Hexagons!

Because have no resistance when it comes to starting new projects… I’m working on a hexagon quilt. I’m really loving it too, it’s mindless and soothing. Much easier than I ever expected it to be!

And for some reason, I just cannot bring myself to sit at my sewing machine right now. So it’s nice to have a lap project that I can do anywhere.

I’ve looked at a bunch of tutorials, but this is the main one I’ve been referencing.

And now I’m going to get back to it! (It’s very addictive, you’ll see! )

Homeschool Montessori Day 1

Hello again! The past few months have been extremely busy for us! We moved (again), which was the major thing.

Now that we’re settled in our new house, we have a great space for homeschooling, and I couldn’t be more excited about it.

I found a great online Montessori training course (more on that in a later post), and I officially started building our class last night so we could begin lessons today.

Our setup is pretty simple right now. We have 2 sets of shelves and our child-sized table. I added a stool for me to sit on when presenting lessons. I used blue painters tape to create our line.

I’ve only put out 2 lessons (Object Transferring and Dry Pouring) and some mats.

Dexter was beside himself to get started on lessons. It was very difficult to hold his attention at first. We worked on some Grace and Courtesy lessons. He very quickly picked up the phrase “soon you will be able to…” and started repeating it back to me.

Even though he was antsy, he really enjoyed going through the Grace and Courtesy lessons. After I did my presentations, he would always begin his turn by saying, “Watch me carefully, and then you may have a turn!”

Presenting the hands-on lessons were more difficult. He was extremely eager to have his turn, and he talked and tried to grab the whole time. I wasn’t exactly sure how to handle that! So I’m going to have to ask my instructor about that and some of our other issues.

He did Object Transferring almost like I did it, which was encouraging. But he only wanted to do it in one direction, exercising one hand but not the other. I did wonder if I put too many of his glass marbles in the basket. Tonight, I will probably only leave 5-10 and see how that works.

So we moved on to Dry Pouring. I did my presentation, then returned the tray to the shelf. But when it was Dexter’s turn, we discovered the loaded tray was too heavy for him to carry! So he just grabbed the pitchers and took off! Later, I brought the tray to the table for him (when he wanted me to have a turn, I used it as an opportunity to present the lesson again), but I suppose we’ll need to find another solution. Either he needs lighter pitchers (those Pyrex measuring cups *are* heavy), or we need to do the lesson by putting down a mat and moving the pitchers over. I’m not really sure which is more desirable.

Overall, he did really well at pouring. He did decide to try to play in the kernels at one point. And then he went back to pouring. I think I said, “Soon, you will learn to pour without playing in the kernels!” and that seemed to be enough of a reminder for him.

I showed him to pour using 2 fingers for support on the pitcher, and he truly tried to do that, but just couldn’t figure out how to do it. So he used his whole hand. He also would sometimes rest his hand or the top pitcher on the bottom pitcher when pouring.

But he was happy with his work!

He did really want me to stay with him while he did everything, and I knew that would be an issue. So I set up my own workstation in the dining room, where I was in eyesight. Every time he asked me to come back to watch him work, I told him I had my own work to do, and he would go back to his task.

He did have a hard time accepting that we were not going to mix the 2 lessons. I explained to him that we would leave them separately, and that if he tried to pour the glass marbles they would likely break, and that soon I would give him a new thing to pour.

He was really able to work for almost an hour, which is probably pretty good for a first day. This wasn’t uninterrupted work, but he was at least interested in lessons for that long. After that he wanted to pretend the rolled work mats were light sabers and the marbles were batteries for the light sabers. Sigh.

My personal difficulty was staying positive and patient. Sometimes I didn’t know how to correct an issue without just saying, “Ok, we’re not going to do that”.

Hopefully things will go more smoothly tomorrow! I do know that it will take time for both of us to develop patience with this method.

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Rotating Toys (or How Not To Be Crushed Under An Avalanche Of Toys)

We are moving (yes, again), so we’ve been using this opportunity to prioritize and purge. One of the areas that’s always been really difficult for me is toys.

I’m sure, if you’re a parent, you’ve been in this situation: your kid has a TON of toys already, most of them littering every square inch of your home, but your child acts as if he has nothing to play with. And getting rid of toys is close to impossible because you know your child has played with each and every thing in the pile (once or twice), and will again (once or twice).

