My very spoiled daughter took a fancy to this particular strip of material. I am working on a jean-thang and this was from a pair of jeans I cut up. Every time the girl passed by she would beg to have it. She'd pick it up and hold it and rub it on her face. (Weird.) I got angry at her and told her that she wasn't going to get it and if she ever mentioned it again...time-out! Yes. I know. Quite dramatic of me. Well...Alaina wanted it. And what my Laina wants, my Laina gets. (apparently.) When she was playing with her brothers, I found a little tutorial online and thought I'd make something out of the material.

And voila! A little/big quilted purse. (Alaina thought she'd mix it up by modeling on the ground here.)


I salvaged a pocket for the other side.

And a green zipper & bright blue inside to top it off. FUN!

Yes. I know. Spoiled. But look how cute. ;)

Austin's first love was a cute white little dog named Bolt. You may have heard of him. Well, Bolt is all we heard from that child forever. He loved the movie. He slept with his stuffed Bolt. Every picture he drew was either of Bolt or of lightening. Nothing was better than that little dog.

Until he saw Stitch (from Lilo and Stitch.) All of a sudden all of Austin's pictures turned blue. A blue stuffed Stitch pushed poor used up Bolt under the bed. Stitch was the key player in all of his stories. It was Austin and Stitch, forever. But somewhere along the way, Austin must of felt a nagging tug of loyalty towards Bolt because just last month I've started seeing a strange blue & white creature in Austin's pictures. One that looked a little like this.


He is half Bolt and half Stitch. I've heard him referred to as 'Boltch.' New stories about Boltch were told. Every time Austin brings home an art project from school, the creature is somewhere hiding in the picture. The side of his work sheets have doodles of him. I'm surprised I haven't seen him penned on his wall yet. (not to say he hasn't...I just haven't seen it.) Well. I thought it was pretty harmless for him to draw picture after picture of little Boltch. That is, until he changed up the name. Now instead of writing Boltch at the top of each paper he touches, he is writing this:


Yup. Boltch went out the door and in came Bich. You read it just the way it sounds. (I'm thinking Stitch has prevailed as his absolute favorite, so he gets most of the name.) So. How long until I have to have a teacher's conference at Austin's school? Or do you think his teacher will just pretend it isn't happening and secretly think I'm a terrible, mean mom? (Hey, Mom...I just drew another picture of you...) Or, perhaps she thinks we use the word to discribe greatness...like the super-star Bich in Austin's picture?

Whatever it is, I find myself hesitating to correct him. Its just that it is so creative. And made with such love. Ok. Ok. You don't have to tell me. I'll have the talk, anyway. I'm just cringing to hear my son repeat the same desperate words I heard from Rob about 12 years ago, "You are KILLING my passion!" (This said when Robert had two fish tanks, 5 cups of Beta Fish on the kitchen counter and a 'breeding cooler' on the back porch of our teeny tiny apt. in SLO. When he discussed buying a new and bigger tank, I admit, I reacted a little dramatically with an emphatic and resounding 'NO!' And hence...the infamous quote. And, after we looked at each other, both so emotional...a whole lot of laughter.)

So. Back to the point. Bich is good as gone. *sigh* Hopefully it won't be too hard to bring Boltch back from the dead.

Boys and girls in blue.


What have I been up to lately? Quilting of course. It is baby season again and I've had some fun doing a couple of projects I've been thinking about forever. (Well, at least for 9 months.) Lora's little one, Naomi made her appearance last week and Noelle's little Connor came earlier than expected a couple weeks early. And now that both have been sent in the mail...I am free to post pictures.

I had been holding on to this cute blue silhouette material for a long time. It had cute little boys and girls on it and I've been waiting to for the right baby to come along to use it. Noelle had already decorated her room in blues, beige, white, dark brown and orange. This was a challenge for me to create something with those colors without it become too 'old' for him. My first try at material too drab for a baby so I went back and finally got a combination that I think worked out.

I loved the result and wanted to do some heavy quilting one it with three different colors...blue, brown and orange. I started in the middle, moving out and didn't realize that the drag on each line of stitching was making my blocks wobbly. About 1/3 of the way through I noticed and tried harder to keep it all straight. It worked better, but I was bummed out with the jello blocks. Lesson learned, I guess. Unless...of course, I just tell people that I was going for zig zags.

Here is the back. Isn't that material so cute?
Lolo's blanket was a combination of the same blue silhouette material (only the girls) and I wanted to use a lot of the same colors. However, the challenge was to make it look very girly instead so boyish. I added some pinks in and used a tube/quilting technique I saw on line. The first couple of tries with this style of making blocks frustrated me because the corners of the diamonds got cut off. So I messed around with the pattern until I found a way to keep the corners crisp. I liked the way it turned out.
I used a very soft furry material on the back which looks cool, feels cool but is not super cool to quilt on. It moves around too much. Because of that, I decided to keep the quilting down to a minimum. It is actually the least amount of quilting I've ever done on a top so I'm really hoping it will hold fast.

Alaina helped me a lot on the name on the back. She worked a little bit on each letter (some of the letters she did by herself.) It was fun to watch her go...although I don't think I should have started her first project ever on something that required such attention to detail. She is determined, though.
Look at that sweetie-pie. Naomi, just a few days old. Don't you just want to take her home? I can't wait to see that child.