Wednesday, June 17, 2009

ALERT: Jackspeak

After months and months of diligent practice, Jack finally masters a new skill--snapping. He is thrilled with himself, snapping himself silly all day long. While I'm making dinner that night, Jack comes into the kitchen with a question.

Jack: "Mom, do you think snapping is fun?"

Me: "Well, yeah, sure. I like to snap to music sometimes. So yes, I think it's fun to do that."

"Yeah, me too. Because you know what? I've been snapping for hours and hours and hours. And you know what, Mom? I'm really, really enjoying it."



Monday, June 15, 2009

Baby Quilt "Friday!": Sleepy Bees

Welcome to the almost-final installment of Baby Quilt "Friday!," featuring quilts from The Little Box of Baby Quilts. Here she is, quilt number twenty (if you've been counting). With all the bees and all the ZZZ's, I figured I'd call her "Sleepy Bees."

Sleepy Bees
From The Little Box of Baby Quilts, copyright 2007 Jenny Wilding Cardon/That Patchwork Place. Machine quilted by Cheryl Brown.

Only four fabrics are used in this quilt--pink, blue, purple, yellow. It's the largest
quilt in the bunch of twenty, too. Big enough to move with a kid through their
preschool years. My favorite part of this quilt? The fuzzy eyelashes and
antennae, hand-stitched with black eyelash yarn.

Yep. I pulled YARN through cotton
quilting fabric. (Just a little.) Not a monumental quilting no-no. Or is
it? (Maybe just a little.)



This quilt has a sprinkle of several familiar techniques. Never a boring moment
making up this girl.
Let's see... there's chain piecing, strip piecing, and half-square triangle piecing, plus applique and embroidery, both with yarn and thread. If you're looking for a fairly simple tutorial on a variety of quiltmaking techniques... and you are also looking for a baby quilt... and you happen to like this particular design... and the baby shower isn't tomorrow... hmm. It's a fun quilt to make. Let's leave it at that.

You can see more quilts from the "little box" here, watch a video about it here, and read more about each quilt here.

My plan is to create one final post about The Little Box of Baby Quilts to wrap things up. You know. Closure. I imagine little thumbnails featuring my favorite details of each quilt. When you click on the thumbnails, full photos of the quilts will pop up. Then, your computer screen will turn soft and cozy and fuzzy and frilly so you can reach out and touch the fabric in each quilt and see its true colors. Then your computer screen will turn back into a computer screen and show a picture of every candy bar in the whole wide world, and you can click on your favorite and it will materialize right before your eyes. (Mmmm, Reeses.)

We'll see how those plans go--cross your fingers. Hope to see you back here soon.