All the time to Bennet: “Ha! Good one Bennie!”
Her: “What’s that sound?”
Me: “It’s the music.”
Her: “Oh that’s cool. It sounds like a kid screaming.”
“Be quiet upstairs and downstairs because my baby is asleep below the sewing machine table.”
To her African American friend: “Your hair is so soft. It’s like fabric, but softer!”
After cutting off Bennie’s baby mullet, “Do you know what we should do with Bennet’s baby hair? Put it into a glass of water and see if it grows!”
When Taro was here visiting with his family I thought it would be fun to take his wife to a meeting of modern quilters in our town to show her some American craftiness. She was a little nervous about sewing in front of people she didn’t know since she is a beginner. I wanted to come up with an easy, but still interesting top for her to sew. I decided that teaching her log cabin blocks would be really fun, since they are easy, and almost infinite in their design possibilities. She picked up on the idea quickly, dug through my scraps, and got to sewing. Once she had a few blocks she straightened them up, added bits if needed and came up with this little grouping.
Then she added this beautiful light blue Kona Solid around the outside to get a simple, modern quilt top:
Before she left she picked the back and tasked me with finding a binding (something green with a pattern was requested).
I had this organic (and super soft) discontinued Cloud 9 print in my stash that worked great for the back. She thought this would be the perfect size quilt for her little one, and I agree, this size is the best for everything from a floor play mat to car rides to stroller, to sleeping in a toddler bed.
I did an all over meandering but put in a few special touches, like baby’s name
and a few sweet hearts here and there.
If you have a friend who you want to get into quilting might I suggest a project like this? Almost all quilters have an abundance of strips in their scrap stash. This makes if fun and easy for your friends (or children!) to make designs quickly. And the way a log cabin builds on itself makes it easy to square up, or embrace the wonkiness if you want to. Plus there is nothing like a quick project to get someone hooked on quilting!
(If you’d like to see another quilt like this, I made one in a similar style, but with completely different quilting. Click here to see it)
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-It’s 12:45 AM and Bennet has woken up 4 times already. To pee at first, but now it seems she caught Tuesday’s cold. Stuffed up noses + baby = not good.
-That’s why I’m blogging from my phone while nursing.
-See that excited girl up there? The sun plays a big role in that excitement, but so does her and Apples (her doll) matching satchels. My grandma gave me some 18″ doll patterns and that little purple bag was one of them.
-Tuesday has circled 99% of the other outfits on 9 other patterns for me to make. For a total of about 30 separates and a million tiny pattern pieces.
-Turns out I’m pretty easy to convince.
-I finally admitted to myself that Tuesday was never going to use most of our Montessori equipment and packed it away.
-I put out new (actually old, just forgotten) toys downstairs and had some peaceful moments and lots of good playing. I’m in spring cleaning/re-arranging mood for sure.
-I found this pack of “vintage” ki memories (favorite scrapbooking brand) for 99¢ at goodwill and about fell over.
-I’ve been scrapbooking again. I still love it.
-I met with a lawyer for Pax Forest School. It went so well.
-She had this giant relief map of Oregon on her conference wall and I about died, so awesome! She also slid two barn doors closed and the backs had white boards on them. The office was fully paneled in cedar and reminded me of Black Butte in the 80s.
-Speaking if vacation homes we’re looking at yurts for forest school. I want one so bad now. Just put it out on the middle of nowhere and I’ll sit in there and read while the rain comes down.
-The phone always autocorrects put to out. I really dislike it when I spell something right a few times and autocorrect helps me out by making complete non sense out of my sentences.
-ok Bennie is asleep on my lap. Going to attempt a transfer.
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Yes, Pax Forest School has taken up most of my time these last few weeks. I’m not sure what I expected, starting a non-profit extracurricular outdoor education co-op from scratch! But we have our insurance applications in, we are a registered non profit corporation with the state. The Bylaws are written!!! And the appointment with the attorney is next week. Phew. Just a million other things to do (um find a permanent location being a BIG one), but so far so good. When I start to get overwhelmed by it all I just think of the days outdoors that my girls are having.
Taking a walk by the river with mama and Tuesday (who is behind me here).
Another mama (who just found us online and didn’t know any of the founding members before) whipped this up for the kids to weave natural materials onto. Love it.
Bennet and I trek up to the Porta Potty. She is in awe of the whole thing I think. Usually she just sits and takes it all in while eating lots and LOTS of snacks and lunch. By the way if you haven’t made a pixie hat yet, you should! These things are SO GREAT.
Oh ya, and we made the front page of the paper (!!!). Read the article here.
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