qypsy wife quilt - sarah schraw's modern farmhouse vintage version

the gypsy wife quilt along 2016 is getting into full gear. you can see the fabric pulls being made by various participants by searching the hashtag #GWqal2016FabricPull on instagram. i think next week we will have a link party here for blog friends to share theirs, too.

do you know what fabrics you'd like to use yet? in order to give fence-sitters some ideas and inspiration, and to get us all excited about our eventual finishes, i'm going to run a fun series of posts over the next few weeks until we officially begin in february. this series will feature some completed gyspy wife quilts in various styles, as well as some Q&A with the makers about their quilts and the process. i think you'll be pleased with the participants i've convinced to share with us. i know i am!

to kick off my veteran gypsy wife quilter series, today i'm introducing sarah schraw of sarah quilts. (instagram @sarahschraw) i've been a big fan of sarah's work for a while now. her combinations just sing to me; her fabric selections are impeccable. i adore her gypsy wife quilt, which i think of as having a vintage-farmhouse-meets-modern-fabrics look.

here are sarah's thoughts on her gypsy wife journey:

I really enjoy the variety and fun of samplers, and I love the way Jen Kingwell designed this particular sampler. Those vertical stripes are such a great way to bring a sampler style design together. 

I made my first block 101 weeks ago according to IG. I'm still working on the hand quilting so I guess I can't say I'm done yet. I'm about 1/3 done but now I'm hand quilting My Small World as well so I'm a little distracted.

I believe my initial concept was flowers, dots, and stripes. And as many colors as possible. I had just finished my neon sampler, and that was much funkier (lots of Anna Maria Horner and Amy Butler and of course NEON), so I was in the mood for something softer and prettier (Bonnie & Camille, DS, etc). I do that a lot - finish a project that contains certain designers and then start something with a completely different part of my stash.

My favorite part of the process was the larger, more complicated blocks. I love the variety and sense of accomplishment you get from just one block. With some of those blocks, making them once was definitely enough!

One thing I would consider doing differently would be to take the quilt section by section rather than just going in order of the pattern booklet. It was really hard to get color distribution right because I didn't pay a lot of attention to which blocks were near each other. Plus it was really overwhelming and arduous to face all those skinny strips at once.

I'm hand quilting because I enjoy it and frankly I am never truly pleased with the result of my machine quilting. You have so much more control when hand quilting. And of course I love the way it looks.

I thread basted the quilt first - following the Sarah Fielke hand quilting tutorial on YouTube (here). I tried a tacking gun on My Small World as recommended by Jen Kingwell's hand quilting tutorial on Fat Quarter Shop's YouTube channel but I felt like that was actually harder.

Good luck! Please let me know if you have any other questions along the way. 

if you are a new quilter, sarah's blog has a whole series on making your first quilt. or check our her wonderful barn door quilt along. (i still have my fabrics set aside for that one! it's on my list.)

make your own gypsy wife quilt with us this year! join the gypsy wife quilt along 2016.

we're on instagram at #GypsyWifeQuiltAlong2016

ps - sarah never posted this finish on her somewhat waining blog (she had a baby!), so i'm linking it up to friday finishes at crazy mom quilts for her!

gypsy wife qal - update on schedule changes

after some discussion, megan and i have determined that the interest is high and we'd better harness the excitement energy. also, it's easier to break the quilt up over 9 months of piecing rather than 8. therefore, we will be offering an optional start for the quilt along in february, with section 1 up first.

originally, we were going to have to lump sections 1 & 2, two medium sized sections, together in february to get the top pieced by november. we figure those ready to go should just get going and do one section next month, and another the following.

if you aren't ready to start with us then, it's okay! don't panic. you can still join in and catch up. you'll just have a bit more work to do over the first two months like we were originally going to do. it's not a problem.

so get your patterns out, pull those fabrics, and start pressing your lovelies in preparation for some cutting. if you can't wait to cut, the strips are a great place to start. please see my last post about fabric selection for information on the strips.

