basket o' quilts

 last summer, i had three quilts happily living in our family room, there for anything (reasonable) the children wanted to use them for. my method of storage for them was to drape them over a couch arm. it worked well at the time. fast forward to early this summer and i have 5 quilts who reside in the family room. the old arm-hanging method wasn't working so well anymore.

so i found a basket at target that rounds them all up nicely - and quite literally seeing as it's a tube-shaped basket and i roll the quilts to put them in there. this is a smith and hawkins basket that matches the large baskets i have housing kids' shoes and sports balls in our central hallway. i like that the basket matches but is unique in it's shape.

until becky gets busy with her mad woodworking skills and makes me a quilt ladder (pretty please?) like the one she just made for herself, we'll be using the basket for quilt storage 'round here.

some fmq and family, too

 after having difficulty with fabric pushing and bunching on my first attempt at the straight line quilting for "twirly", i took leah day's advice from her craftsy class and tried to do the straight lines with my fmq foot, to varying degrees of success and disaster.

it felt good while i was doing the fmq, but it wasn't always working as well as i thought. i did manage to keep my stitching pretty darn straight, for the most part. my main problem with it was that occasionally the needle would jump to the left a stitch length or two when i would stop to move my hands. this is horribly noticeable when you look at the lines.

when i stipple, i can move one hand or the other without having to stop very often for adjustments, but with straight lines, you have no choice but to stop to move your hands pretty much every time your hands reach the end of the quilting table. and that's when the needle would mysteriously shift over a bit and ruin the straight line effect. argh! i redid some of it and left other bits. i'm hoping a wash and crinkling will help hide the less-than-perfect lines in this quilt. i suppose i just need more practice and it will start to come more naturally to me.

the good news is that the fabric stopped shifting and bunching like it did under the walking foot. now the lines just don't look so good.

on the other hand, i tried out the wishbone pattern in the dark green sashing strips and it worked beautifully! i thoroughly enjoyed sewing this pattern and will definitely use it again. it was next to impossible to photograph, but it looks good on the quilt.

 all that looping was meditative and relaxing. it's a forgiving and pretty pattern.

 while i was busy quilting away, working out my arms (please tell me this counts as exercise of some sort because my arms are sore!), we had 4 daughters, 3 nieces, and 2 neighbor girls playing in the family room. they decided to create a play for us. of course they made a huge mess, but also a very cute production. i loved that they used as many of my quilts as they could find as part of the set. there were quilts laid out everywhere! they made it look homey, i suppose.

other family happenings this weekend: our snow pea plant produced it's first pods for consumption. the 5 yr old and i have been watering and watching these grow from seed since the end of September. it's the extent of our winter garden this year.

my oldest son sought out the hat loom and began a new hat for himself to keep his head warm in the dropping temperatures. i love that even my boys are handy with fibers when necessary. these are by no means high-quality hats, but they enjoy making them and will wear them around the house on a chilly morning.

d1 even made his own hook to replace the missing one from the kit. he fashioned it out of a paperclip and some beeswax. that's one handy boy.

books and quilts are us

reading time with the first grader on the couch, curled up under lolly lolly

this house has long been over run by books. now the quilts are starting to pile up, too. i think this is a good combination: books and quilts. what could be cozier?

when my quilting began 3 years ago (this month, actually!), i could not see down the line to a day when i would have so many quilts under my sewing belt. it just seemed impossible that i would find the time to make much of anything. now my kids ask, "where are you going to put all these quilts you are making, mom?" never fear, we haven't hit the saturation point yet.

reading and quilts collide at several points through out our day and our home.

sometimes we sit up to read during homeschool reading time with the younger girls and other times we lay down on the couch. d3 wanted to revisit BOB books, our go-to starter readers, a few days ago. since it was going to be easy, review type reading, we snuggled in on the couch. with the weather cooling off, the addition of a quilt was perfect. lolly lolly was her choice, of course.

 while she read, i may have also been studying the quilt in front of me. it's such a fascinating piece of work (not mine, you know - rachel hauser's). my fabric matching and purchasing has already been affected by it. i sure wish I knew what that awesome floral on the goldenrod background is.