Some of my friends have been really successful at rotating toys, but I just couldn’t figure out how to implement that in our home. But, thanks to Pinterest, I learned that the key is stripping it down to the bare minimum.

I found this great guide at Little Stories. She shows you how to categorize what you have and divide toys into sets that will maximize learning potential.

I really wanted to wait until after the move to start this, but seriously, we were tripping on toys constantly, and I was about to lose it. Teaching clean-up skills is likely my least favorite part of parenting so far. After starting this system, it’s SO much more manageable.

I gathered all the toys and was shocked to realize how many we really had. This is for one child, people, and this doesn’t include larger toys and outside toys, such as his kitcken, basketball goal, and sand and water table, and things like craft supplies. I don’t know if you can tell, but it’s not just one layer deep… the pile covers our entire king-size bed.

I made some tough calls, trying to be honest with myself about what he doesn’t use or need. Then I added back just a few types of toys.

(I feeled compelled to note that I did not lay out the numbers like that, Dexter did. My OCD tendencies would not have allowed me to let them be out of order!)

The benefits so far:

• There are less toys in the floor.
• Clean up is a breeze because he’s not overwhelmed.
• He actually plays with what he has.
• He plays with things he never tried before and gets creative with what’s available.
• I’m able to monitor what he’s still not playing with so I can remove it from our home.
• Our time is spent more productively than before, when he wasted time whining and being bored, and I wasted time trying to force him to clean.

We are in our second round of rotation so far, and it’s still working well. When he asks for a different type of toy, I have him gather up something he’s willing to trade before I give him the new items. Otherwise, I plan to rotate the entire set about every 2 weeks.

I’m really excited to be able to really sort and store my sets when we move. Right now, all the extra toys are still in my bedroom because there was no better place to put them during the move.

If you have other tips and tricks, definitely leave me a comment!

Archie

My adoring fans have reminded me that it’s been a long time since I’ve blogged. And she is they are right.

As I mentioned a while back, I’ve been participating in the Sewing Buddy Challenge at Whipstitch.

Our first challenge wrapped up this month, and my partner and I won 2nd place! We were to collaborate to make a pair of boy/girl projects, which works out perfectly since I have Dexter and Elisabeth has her baby daughter, Cate. We made these precious little dolls from Wee Wonderfuls called Olive and Archie.

This pattern was absolutely worth the money. I only had one problem with it, which I will go into later. But, for your $15, you get the patterns for both Olive and Archie, plus all sorts of clothes, and accessories including backpacks, sleeping bags, and a cat pal.

Elisabeth and I chose a color palette, using Moda’s A Walk in the Woods line as our inspiration. I would have loved to just get some of that fabric, because it is PRECIOUS, but I’m trying to stash-bust. So I had to bring that vibe to my doll while keeping down extra purchases.

I created a few sketches, with three major goals in mind:

1. Use what I have as much as I can.

2. Stick to the color palatte/theme we chose.

3. Make the little guy look as much like Dexter as possible.

I easily found a felt in color similar to Dexter’s hair. I ended up getting a blend because I was trying to keep costs down. I can tell that it’s pilled a bit, but overall I think it’s fine.

But finding a skin tone nearly drove me crazy. I shopped at Joann Fabrics, which I normally really like. But they had a whopping total of two fabrics that could possibly work for skintone. One of them was too orange (we are an extremely pale family) and the other was thinner and weirder looking than I’d like. I made the smart choice and went with thin and weird.

I started stitching my hair on. So far so good. Except in this photo, you can see straight through to the paper under the fabric. But surely that won’t be a problem, right? Right??

I’m 99% certain I washed my fabric before cutting. But I really can’t remember now. After sewing all my hair on and starting to assemble the body, I ironed some seams, and suddenly the weirdness of the fabric became an actual problem.

The fabric melted/shrunk. The photo above shows the difference between the pattern piece and how much shrinkage occurred. In retrospect, desperation to find the right color may have caused me to get something partially synthetic. But I will never know, because when I went back to Joann for a replacement, I couldn’t find the mystery fabric.

So I came some with the too-orange fabric, washed it… and then realized under our lights that it was yellow.

Long story short, I went to Hobby Lobby and found an acceptable fabric. The twist: A few days after I submitted my doll, I found my own stash of fleshtone fabric. Sigh.