#GypsyWifeQuiltAlong2016 on instagram

gypsy wife quilt along 2016 - fabric selection

 this is my pile of gypsy wife fabrics. i will need no where near this much fabric to complete the quilt, but this is where i go when i'm making a block and need fabric. this is the gathering of fabrics that would work in the quilt. my original pull is much smaller, but over the two years i've been working on the project, i've added and added pieces that seem right to me.

there are dozens of beautiful gypsy wife quilts out there, each with a unique feel and/or theme to it. over the next few weeks, i plan to introduce you to some of them. there is no right or wrong way to go here. i've seen gypsy wifes (wives?) that were all solids, all low-volume, all one designer, or all scrap stash and completely random. mainly, just pick a theme or mood and get pulling fabric. this is certainly a quilt that can take a huge spectrum of variety or would look great with a pared down palette, too.

 for me, when i began gathering fabrics, i was looking for things that said "gypsy" to me. instinctively, i know what this means. putting it into words is a little harder. but here goes!

admittedly, my idea of "gypsy" is personal and completely romanticized. when i think "gypsy" i think rich euorpean fabrics that represent their wanderings over the continent, a motley collection of scraps patched together out of thrift and necessity, bohemian style, rich colors. the image of the gypsy caravan, with it's outdoor camping lifestyle is conjured, so there's a certain element of "picnic" woven into my theme. and maybe a tiny bit of "circus" with trained animals because i think of gypsies as travelling performers.

as far as my color palette goes, when i first saw the quilt pattern, it seemed to me there was a predominance of red (my favorite!) and that appealed to me a lot. so i have tried to incorporate a lot of red in many tints, tones, and shades, which means a variety of pinks, too. yellow, blue, and green also feature strongly as supporting colors. orange and purple are not present, except maybe a few strokes included in some very colorful prints. if you look at the pattern cover, the original gypsy wife has lots of bright colors interspersed with many greys. i like the way they play off each other in that quilt. however, i haven't used many neutrals other than whites and creams in my own palette.

 my print selections can be grouped into several distinct categories i have purposely tried to include. first, there are the rich, busy prints with lots of colors. these are large scale prints and i use them for the biggest sections of the blocks. this is a place you'll find some AMH and Amy Butler, Joel Dewberry and Heather Bailey.

there are a few novelty prints that say "gyspy" to me, which i use for fussy cutting block centers.

 to support these busier prints, i have some monochromatic prints with the right feel and lots of dots, mostly because i noticed several dots in ms. kingwell's original gypsy wife quilt. dots make great supporting fabrics or layers in the blocks. and they are really good for the strips, too.

these ditsy florals and small scale geometric prints are also supporting fabrics in the blocks and are used for strips.

 stripes. i've used stripes a lot in supporting roles, too.

 and there is a stack of solid colored fabrics to break up the business of the quilt and give those prints a bit of room to breathe. i haven't used the solids a lot but find i like them as borders for the blocks that have borders since they will help separate the blocks from other elements surrounding them. i've also used the solids in some of the blocks with multiple layers to give the prints there some room, too.

i've gathered lots of low volume (light) prints to use as the backgrounds in blocks, and to add depth and variety to the strips.

the pattern fabric requirements are pretty vague, and for good reason. this is a scrappy quilt. the designer, ms. kingwell, is of the opinion "the more fabrics the better." and i agree. you won't need very much of any one fabric at all.

i started out by pulling from stash and then buying 1/4yd cuts of the fabrics i thought would compliment what i had gathered. because this quilt consists of many long strips, i think traditionally cut 1/4 yds are more versatile than fat quarters. but don't throw out the fat quarters if you already have them! this is just a tip for buying.

 i have a collection of scraps set aside that can be used in the blocks. there are some tiny components to some of the blocks, so put your little cut off pieces in one pile and dig through them when those small pieces are called for.

i've also been keeping a pile of strips put aside on a platter. when i was following the "make all the blocks in order they appear in the book" system, i was cutting a strip every time i cut into a new fabric. this way i didn't have to cut all 60 strips at the end. this will still work for the "make each section" system of attack, too.  you'll just need to cut a handful of strips at the beginning so you can put together the first few sections.

and while we're on the topic of strips, i need to say the info on the back of the pattern is confusing, or at least misleading.

the fabric requirements on the back of the pattern call for several 4" x wof strips and a few 2" x wof strips. however, the strips actually used in the pattern are 1.5" cut (1" finished) and 1" cut (1/2" finished). you could certainly cut your needed strips from those called for if you already had those sizes on hand. just don't cut your strips at those widths on purpose because you will be cutting again and wasting a lot of fabric.

i hope this has helped you think about what your gypsy wife will be.
next month we will have a link party for sharing fabric selections. in the meantime, please ask questions.

we're on instagram at #GypsyWifeQuiltAlong2016

why you want to gypsy along in 2016

or at least why megan and i want to . . .

it seems it was only a year ago, but it was actually two, that i was visiting megan on her blog, jaffa quilts, when i saw a very intriguing quilt pattern. it had several rows of scrappy strips sprinkled with a hodge podge of blocks, thickly at the top and dispersing into mostly square-in-square blocks at the bottom. i was in no need of any new projects but i was absolutely smitten with the quilt.