most of the quilts i have in progress or in mind will either round out the collection of quilts that live in the family room, available for anyone to use in there, or will go on the play balcony for use during dramatic play. in addition to this, i've begun placing quilts in a few other strategic locations.

i recently turned this small corner of the landing at the top of our stairs into a junior readers corner. the little bookstand is nothing too special to look at, but it does the job of displaying books. perhaps i could paint it a pretty color. i was inspired to make this space by mariah bruehl's book playful learning. i won a spot in one of her ecourses about learning spaces 3 years ago and have been slowly implementing the ideas around the house. part of her philosophy is to make an attractive, inviting display to draw young learners in. (fyi - her website, playful learning, is a great parenting resource.)

this little corner could be a lot more attractive, but it's a good start and far better looking than the messy shelf of piled minutia i had here before. eventually i want to add some clip boards to the wall to hold the kids' art above the shelving and maybe make a comfy poof cushion for the reader to curl up on. for now, as an invitation to sit down and read, i'm using the little rocker d1 got for her first Christmas. at nearly 15 years old, it's starting to become a family heirloom. i draped out on a limb over the rocker for some added comfort and color in the corner. for the record, the invitation is working. even some bigger kids who can still fit their slender hips in that chair are perusing the selections or get suckered in to reading by their younger sisters.

each week, i change out most of the books on the shelf. this has been a great way to get them to revisit a few books several times during the week instead of just quickly browsing (and leaving huge messes behind) from the big shelves that hold literally thousands of children's books. with a few specially curated items, they engage more often and longer with individual titles. there is even a little shelf on the bottom for a collection of board books for the baby.

on the shelf this week:

stuck by oliver jeffers (hilarious)
the mitten by jan brett (classic/winter)
this is not my hat by jon klassen (again, hilarious!)
lilly's purple plastic purse by kevin henkes (classic/dealing with childhood issues)
each peach pear plum by janet and allan ahlberg (classic/rhyming)
oliver finds his way by phyllis root (childhood issue - getting lost)
the king who rained by fred gwynne (a child's literal look at common sayings)
why mosquitoes buzz in people's ears by verna aardema (classic fable)
the very hungry caterpillar by eric carle (classic)
olivia by ian falconer (classic/hilarious)
madeline by ludwig bemelmans (classic/rhymes)
the little house by viginia lee burton (classic)

maybe some readers would like to see what's on the shelf each week? i might could do that periodically.

another ritual around here that ebbs and flows in frequency is called "quilt time." my older children go to a math tutoring service for their math education in the afternoons. the 3 little girls and i have one hour to read together during this time. i tell them to grab their mama-mades and meet me in the family room for a read-aloud. it's the next best thing to an actual nap, which the older 2 don't do any more.

now that it's colder, they are piling on the quilts: one to lay on and another one or two to snuggle in.

our current read aloud picks: the flint heart by kathryn and john paterson, and the squirrel's birthday and other stories by toon tellegen.

so what's your favorite read under a quilt or spot in your home where reading and quilts collide?

quilting sightings and stuff

since enjoying the success of this green pitcher as a thread catcher, i've acquired a bit more inexpensive pottery bits at marshall's to dress up and organize my sewing area: the other pot i am using for spools, the top-most yellow bowl is pieces for my machine, the leaf plate has my binding pincushion (i've been using it for a pincushion since i haven't made one yet) and various pins, there's a small flower bowl for floss, and the yellow bowl at the bottom is for any bits i need for whatever project i have on the machine at the time. form and function here, folks.

since it's summer, i've dug out my headbands and worn them a bit. i really wanted to wear one to dress up my striped tee the other day. somehow i convinced myself that the yellow and pink headband coordinated with the neon orange tee! can you believe it. not even close, is it? really, in my half-dark bathroom it looked similar. but with my hair covering most of the band, only that completely unmatching pink rose showed. i am strange on occasion, it's true. my kids would be right to challenge my fashion sense here.

quilt sightings:

 d#1 taking a sunday nap with the abbey lane diamond quilt.