Aside from that, the pattern started out ridiculously easy. But there comes a point when the creator tells you that you will be cursing her name, and she was not wrong. I didn’t curse *her* per se, but I nearly lost it several times. The problem is that wretched bottom panel. If you’ve made this pattern before, I’m sure you know what I am talking about. If you haven’t and plan to, you *will* know what i’m talking about! I Googled and searched and pleaded to the internet fairies to give me the answer and I never found it.

In the end I just had to wing it. So Archie has a funky butt.

I thought it might bother me that my handstitching is so awful, but I’m just glad that part is over. And as with childbirth, I’ve almost forgotten the pain and would do totally do it all over again.

The eyes where my only other creative difficulty, because I wanted Archie to look like Dexter, but Dex has hazel eyes that are difficult to replicate.

I almost settled for these plain dark eyes, which I love, but I just really wanted light eyes, even if they were still wrong. So I chose to do a circle of charcoal gray with pale blue on top to create irises.

I stuck on all the features, subbing felt scraps for the mouth and nose, to get the correct placement and shapes. Then I just stitched on the face.

I made a little red jacket last minute using the hoodie pattern included in the set. I didn’t finish the seams, because I was running out of time. But I really wanted that pop of color to complete the look I was going for. It was then that I realized that I didn’t like the placement of the arms, beause with the jacket on, things look a little weird and the jacket actually doesn’t want to stay on.

But, I was extremely happy with how he turned out!

More importantly, Dexter is extremely happy with him. I wish I could have captured how thrilled he was initially. I gave him the choice of whether he wanted to change the name and he really liked “Archie”. Or “Artsy”, as he calls him.

And he sleeps with Archie every single day.

Even if I didn’t win anything in the challenge, this would have been enough!

But I won’t say no to the 1/2 yard bundle of fabric 2nd place gets :-P.

The Beast

Inside this cave lives a terrible beast.

The beast wakes.

He paws the ground.

He glares.

He creeps.

He lives with his mother, who is equally terrible.

Together, they are ferocious.

The beast selects his prey… And attacks!

Mmm. Delish.

The beast is happy. For now.

Time for seconds!

 

2012 Sewing Buddy Project

I just signed up for the 2012 Sewing Buddy Project at Whipstitch.

Do any of these describe you:

• You’re totally pumped that there is a thriving community of crafters on the Internet and you’d like to be a part of it.
• Your WIP and UFO piles qualify you for Hoarders: Crafters Edition, and you need encouragement to dig your way through them.
• You were a nerdy little kid who loved pen-palling it up in elementary school.
• You’d like to buddy up with someone who shares you’re love of sewing.
• You’d like the opportunity to explore aspects of sewing you’ve never tried before.

If so, scootch on over there and sign up too! Sign-up runs til April 1 at midnight.

 

Tiny Dresses and Bees

Dexter and I had a lovely evening at the park today. He was thrilled to find the entire area swarming with bumblebees. It was actually quite relaxing to watch them go about their buzzy business.

My mind has been preoccupied with lots of different types of bees lately… Particularly quilting bees.

I never manage to catch the beginning of a quilting bee, I just see blocks showing up on blogs I follow. So I’m toying with the idea of starting my own, although I honestly don’t know if I could come up with 12 interested quilters.

*If* I do this, these are the things I’m mulling over:

I’d definitely want it to be continental US only, because of shipping. During my research I saw some people say that there are 2 ways of doing things. You can either mail out fabric so you can control what goes into your quilt, or you can agree to use your own stash to create blocks for each quilt. The first option will be pricier. I am open to suggestions on that point.

I’ll also judge by interest whether to do a year long bee or a 6 month bee.

And I will be thinking about how many blocks each person should make, depending on the number of people interested and the agreement of quilt size and block number and size. (A typical bee consists of 12 members, 12 months, 1 block per person per month.)

So leave a comment if you’re interested in something like this. I will continue to update the status of the potential quilting bee when I have more info!

And for my followers who may not know about virtual quilting bees and really just keep up with my blog because you love me, tell me if you want more info. I didn’t go into what a quilting be really is because it’s getting late and I still want to watch TV with Alex :).

Finally, I made some dresses for my sister’s baby (Full disclosure, I may be more excited about this baby than any other baby besides my own. I LOVE the dickens out of all my nephews. But I’m really REALLY excited about this little girl person!) and I wanted to give a heads up that I will be putting out a tutorial and pattern for them very soon!

