Sewing with a 7 1/2 year old

My grandson had watched big sister working on some sewing projects after she went to sewing camp last summer and thought he wanted to learn how. I offered him sewing camp this summer but he said, no thanks, but wanted Nana to teach him. So he came over yesterday for sewing lessons. Stayed overnight and we worked more today. The kids a natural - he seemed to just 'get it' from the start. We'll do this again, later in the summer. It was really great fun!











Just playing with scraps and we (he) made a little "quilt" for the stuffed tiger,

I'd say it was pretty darn good. He made another that Nana forgot to take a photo of.






All of this hard work deserved a bit of a break so we headed to the park with the climbing wall and the tire swing and then on the way home,




If you can't tell, that says Top Pot (fabulous local doughnut shop).




And then because it is finally that time of the year (around this part of the world,)

Strawberry Shortcake Time! Yeah!

Life is good!






Addendum: 7/1/10


Here's the little quilt that he made. I sat with him and we talked about what he was doing but it was all on his own. Pretty terrific, yes?

A Little Inspiration

With all the fabulous fabrics and projects on display at the Shop Hop, I couldn't just sit around. You have seen this little table runner. I just added a bit to jazz it up. I think I'm happy with the flowers. Perhaps I'll add button centers - seems like that would be good.




What do you think?

The vine and leaves are needle turn applique. I'm in a mood for some more hand applique - so we'll see what's next.

My friend Caroline sent me a Beesie - it's the mascot for the Dutch World Cup games. So it is in a place of pride - ready for the next match,

Too bad the U.S. is out. Alaas.

Wednesday at the Shop Hop

What a fun day! While we were not officially participating in the Shop Hop [i.e. not planning to make the official block] we had a very fun time visiting 3 shops. All the shops stock up especially for all of us who wander in - so it's such fun. And being Day #1 it wasn't quite so crowded as it will get later in the week-end.

Began our day at a marvelous shop called Shibori Dragon [scroll down on their web page and take a look at some of their magnificent asian fabrics. ] Sorry - I forgot I meant to take a picture, but you can see some of the wonderful things I found there,
















Aren't they wonderful?




We then drove quite a few miles south to a very small town with a quilt shop I have heard about,
Gee Gee's











They are reputed to have more than 6000 bolts of fabric. I think it is true. Guess what? I did find a couple of things to bring home with me, but unlike Shibori I managed to find a few things that were in the 40% off room. Oh how nice!











Isn't this blue just crazy? No it is not out of focus, but they have printed it with a blue line just offset from the black, so it really seems to move when you see it up close. I'm excited to see how I can use it.

Finally we made it to Carriage Country Quilts on the way home. This is the favorite place of my Dutch quilting girls (see blogs from March). They have simply marvelous reproduction, civil war, homespuns - I would call them comfortable colors. I had more than sufficient fabric for one day, but did find a few patterns that called to me,











Wow! Lucky me! I have a few projects for the next several months, if not longer ;-)

Tuesday Report

After my production last week I have been taking the time to work on tidy-ing the sewing room. There are a number of folks who have been inspirational (or dare I say - shaming me) to improving the room. Check out this gal's room. Pretty amazing, no? It is just so georgous! I'm not there yet, so no photos.

Yesterday was a fun visit to Half-Price Books. I always love to go and visit their quilt books section. Found this one:
A few years ago I went to Houston and took a class from Becky Goldsmith (Piece O' Cake). Some delightfully whimsical appliques.

Today I received my quarterly Fabric Club from Minewood Quilting. Four times a year I get a selection of 6 fat quarters of "Basics" fabrics, from Denmark. They are always such very nice blenders. Here's what came today,

Agnes Mijnhout lives in the Netherlands but ships worldwide.

I made myself a couple of wine bags. These are so simple - you should have some. They only require 2 fat quarters. We had taken a bottle of wine to friends for dinner on Sunday night and she sent an email Monday saying that we had forgotten to get our wine bottle holder. Silly girl! It was for her.
Last bit of news - tomorrow the Western Washiington Shop Hop begins. Two friends and I are going to visit just 2 quilt shops - ones that are a bit of drive, which we don't visit with any regularity. More to report later in the week.

At last, at last

She's finished. And even though DD's birthday was in April I hope she will still be pleased. This ended up being a tricky, somewhat frustrating effort, but I am very happy with it.

I did some free-motion quilting in the dark side of the log cabin - swirls, loops and leaves. Not really very sophisticated, but done.

Camping over the week-end and then I get to tackle one of the several (many) UFO's. Hurrah!

Lucky me!

I'll show you the "lucky" first. My Friendship exchange from Ina, in Neede, Netherlands (Holland) arrived today. Such wonderful work -

A biscornu with little houses all around the edges and it says (in Dutch) "The way to a friend is never too long." Lovely. Also she sent some Dutch fabric, embroidery thread and a cute tablet that reads: Good Friends are like quilts - They never lose their warmth. Isn't that grand? I didn't take a photo of what I sent to her - so hopefully she will post a photo and I can borrow that.

The not so lucky - check out this sky,


It has been so dark and dreary and rainy. Spring? What spring? I guess the only silver lining I can think of is that some of the weeds are fairly easy to pull - they are soggy!

I've finally finished DD's birthday quilt and am doing the binding. I will show you when I've finished the hand sewing.

Monday update

I promised some photos of some things I can show you. Both of these are just patterns that I was trying out. I'm not at all sure what to do with them - but wanted to see how they would look. I chose a really dark red for the half square triangles and used 'leaders and enders' from Bonnie Hunter for the 4 patches. I need to find a lovely quilting pattern to go in the white diamond that emerges. Ideas?





I had a nice pink-ish batik which worked well for the center and corners of this table runner. These are some of the string pieced reproduction fabric strips I have been making (I couldn't just throw them away!)

So you see I am doing something. :-)

Did she fall down the rabbit hole?

Actually no, I didn't, but somehow the days seem to be slipping past and I don't get to updating. So apologies - I'm not ignoring you. I have been doing sewing but sadly cannot show you what I've been doing - making stars for Caroline, Dieuwke and Willemijn (my Dutch quilter visitors from March). I have been using up the last of the left-over reproduction strips and am thinking that I will perhaps try something similar to Nanas Gardens (quilt in a day). This is something that I have been plugging away at:

Hand quilting. I'm not the greatest, in terms of lovely small stitches, but I am fairly evenly spaced - so give myself points for that. You might notice that we are having sunshine today - HURRAH! In contrast with the Memorial Day week-end, where we had one partly sunny afternoon:


This is mostly what we saw out the window (enlarge it and you can see the rain on the windshield of the motorhome and the puddles in the background) It really was dreadful. One is supposed to be able to be outdoors some of the time, but our time was severely limited. We were also holding our breath as we drove 20 miles into the nearest little town with a tire store - we kept losing air out of one of the rear tires - a slow-ish leak. Fortunately it was a bad valve extension (if you care) so after removing that we were set to go and to start breathing deeply again. Fingers crossed that our June event holds better weather.

Good quilty wishes and I'll try to do better at working on things I can show you. :-)