The Christmas Quilt

Wait, what? A Christmas quilt in June?

Yes, a Christmas quilt in June, but I'm actually behind, not ahead of the game.

I bought some Michael Miller Christmas fabric from a coop last summer. I thought the fabric was fabulous and bought a lot and than realized there was nothing I normally made that would necessitate 11 yards of Christmas fabric. Cue quilting music. So I spent an afternoon at a friends house looking through her quilting magazines until I found something. I had intended to make it for last Christmas, but it didn't get done in time (obviously) so I finally started on it last week. I got all the blocks pieced together and I laid them out and I'm just not happy with it. It's hard to look at and something is off. I've decided that the border fabric isn't right so I've sent off for some more evergreen ta dot in hopes that a darker border fabric will make the difference. Stay tuned for the finished results.

crafty kids

Carter has been asking me to sew for ages. He watches me sew all the time and knows the ins and outs of my sewing machine (Have I mentioned my new machine? I bought it from a friend and it's leaps and bounds better than my old machine. I'm very much in love with it.) He knows what the pedal does, how to put down the presser foot and lift it up. He'll stand on the back side of my machine and lift it up and down for me. If I get up he hops in my chair and tries to take the bobbin in and out and messes with the thread to rethread the machine, twirls knobs and all sorts of cute and horribly annoying things.

Some time ago we went to the fabric store and chose some fabric for him to make a pillow. We were finally able to sit down today while Oz was napping and sew. He sat in my chair and I raised the pedal up so he could reach it. He sewed the entire pillow, stuffed it and then worked with me to close up the opening by hand. He was so proud of himself.






Watch the video, it's super adorable.


The finished product.

sometimes handy is crafty

One of the biggest reason's for my absence from blogging these past few weeks (besides spending four days reading all four Twilight books while ignoring all manner of household chore, barely meeting the basic needs of the kids and eschewing sleep) was that we half finish our basement. It's still in it's raw stages and is certainly the least saucy room in the house, but it's serving it's purpose until I can do more.

My dad, who is the king of all trades and home improvement projects, came down to help me. I prepped the basement by reorganizing the bad side (what we affectionately call the side where the workshop and washer and dryer are) and moving all the good side furniture over, painting the walls and buying the supplies.

Once he was here we hung the drop ceiling, which I had never done before, but I proved to be somewhat useful. We had to make a million runs to the store and work around the kids, but we ended up turning this:

okay, i'm going to have to search for old pictures, but trust me, it was ugly

into this:





I have grand plans to use some Joel Dewberry Ginseng home decor weight fabric to recover the couch and chairs, plus there are curtains to make for the windows, art to hang and pretty baskets to buy for the shelves, but overall, I'm feeling pretty craftyhandy!