime, and hope it will continue to hold special memories for my boys long after I'm gone.

New Project

There is a fresh pile of fabric sitting on my work table, calling to me.  I have two new projects to work on and I'm giddy with excitement!  No, I certainly don't "need" any new projects since my to do list is as long as it is, but this has nothing to do with "need".  It's all about want people.  This fabric is not 100% quilting cotton however.  What could I possibly be making?  Stay tuned to find out.



Quilt Day

My bestie and I have been quilting together for, well, more years than I want to admit.  In recent years we have jointly come up with a quilting goal for the coming year.  Our quilting New Year's Resolution of sorts.  After careful thought, we decided this year needs to be about completing some of those UFO's we have in our stashes and just having dedicated quilt time together.  We now have one glorious day a month to quilt! 

Last month my bestie's sister moved here from Texas and has joined in the fun.  This past weekend I hosted them at my house for a day of fabric, chit chat, snacks, a tour of my house and stories of every quilt in it.

Look at this stunning baby quilt my bestie is working on!  It has a wonderful modern feel with these fabrics and design.  That's one lucky baby!

Her sissy is working on this beautiful wall hanging for her house.  This is only the second quilt she has ever machine quilted herself and is doing a fabulous job!

I started quilting this star quilt for a good friend of mine who graciously does our taxes every single year and never asks for a penny in return.  I think she needs a lovely thank you gift.

Of course "Thing 2" wanted to join in the fun.  His "puppy" needs his own quilt, right?  This has to be the cutest sewing machine I've ever seen!  It's an old Singer hand crank that was my mom's when she was a little girl and is one of my favorite things...ever!

Lightening Progress

There's always excitement over the start of a new project.  The anticipation of starting something new and the uncertainty it brings.  Will I find a challenge along the way?  Will a new tip or trick be figured out during the creative or construction process?  The start of a new cross stitch project doesn't bring any of this for me.  I always start off a cross stitch project thinking how nice it will be to have a mindless project to have next to the couch to pick up and work on.  No sooner do I sit down to start it when I'm quickly reminded why I don't do many cross stitches.  The color changes, the counting, the re-counting, oh the re-counting!

I'm determined to finish this one however.  You can't have Tow Maymo on your wall without Lightening McQueen after all.

"Tow Maymo"

Have you ever had one of "those" projects?  You know, one that you begin making for one child but end up finishing it for another?  I've had a few, okay more than a few.  When "Thing 2" was younger I picked up this adorable Tow Mater cross stitch to frame for his bedroom.  Here we are several years later and he's no longer infatuated with Cars.  Along came "Thing 3" who is currently 3 years old and completely hooked on Cars!  So out came the cross stitch to finish and frame for his room.  As soon as it was recognizable as Tow Mater, "Thing 3" would sit next to me on the couch while I was stitching and say "Tow Maymo go my oom".  We're working on his language.  Understanding this little one is difficult at times.

You can't very well have Tow Maymo on your wall without, you guessed it, Lightening McQueen!!

Cub Scout Bag

When "Thing 2" decided to follow in his older brother's footsteps and join scouts as a Tiger cub scout, I made the decision to volunteer as the den leader.  When "Thing 1" joined Cub Scouts I volunteered as the Advancement Chair.  My thought was it was an easy enough position to handle with a full time job and a baby at the time.  While holding this position I watched the other leaders so I thought I had a good handle on what the Den Leader position would require.  Boy was I wrong!  It's quite a bit more work than I anticipated, however, I am finding it extremely rewarding!  There are a total of 10 boys in my Tiger den and they are such sweet young boys!  As the Den leader it's my job to make sure the boys have fun, while learning important life skills.  Who knew that would require dragging safety scissors, glue sticks, markers, a binder full of information and assorted projects between meetings, so I decided to make myself a cute bag just for Cub Scouts. 

First find was the adorable Cub Scout fabric by Robert Kaufman which is now discontinued.

Next was to decide on the pattern.  My bestie had made me this adorable bag several years ago that I love!  I use it all the time as a project bag.  Pattern Here.

It's just adorable and the right size to be hauling safety scissors, glue sticks, markers, assorted projects and my binder that helps me stay sane.  Well, I'd like to think it does.

This bag can be easily created in one day, however with three boys under foot, I don't accomplish anything in one day.