 

 

Cousin Craze

I started this post about a week and a half ago at my sister’s house. I never finished it because hours later, Deborah and I were making a midnight trip to the ER to check on some early contractions. Needless to say, the week did not go as we had planned and we spent most of our time after that trying to recover. Deborah more so than me, obviously…

This week I’m staying with my sister Deborah (below), who is very pregnant, and her twins, Ty and Micah, who are equal parts sweet and lively. We’re going to be doing a few baby projects* while I’m here, but in the meantime, we’ve just been wrangling hooligans and trying to keep the avalanche of toys from killing us all.

*The projects were not completed, boo, and as I was leaving we discovered a glitch in one of the pieces. Hopefully Deborah will feel well enough to complete them soon and post some pix!

On the first day, I got to snuggle sweet baby Isaac, my brothers son. He is the most precious baby in all the land, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a child as consistently happy as he is. I rarely get to see him, so I was really excited that our visits overlapped.

Dex was EXTREMELY excited to be with our family!

The colors in the picture below are off, but it was the only time I could get Dexter to look at me for a picture. I’m not really sure he likes to be photographed. He only enjoyed the snapshot above because Uncle Ian was the photographer and allowed him to get within lens-biting distance.

It’s so lovely when the cousins take a break from harassing each other (or Ty and Micah get a break from being harassed by Dexter). Ty and Dex spent a fair amount of time Magna Doodling together…

…while sweet Micah played with animals by himself.

This child has the sweetest, most squishable-kissable cheeks!

Dexter is working with Magna Doodle intensity.

The boys fought over played with a lot of cars.

Below we have Hoarding Action Ty*.

*Hoarding Action Micah and Hoarding Action Dexter sold separately.

Dexter feigns patience while Ty plays. Yeah, save your thumb-sucking and sparkly eyes, buddy, I’m not buying it.

Things got a little crazy when the balloon fight started. But at least they were all laughing at the same time…

I love cousins.

Postage Stamp Quilt-Along Update

I’m a little behind on my post this week. I was stressed out about it because I thought I’d solved all my technology problems from the past few weeks. I was wrong. I think technology hates my blog. I was so mad the other day that I almost swore off blogging. But my husband helped put things into perspective: “No one is wailing and smashing their computer because you haven’t posted in time. They’ll see it when they see it.” Oh, Alex, you keep me grounded in reality. My response was, “Well, they *should* be.”

But, I’m still here, and (dare I say it??) think most of my tech problems are solved.

I’m excited to say I have already completed my February Postage Stamp Challenge! I solemnly vowed to sew all of quadrant 1 into sets of 4.

Sewing is done.

And ironing is done.

It was pretty awesome to iron these out. I started getting a feel for how things are going to look!

There were some sad ones. Several are like the one below, where the seams just don’t quite match. I didn’t have any tragically off-kilter ones, but I’m a little concerned about how it might throw things off. Of course, I’m worrying too much about it..

And I found a fabric I sewed on backwards. It’s the orange in the upper right. I *almost* took it apart to flip it, but I realized that it just doesnt matter and that I may like the backside better anyway.

And then there’s this bad boy… He’s more than a little snaggle-toothed. I am going to see if this block can be salvaged, but I suspect I will have to take it apart and maybe replace a couple of the squares. It might be for the best, all those lines going in different directions make me a little nauseated and anxious lol.

But overall, I was really pleased with how they look. I definitely have some favorites! The one below just makes me really happy for some reason.

A few produced some color combos I’d never really considered. In the future, I may look to these for inspiration:

I really liked this one with the frog.

I definitely have a weakness for aqua, red, and black together. All my favorite blocks turned out to contain green/aqua, red/orange, and black and white!

Now I’m going through and squaring up all my blocks. Does using a rotary cutter make everyone’s elbows burn, or am I doing something wrong??

Bring on March’s challenge, Mary!! I’m ready!

 

Link to Felt Piglet Tutorial

https://lemonwoodclock.wordpress.com/2012/02/14/felt-piglet-tutorial/

I finally got my post uploaded, but because I had originally posted it as a draft, it is still loading as an older article. So, for anyone who cares to be notified when I create a new post, and because I’m not sure the way I did things did that, here’s the link to that post.

I’ve had so many annoyances with blogging the last couple of weeks! It’s primarily growing pains, because I’m learning to do some new things. But hopefully I’ve worked all the kinks out and things will go more smoothly in the future!