The non-road trip

We were able to visit my sister, brother-in-law and nephew for Thanksgiving. We actually went last weekend and visited early. Our hope was to use some time my parents had in their timeshare company to rent a place for all of us to get out of town but it didn't work that way. But before we knew that we weren't going to have a road trip I had already started on the road trip bags knowing that there was going to be a lack of toys where we were going.

The bags were made from a free tutorial here. E's is the one in blue and was made exactly as the tutorial directs, N's is the light one and I squared the bottom rather than rounding it. I'm not sure that I can tell much of a difference between the two when they are sitting. The cords I think could be shorter and the tubing that the cords go through have to be bigger than what is called for in the pattern. I made them bigger and they were still pretty snug to thread the ties through.

I have been wanting to make a few handmade quite activities for N to be able to play with on her own when I need a minute (or five) to myself. Thanks to the wonder of Pinterest I found this, I love that she did it as an exchange with other mom's and I think that it would be a great way to do Christmas if you knew enough parent's who were game. I didn't do everything that she had listed but I did a few.

A rice I-syp bag: which N loves, even if it is just to carry around. I walked around JoAnn's looking for small stuff and ended up with some shaped buttons, small wood shapes, ABC letter beads spelling out her name, some small bells, and some of those Japanese shaped erasers (a pig and a pair of shoes if you are really interested).

The button worm: at least that's what we're calling it. She hasn't really gotten how to thread it yet but she does currently enjoy sticking her fingers through the cut holes when the felt squares are taken off the ribbon.

Velcro sticks: a note of warning, if you buy the pre-colored sticks at JoAnn's and your child sucks on them, the coloring will come off and dye your child's mouth/face/hands etc. On the up side N doesn't really chew on them any more since the incident with the one red one that made me freak out. She does love ripping them apart whenever I try to make a shape with them.

The bead bottle: by far N's favorite, and probably my least favorite. It's a mess, pony beads will go everywhere. On the up side, she does love putting them in, in the bottle, in her pants, in the play kitchen, in the trash, pretty much anywhere they can be put, she'll put them.












The miscellaneous extras. You really can't go wrong with giving a toddler a whistle and a kazoo, at least if you want them to stay occupied you can't go wrong. If you want to have a conversation with another adult it might not be the route of distractions that you want to take. N mostly likes the silly putty container more than the putty itself.

Countdown

Time is speeding up, as it always seems to do this time of year. With a toddler in the house I have gotten better at strategically planning ahead and how to make the most of my time. So far it seems to be working for the handmade present stack that I've been working away at for the past couple of months. Yep, that's what a toddler will do to you, make you start Christmas presents in August.

This isn't quite a Christmas present, it's N's advent calendar. Which in it's own perverse twist needed to be done well before Christmas time. I have really clear and fond memories of our advent calendars growing up. We always got to pick out one of the molded chocolate ones. You know, they sell them at grocery stores and as a kid you get excited, because, hey it's chocolate everyday. But as you get older you realize that the little brown shapes are more wax than anything resembling actual, good, chocolate. I wanted N to have that same excitement every morning leading up to Christmas.

I fell in love with Elizabeth Hartman's version a few years ago and knew that I wanted to make one. Last winter, after Christmas, I stocked up on the fabric since it was so cheap. This would be a great scrap project because you really don't need much of the patterns at all. I think that the next time I make it I would probably try to use a charm pack. I finished the top months ago but I was building up the courage to do the quilting. With December looming I finally got busy last weekend. The quilting was actually quite quick and a lot easier than I had imagined - it is just squiggles after all.

All in all I'm happy with how it came out. The pockets are big enough for treats and little presents (hello Target $1 bins!) but the whole calendar doesn't take up a ton of space on a wall. It probably would even fit nicely on a door. Here's hoping the rest of my present stack finishes up as quickly and easily!

A little crazy

We are in the process of buying our house. It has been a long process. Not particularly difficult, just a lot of paperwork, legal-ese, and frustratingly long waits. We were suppose to close on the first, November first, however that has come and gone and we are not in home ownership land yet. Needless to say, some of my free time (read: crafting time) has been over taken by calling a lawyer, or a bank, or an insurance company, or someone else.

I have managed to work on a couple of little things. This one I don't feel like I can really take the majority of the credit for. The quilt top was done by my great-great aunt. My mom pulled it out when we were visiting a couple months ago and said casually something along the lines of how wouldn't it be nice if I could finish it for my sister. Point taken.

The top is an odd size, but it's bound for my sister's couch so sizing isn't something I had to be worried about. The "batting" of the quilt is old chicken feed bags, they were so great I almost wished I didn't have to cover them up with backing. Plus the hand embroidery made a lovely pattern all it's own on the batting.

My sister was also visiting my parents while we were, so she and I were able to pick out backing and binding fabric together. She chose some Kona cotton in Grass and I love how it turned out. The front can be a little dark on it's own but the green helps lighten it up a bit. Finished at just the right time since we're going to visit them in Wisconsin a just a couple of weeks. It will be perfect for snuggling with her on the couch and drinking some tea while we plan the Thanksgiving meal.

A year behind

The traditional two year anniversary gift is cotton, three year is leather. Colin and I received this quilt top for our three year anniversary last month. Either my mom has had a bout of amnesia during our marriage, or she's just not trying to stick to the traditional timeline.

It was pieced, by hand, by my grandmother and great grandmother the year that my mom was born. Most of the flowers are scraps of other fabrics and although in this photo it looks like all of the fabrics of a similar color are the same, they aren't. The quilt is an odd size and when laid down flat it becomes clear that it isn't finished. 