and there was a quilt along organized to spread the joy out over the year. i like a quick finish, but i was ready to push my skill set and learn some new things. i wanted something more complicated that would challenge me and yeild some truly impressive results. a monthly quilt along  seemed fun and doable to me, a great way to pace myself as i slowed down and concentrated on the process more.

at the time, i was just getting my sea legs with quilting. i had a few finishes under my belt and felt my straight lines were getting pretty straight. i had recently branched out to the scary hst shape (bias edges!) and found it not so scary after all. gypsy wife was going to be another step along the learning path. and was it ever!

this gypsy lady will give you a taste of all kinds of blocks without committing to the repetition of the same block many, many times. so for those of us who like variety, come here! admittedly, there are several square-in-square (economy) blocks, but you can change the fabrics each time, so that's not boring at all.

i like that the gypsy wife is sort of a sampler quilt, without a traditional sampler quilt look or layout. it's scrappy wildness at its best. and it is great for eating up scraps. dig out your favorite bits and watch them come together beautifully.

i can testify that as intimidating as this quilt looks, it is doable for someone with only moderate experience, a sense of adventure, and a desire to learn. it will also help if you don't beat yourself up over perfection when mistakes occur or points get lost. this quilt is so wonderfully busy, those little frustrations won't really be noticeable when it's all put togther (so i'm told).

the 2014 quilt along was logically broken down by month to work through the blocks in the order they were presented in the book. that worked really well in some ways. you just went from page to page, making your way through the book.

but over time, i found myself wondering where all the pieces were going to end up, what was going to go next to each other. the pattern is not clear about this and the blocks aren't presented in order of appearance in the quilt - you have to locate the piece in the final layout by scanning several pages to know where it's going to go. so i spend the better part of a cross country plane ride laboriously numbering and lettering each piece in the layout and then cross referencing this to the instructions.

i was having a real love/hate relationship with that pattern for other reasons, too. it does have nice, clear graphics that accompany the explanations for how to construct each block type. however, as someone with only moderate experience, i often found those instructions not as detailed as i would have liked. i was used to having more measurements for component pieces, not having to figure them out myself.

on the one hand, i learned a whole lot by trial and error, figuring my way through the pattern. on the other hand, this slowed me down a lot and sometimes discouraged me.

about halfway through the year, people, of course, were dropping out, for lots of reasons. and some friends decided the system wasn't working for them as it was. this is totally understandable because people are all different! i find no fault at all with the original system. it just didn't work for me. or i just wasn't able to stick with it because of my life and other quilt projects happening and interfering all the time. in the end, out of 30+ participants, there were 7 quilters who linked up to the final finish party. i'm sure others have completed their quilts since then, like megan and liz.

those other smart friends began working on the quilt by sections instead of by page number. this appealed to me because it allowed me to see what was going where and next to what. even though it is a very busy, scrappy quilt, i didn't want to end up with clumps of color or certain fabrics grouped together. i wanted the random more evenly spread around.

i did like how much i was learning. i liked working through this project over a period of time. more than once i spent an entire sewing session on a single block and felt my evening quite enjoyable.

somewhere over the summer, i fell behind and some other projects took priority. and then it got put away all together. so at this point, i have a handful of completed blocks and am ready to jump in again. this time with a different plan and a new set of friends!

megan finished her top, finally, in february 2015, and recently got it quilted and bound, then shocked me by saying she was gifting it to her mother. how on earth could she bear to part with something so labor intensive that she had worked on for so long?! the explanation was that she didn't like the fabrics she had used and just didn't feel the quilt was "her." megan opted to get a fabric kit, which made all the selections for you, which explains her ambivalence with the final product.

after talking to her about her completed quilt, i got itching to get back to my own project. and i teasingly told her she needed to make another gypsy in fabrics of her own choice. well, she listened! and since we were both feeling interest in tackling the project again, i suggested we co-host a quilt along, over fewer months and arranged around sections rather than book-order. she agreed.

we put feelers out on instagram and have a troupe of ladies keen to join us.

our plan is to complete the quilt over 10 months - february to november 2016. we are working out a schedule and generating interest through social media, encouraging participants to get ahold of the pattern and begin fabric selections now.

i have extensive notes all over my pattern booklet that fill in many of the blanks i found missing in instructions. megan, as a veteran with a completed quilt under her belt, has lots of experience to share, too. we plan to do this through alternating monthly blog posts as we quilt along. we would really like to share this knowledge and experience, such as it is, with anyone else interested in making this quilt.