d#2 curled up with "out on a limb" for a judy blume read. cozy!

those family room quilts are starting to see a lot of real use. hurray! the kids finally seem to realize they're there and for their use.

day off

 i was taking a quick no-calorie, summery gift (sparkly lip gloss!) to a friend while visiting teaching her this morning and decided to spruce it up with some sewing scraps. that little bow out of a bit of a fabric string made a nice touch that seemed to say, "i took a moment to make this a bit more special for you" rather than just delivering it undressed. if she was a sewer, of course i would have taken her some lollies.

 while the cat was away, the mice . . . baked. my oldest son is an adept in the kitchen and will whip up treats, with his own modifications, on a whim. his cousin was here and i can now tell my sister they didn't play the wii all day long, but did something constructive, too. miette, by the way has the most divine chocolate cake recipe ever. son said he adapted it to make it bake more quickly but did not elaborate how. oh, yes, and was out of some ingredient or other. but they were still yummy.

my wrist was hurting a tad this morning and the mr., who knows these things, said, yes, you can give yourself carpal tunnel or at least damage yourself in a week's time, so i laid off the sewing for the day. (maybe tonight?) i still got some quilt time in by curling up under the almost finished "romance in the garden" (binding sewn on one side, just needs tacking down!) with some new quilt books.

then i napped.
so the staycation is still being enjoyed.

and to be honest, i think it might be the computer, not so much the sewing that's got me achy. i need to work on my posturing all the way around at both these activities.

linking in to really random thursday at live a colorful life.

family room quilts

a favorite family room activity

I make quilts to be used: read on, snuggled under, dragged around, built with, laid on, lived in. Loved. I do not make them to be hung on a wall and admired, or folded up on a chair, never to be touched. I do ask the children to be respectful and gentle-ish with my creations, but they are definitely made for use.

Right now, I have 3 quilts that camp out in the family room on the three couches. I made one of those quilts myself and the other 2 are store samples I bought from ETC, handmade by employees there. "Romance in the Garden" is also intended for this room and couch living once I complete it.

Out on a Limb

So far, there is one common thread among those quilts in this room: they each have the room's colors in it. I would like to say this is due to my decorating genius, but it's simply a happy happenstance at this point. My family room colors are red, blue, and green. My color scheme was based on my now 10yr old red Charleston Pottery Barn couches and a painting we purchased on an Anniversary trip in Kauai a few years back.

"Song for the Journey" by Dorsey McHugh

I painted the walls a barely-there light blue, pulled out of the water in the painting, to softly compliment and underlie the strong red of the couches. There are blue and green pillows on the couches and touches of all three colors all over the built-in shelving on the wall. The family room is our casual, hang-out spot, right off the kitchen, where we read together, roll around on the floor, build with blocks, have dance parties, sometimes homeschool, and just live, really. The quilts are meant to add a homey touch to the space and to be readily available for whatever they are called upon to do.

beach pow wow



None of the quilts are the exact colors already in the room, but I've gone more for shades of the color palette than a limited selection of specific colors.

Abbey Lane quilt

I look forward to the day where there are enough quilts in here for everyone to grab one during story hour or an evening by the fireplace.

Homey, isn't it, to have quilts everywhere?



quilt sightings

 I always get a kick out of seeing my kids use the quilts we have around the house. Whenever I do see them making forts or having a snuggle, it motivates me to keep making more. And reminds me that I want each of them to have their own mama-mades. This afternoon, I saw my oldest son (12) lounging on the floor, covered in my "out on a limb" quilt for comfort, playing with one of his younger sister's stuffed animals (because it just happened to be lying nearby). It was a lazy, cozy picture.

Even better, he then fell asleep just like that. Oh, it makes me smile. And think of all the times I've pulled one of those quilts over my body, head included, and done just this: nap.

This boy doesn't take naps very often at all anymore. In fact, I can't remember the last time he did. Maybe a growth spurt coming on? Whatever the cause, I'm glad he grabbed a mama-made to doing his sleeping with. Someday soon he'll get his very own.