A New Quilt

I started a new quilt earlier this week, and am loving it. Okay I love all of my quilts, but the excitement of making a new one is, well...exciting!

Every time I make the front of the quilt I think "it's perfect the way it is" and can't decide what design to add.

It's like a blank canvas. Full of possibilities.

I went for a hummingbird on this one.

I thought purple contrasted well with the softness of the colors of the blanket

I then decide to add yellow binding to represent the sun

and turquoise on the back to represent the sky.

Now the blanket is ready to be turned into a quilt by adding quilting. I'm a bit nervous for this step and have been putting it off. Just like at the beginning, when I think it's perfect the way it is, but each detail adds to the beauty of the quilt. That is my goal for the next couple of days, and I have a pretty fun idea for how I plan to quilt it. I just hope it works:)

Our Neighbors

I know it's not fair to pick favorites, but I'm going to. We haven't met all of our neighbors yet, but so far my favorite neighbor is Snowy. She is a white donkey, and the loveliest, sweetest creature.

Look at her beautiful face!

Whenever we want to visit her we just have to call her name and she comes trotting over. We like to bring her apples and carrots. 

We have a bear in the neighborhood, who we have only spotted a couple of times, and one of our neighbors was telling us the bear got into the alpaca fence one day. Snowy herded up all the alpaca and brought them up close to the house and wouldn't let them leave until the bear was long gone. Seriously smart donkey!

These are the alpaca.

We like the alpaca, and love watching the deer. I just want to hug the deer, but they won't let us:)

Here are a couple of fawns. If you look close you can see their spots.

We also had a couple of horses in the neighborhood for a while. Two lived behind us, and could look right into our yard, and the other, Madison, lived with Snowy and the Alpaca. Madison is a beautiful horse, and could easily steal the show from Snowy, but I still love Snowy best.

For some reason we don't have a picture of Madison. This is one of the horses that lived behind us.

What a wonderful place to raise our kids!

More Time

I wish I had more time to do the things I would like to do. I feel I barely have time to do the basics, like clean the house, walk the dog, laundry, dress kids, meet everyones needs at once....etc. On top of that finding time to sew or exercise or keep up with my blog and shop is a challenge.
I could wake up at 6 am to exercise and stay up late after the kids go to bed to sew, but I need sleep! Without sleep I'm a wreck, and totally non-functional. I've tried to exercise at 7 am, and for some reason just can't do it. 9 am is when my body is ready to exercise, and not a minute earlier.
I'm in no way in a rush to have my kids grow up faster. It already feels like they are growing too fast. I can't believe Jude is almost ready to start riding the Skuut bike and that Jasper is too big for the Skuut. Jai is moving into double digits this year!! What?! Slow down!
So am I looking forward to having a bit more independence? Yes, but am happy to wait and enjoy my kids while they are little and need me. There is nothing better than listening to them laugh, cuddling with them while reading stories or watching a movie, making crafts, building with kapla or lego, just BEING with them. I will have all the time in the world to work off the baby fat and sew to my hearts desire when the kids are older and are busy discovering their interests on their own.

It's impossible to shoot a picture of all three of them at once! This is the best I could do. They are searching for worms in the garden, and it was serious business.

My Kids Are Cool

Quick entry (props to all the bloggers. I am not good with time management, and am struggling with trying to keep up with having a blog)

This past week Jai told me he had a new fanciful way of writing his name. Then he showed me.

He told me he thought it might be similar to handwriting. I told him it is very much like handwriting, and quickly showed him how to hand write his name.

This was his first time handwriting his name, and then of course he tried Jasper..

and Jude's name. This is coming from a kid that HATES to write. It's the main reason he left school!

I think it is so amazing what a child will learn when left to explore their own interests! 

Rugged Femininity

About a month ago I took out the book Chic Sweats by Carmen Webber and Carmia Marshall of Sistahs of Harlem. I am an avid reader of Bust Magazine which is where I first learned of the Sistahs, and how I became inspired to make upcylced clothing. In the book Chic Sweats there is this super cute dress that I had to make, and I decided to make a mini version. Instead of sweat material I decided to use a boys flannel shirt. I am happy with the results.

I couldn't decide which side should be the front of the dress. At first I planned on having the front of the shirt be the front of the dress, and planned on adding ruffles.

In the end I decided to go with the back of the shirt for the front of the dress, and made a cute little yellow rosette to add femininity.

The dress is not same as it is in the book, but I am happy with the results

Because my silk screen kit arrived just after I made this dress, I decided to add a butterfly. This was the beginning of my butterfly craze!

It's distressed to add to the ruggedness of the flannel.

My sister in-law offered her friends daughter for a photo shoot, so I sent the dress over and these are the photos she sent.

Cute! I love how whimsical she looks!

I made a matching hair clip to go with the dress.

She looks shocked to be having her picture taken. Adorable!

Thanks for being in the photo shoot little darling and I hope you love your new dress!

So this will be my third entry for the Lil Blue Boo/Dharma Trading Co Design Challenge. I feel a tad over enthusiastic about this challenge, and wonder if there are others that are sending in as many entries? It's just so fun, and it's helping me step outside my normal creative tendencies!