At first I was tempted to just square it up, quilt it, bind it and enjoy without messing with the heritage of the top. But then Hexa-Go-Go started popping up all over the blogosphere and I figured that it was fate telling me to jump into the deep end and figure out how to do some paper pieced hexagons to add to the two sides of this that aren't done. So that's the plan, to try and find some vintagy looking scraps to make a few more full or half flowers to finish it up. I want to hand quilt it anyways since it's too big to do on my machine and I like the idea of doing it how my grandmothers would have. 

Just one more thing to do, in a very large growing pile.

Hand-me-downs

When going to visit my parents I know to leave room in my suitcase for goodies to bring home. It's possible to find almost anything at my parents house, most of which I have never seen before. They have lived in the same home my whole life which leaves lots of memories, and also allows for lots of stuff to get hidden. Both of my parents are savers (although some would perhaps use the term horders), which at times can be a bit wearisome it can also be wonderful for treasure hunting.

First I visited my mom's fabric drawer. She mostly sews clothing, and doesn't sew as much as she did when we were growing up so there are some dusty layers in her stash drawer. When we went through it together the pile she wanted me to take began to over take the pile that was going back in the drawer. In the end we compromised on these lovelies.

I don't know what any of them are, I dare say none of them were purchased in the last twenty years. Only the elephants and top floral are cotton. The blue dots are linen, tulips are a volile and the green and black is something heavy - it was actually my grandmothers.

Next to the fabric drawer is the craft closet. I don't think that I have ever seen the carpet or the shelf liners in this closet. I managed to find two packages of pom-poms and chunky wooden beads that had never been opened for a project with the babies. I also came across these -

Two grain/feed bags. I have no idea what I am going to do with them or even if my sewing machine can handle this heavy of material but I love them. Particularly the farm illustration.
























Then my mom pulled out the big guns. The thing that both my sister and I had not seen before but should have. A family crazy quilt - 

It was done by my great-great-grandmother over a century ago. All of the patches are velvet and the thing is heavy! But the hand embroidery is amazing. I am sure that a lot of the symbols are simply things that they liked, but some of them have more meaning (like what's with the weird arm holding a hat by the year?) however the real story of the quilt has been lost over the generations. It looks like someone used it at one time as a quilt for a bed but I think that over time it has been holed up in a linen closet never to see the light of day. I'm not sure that I can justify putting it on a bed either, at least not while there is a little sticky fingered critter running around the house. Perhaps it will take up residence on a wall at some point, it's just too much work to be sitting in a closet.

Not Sewing

I haven't been sewing, at least not much. It seems like summer finished up in a hurry around here and in our house that means a lot of preserving. I tried making salsa for the first time this year, and although it is good it's a bit runny and my recipe needs a bit of fine tuning before we turn out 5 more quarts again. When we finished the last batch of salsa I was done looking at tomatoes. We had a good summer for them with all of our heat and there were beautiful herilooms left at the farmers market, but I was done. Done that is until a 8 quart box showed up on by door step.

They were beautiful and plum and sweet, and I almost cried because I knew that since we couldn't eat 8 quarts of tomatoes in the next couple of days that it meant I needed to pull back out the canner. Most of the ones in the box were cherry tomatoes and after scouring a few cookbooks and blogs I finally decided on a recipe out of The River Cottage Preserves Handbook. This is a new book to me, C got it for my birthday and I really like some of the unique recipes. So I made roasted tomato passata. The prep is easy enough, half (or quarter) the tomatos, thinly slice some shallots and garlic toss it all with olive oil and some seasoning and roast in the oven.

Then I scraped everything off of the cookie sheet and threw it in to the food processor. I think the recipe called for a food mill which would have been better since you could have removed the skins but we couldn't find ours. After it was pureed I brought it back up to boiling in a saucepan and then canned it. All said and done it made a total of about 6 pints.

I've thrown it in a couple of dinners already, pretty much subsituting it in for a bit of tomato sauce or paste. In a bind we could probably make a quick tomato cream sauce for dinner out of it.

We've put up 5 4oz jars of fig preserves too, which I use in place of jam or jelly on toast. Although apple seasons is just about hitting it's stride it's debatable whether we're going to do apple sauce or not. The apple crop around central NY was hit pretty hard in the spring with the wacky weather and the prices are reflecting that. Might just be easier to go without for a year. Plus, do I really want to pull out the canner again?

Finally

  
N's birthday quilt is finally finished. Let me just say that one more time, N's birthday quilt is finally finished! Exactly three months past her first birthday, and on C's birthday it came out of the dryer and much to a mama's delight she threw it on the kitchen floor, climbed on top of it and snuggled in.


As I've mentioned before, this was my first free motion quilt. Overall I love how it came out. I think that the circles were really simple and were very forgiving with hiding some mistakes. Plus I feel like bubbles go with the whole water theme of the Heather Ross fabric.

There was a lot of thread used - nearly 8 spools of 250 m thread to be exact. Thank goodness it was on sale at Joanns. I'm interested to see if as I get better I use less or if I should always anticipating emptying so many spools.



It's already been put to good use on N's bed as the days slowly become cooler and the nights are starting to warrant more layers. Although I suspect I will cuddle under it a bit more than N for the next year as she still prefers to do the toddler thrash off of any cover on top of her while sleeping. So here's to a happy and warm belated birthday to my sweet girl.