really, for all the headaches it's caused me, it has been a great adventure in the making. i want to do this quilt all the way through and help those who would like to also.

gypsy wife is not the only right of passage quilt out there, but i guarantee you that when you complete one, you will call yourself a real quilter and no one will argue.

so join us!

if you have never seen this pattern but like it, join us.
if you have had the pattern laying around but never made it, now is the time. join us.
if you started the pattern but didn't finish, join us. you'll be ahead!
if you completed a gypsy wife and and want to make another, join us.

all are welcome!

you will find a permanent page with information, schedule, links, etc here on my blog. there is a tab at the top of the page, under the header that will lead you to the gypsy wife quilt along 2016 page.

who's ready to gypsy along?!

we're on instagram at #GypsyWifeQuiltAlong2016

wip-ing all over the place

one look at my cutting table and you can tell i've changed tactics again.

back in november, when i was desperate to get my oldest son's quilt done before his birthday/family pictures/christmas/anytime at all, i put myself on strict orders to work on absolutely nothing but that quilt until it was done, the exception being handbinding "dreaming easy" because it couldn't interfere with my time at the machine working on that orange and blue wonky mess (hereafter refered to as OBWQ).

the result was a lot of anxiety, unhappy time at the machine, and outright avoidance of sewing altogether. once all the (self-imposed) deadlines passed, i simply gave up on sewing. squeezing any time out of the holiday schedule was near impossible anyway, so why gobble up time with what felt like a chore?

as much as i want my son to have his mama-made, i also want to enjoy the process of getting it done. at least a little bit. so last week, when i had a sewing day open up (que sunshine and heavenly chior), i decided i would work on that OBWQ and alternate in some selfish incentive sewing, too. one block of the chore quilt for one pass at another project. part of what inspired this decision was the completion of "dreaming easy." golly, i love that quilt! it makes me so happy to look at it and snuggle under it and spread it out on the spare bed. it's sort of renewed my love of quilting all over again. i thought if i could pace myself with some of that kind of sewing mixed in with the chore stuff, i might find the joy and motivation again. even for the OBWQ.

and you know what? it's working!

after making my wonky log cabin block #11, the first thing i added into the mix a set of hsts for my valentine's pinwheel project, started last year. i sewed together one fat quarter's worth of pinwheels and knocked out another two log cabin blocks at the same time!

 three log cabins and a handful of pinwheels was highly motivating! i started eyeballing some groovy art gallery fabrics and complimentary prints i had set aside ages ago for a plus quilt like jolene's featured on her blog, blue elephant stitches. i love, love, love, this quilt! i was going to buy it from jolene, but for various reasons decided to make my own.

so anywho, last friday night i decided i felt like cutting (totally weird!) and got pressing my fat quarter set and cut into this baby. it was already started in my mind and all i have to do is follow the photo of jolene's layout, so it didn't really feel like a new wip to me at all. i quickly worked out the maths and spent some pleasant time cutting away. now i have a pretty pile of cut fabric i can use if i ever feel the need to just throw something together. i also photographed the process so i can make a quick tutorial later on.

 and since cutting was suddenly so fun, i made another log cabin block (only one to go!) and then cut some more triangles for my indian summer quilt  from rachel's pattern for her angled class (which is being offered again right now) that has been hiding away under the OBWQ on the design wall all fall and winter.

 i'm happy to say that sewing triangles together after several months off was like getting back on a bike. i could remember how to put them together properly, the cutting tricks i discovered, and trouble shoot any problems i had along the way. these are so easy!!! i could sew triangles all day long. with only about three rows left to go, this should be a finished flimsy top in no time at all.

i like the diamond shape that's created when i begin putting the first pairs together and press them open. it makes me wonder what i could do with these shapes in some future project. this particular combo is quite pleasing, i think.

after i had a few more rows of triangles complete, i needed to see the completed portion again so i took down all the OBWQ blocks off the top and set them aside to be sorted and laid out for sewing together. this warm and golden view met my eye. i do like this project! it's all jumbled right now since the rows weren't put up in order, but i can see where it's going and like it a lot.

the other three rows are taking over the "gypsy wife" design wall. i'm just pinning right over the top of the gypsy lady like i do.

so, yeah, i jumped in a lot of different puddles last weekend. and it was a lot of fun. i'm motivated again and have not just one but four projects moving forward. i did also get an idea for two easy baby quilts that i would like to get done and off soon, but those will definitely wait until at least my son's quilt is done.

i do have at least that much self control!