Thanks Lil Blue Boo! You are an inspiration!

The Process

Back in December an interior design company was cleaning out their fabric sample books, so I was the lucky women that got first dibs on the books. If it had been up to me I would have taken them all, but my husband put his foot down! We were sharing the garage at the time. I had a little sewing corner and he had his turntables and art area. He has now moved to the den, and the garage is all mine!

I was so excited when I returned home with all my new books, I started ripping one of the books apart right away, and decided maybe others might be interested in what goes into making one of my quilts. So here is the process.

This is the fabric book after I have taken it apart.

I have to use a screw driver to loosen the staples and then pry the staples out with pliers. It's not as easy as it sounds!

This is what the books look like before I take them apart.

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I then lay out the samples until I have the approximate size of blanket I want to make.

Then cut the samples into smaller pieces

and lay the pieces out in the order I plan to sew them

Then stack them so I can remember what order to sew them in

This is the table my husband  made for me so I don't have to work on the floor! It's a huge mess. This was taken while we were in the process of making the garage MINE!:) See the whale and hummingbird

and this is the final product, with a few steps skipped in between:)

Because Boys Like Color Too!

This will be my second entry for the Lil Blue Boo/Dharma Trading Co Design Contest, lilblueboo.com. I decided to step away from butterflies for a little while when I made this outfit for my son Jasper, and chose wolves. It is important to me to incorporate my culture in my sewing, as well as my individuality. I love color! I feel alive when I am surrounded by many different colors, and shades.

The pants have a flat front waist (using the tutorial Dana Made It), with black knee pads that I have silk screened (again using the contact paper tutorial from Lil Blue Boo) yellow wolf heads onto. When I first silk screened them, I used blue ink, which didn't turn up. Of course. When I decided to use yellow, I went over the blue, which created a cool shadowing effect! I love making mistakes and finding a way to work with it!

The pants are upcycled from a pair of pants I found in a free bin. They are cotton with a bit of spandex, so they are super stretchy and comfy.

Continuing with the wolf theme, I chose to silk screen two wolf heads onto this colorful hoodie that I made from an upcycled t-shirt and this bright sweat fabric that was given to me from my mother in law. 

Jasper is so cute! Like me, he is not comfortable being in the spotlight, so most of the pictures he stood in one spot.

Cute dimples!

I wanted to get him moving, so this is what he did.

For more movement he decided to hop on his Skuut Bike.

Jasper loves his knew outfit, and keeps thanking me for making it for him! There is nothing more gratifying than making my kids happy!

I wanted something colorful, and comfortable for Jas to run, jump, kick and move in. The first thing he did when he put  on his new outfit was to do a power slide! Jasper has a Paper Jamz guitar and he loves to rock out. This is a great outfit for rocking out in.

Wednesdays

Wednesdays are the days I have scheduled for drop in gymnastics, but the last three weeks on Wed the weather has prevented us from going.
I don't have a license...yet. I have my L, so when it's pouring rain, I don't want to walk to the bus stop and wait in the pouring rain, sit soaking wet on the bus for half an hour and then have to walk 20 minutes to get to gymnastics...in the rain, with three boys, and a huge bag full of food and water.
So this Wed I had it! I was not spending another day at home with my energetic brood. I took them swimming. It was awesome! Jai decided he wanted to teach Jasper how to swim. Jasper was a total water baby until he had one bad experience with a swimming instructor, so now he is petrified of the water. Jasper was totally okay with Jai teaching him though. Eventually Jas decided to put a life jacket on and was still a bit nervous, until he realized he was safe. Then he was kicking his legs and using his arms to get around, he even went in the whirly pool with Jai, which he doesn't even like to go in with Rob or me because he is too scared! It was so fantastic! Jai and Jasper played football, and were air, water, earth and fire bending (we just started watching Avatar the Last Airbender).
The whole time we were at the pool there was only one other little girl in the pool, so we pretty much had the pool to ourselves. What more could we ask for. It was great. Once the pool started to fill up with kids for lessons, including home schooling lessons (the reason I chose swimming in the first place), we left. It just was too overwhelming. If Jas and Jai were in lessons, I could have handled it, but it was just too much. The kids had there fill, hour and a half of swimming, so they were happy to go.
When we got home the sun was shining and the kids did some drawing on the sidewalk with chalk.

This picture was actually from a few days ago, but I didn't get a picture today.

On top of that I received a letter of acceptance into a craft fair I applied to be in. I have never applied for a juried craft fair (kind of intimidating!), but I was accepted!! That is super exciting for me!

All in all it was a good day, even if we didn't get to go to gymnastics;)

Fun with Kapla and Dominos

For the last couple of days Jai has been having fun building with Kapla and Dominos. Each time he sets them up, he becomes more creative. It's so awesome!

We bought the Kapla last year and they have been sitting in the box undisturbed. Occasionally played with when friends come over.
I love seeing what he comes up with. We have managed to catch some pretty cool pictures of Jai knocking them down.

This is a cat that Jai made. He also made a bowl of milk for it, but we didn't get a picture of it.

Of course because Jai is building with Kapla his brothers are now inspired to build as well.

This was made by Jasper.