linking up with lee's wip wednesday at freshly pieced

dreaming easy as the year ends

a few soccer games, some chat time with my eldest daughter, moments in a rocking chair with a mountain meadow view. that's what it took to get most of the binding completed on this quilt. and a mere 24 minutes prior to the new year, in one last solitary, concentrated effort, it was done before 2015 winked out.

then, unbeknownst to me, when the mr put our sleeping baby away into her own bed after she rang in the new year in ours, he tucked her in with this quilt. so it's already in service. i'm fairly certain she was "dreaming easy" under it as she slept away.

i've completed the tutorial for this easy, breezy checkered arrow pattern here.

a few weeks ago i was contemplating what i'd done in the quilting realm this year and didn't think i had a single finish under my belt. however, a quick scan of the blog showed that i had completed a project or two after all, including two full-size gifted quilts. i imagine i forgot about them because they aren't here anymore. in reality, "dreaming easy" is my 6th finish of the year.

in january, i completed the binding on my younger son's "bandwidth" quilt as well as my baby's "paris daydreams" quilt. i also finished and delivered "little lady" for my newest niece, evelyn. in march, i was able to gift two quilts: "bloom where you are planted" for my friend jill and "aunty charming" for my husband's aunt sue. that was a pretty good first quarter. the rest of the year saw very little sewing and mostly wip work.

the blog has been rather quiet, too. but i did get some tutorials up for my "cinched" pattern and a simple child's fat quarter apron. i may not be a prolific quilter or blogger, but i do enjoy sharing. favequilts.com is a site that has published a few of my tutorials in their collection of free quilting patterns of all sorts. they surprised me last week by telling me i was one of their top 100 bloggers for 2015! my six and one half dozen baby quilt made it into their most popular projects list for the year. go figure! for someone who isn't nearly as active in the online quilting community as she once was or would like to be, that was a pleasant surprise.

they even gave me a button!

you can see all their top projects for the year here.

so what's ahead in 2016? more finishes, i hope! priority goes to my elder son's wonky quilt, of course. then there's the triangle quilt and penny patch 2.0. you know, all the stuff i talked about last time i posted. i have no big plans other than plodding along and getting things done. well, maybe getting my sewing space whipped into shape and covered with some barn doors.

see y'all around next year!

linking up with amanda jean's friday finishes at crazy mom quilts.

wip wednesday

 sewing time has been sporadic at best lately. still, some is better than none! the quilting projects creep forward, stitch by stitch, and block by block. i thought i'd do a quick wip report to see where my major projects stand. the idea of digging up and photographing the half dozen minor projects did not appeal to me this afternoon. that'll wait until the end of the year review, i suppose.

first, the priority quilt for s1/the boy, is nowhere near complete. after i finished the first row of wonky log cabin blocks, i began to question the design again. but i got over that and started on the second row of 7 blocks, the one and half blocks above being the result so far.

so, no, there wasn't a fab family photo with everyone sporting their personal quilt as a prop. maybe next year! which, coincidentally, will likely be the last year they are all at home. so maybe that will be a better year to commemorate with their quilts and favorite books.

new deadline for the wonky quilt - christmas.

 the next major project in the wings, and the only other one i'm allowed to work on, is the "dreamin' easy" arrow check quilt, which is in the binding phase. i can take this with me to high school soccer games, which just started. this has the added bonus of keeping my lap warm during the games in the chilly fall weather. since i only manage about a few feet a game, this might take the rest of the soccer season to complete!

the third major project, which is pretty far along, is penny patch 2.0. it's top and backing are languishing in the project box i took to (but did not touch at) the cabin this summer. as soon as wonky gets done, this will be sandwiched and quilted.

i even forgot all about the fourth project - my triangle indian summer blanket quilt - because it's buried under the wonky quilt on the design wall. it looks like i have at least one quilt in every phase of quilting: piecing, quilting, binding.

there is no christmas-y sewing going on around here, although there is one little girl who would like to make a six and one half dozen christmas quilt with some fat quarters (stacked on the box above). the other wips, like gypsy wife and sugar block club, will just have to sleep where they are until early spring.

and then it will be time to dream up something new!

but for the winter, i'm buckling down to some slow and steady finishing.
happy sewing, y'all.

linking up to lee's wip wednesday at freshly pieced.

figuring it out

 the wonky orange and blue invasion is still going on around here. however, i am happy to report some progress! after considering what went so blah with the first block (upper left), i decided i needed to add some solid blue strips and create a few more angles, get more wonk in. also, many of my strips were roughly the same size, so i went for more variation in strip width, too.

i got right to work the next afternoon and am really pleased with the new results. after making a few blocks, i knew that original block wasn't going to fit with the rest, so i unpicked it whilst watching some edwardian farm with the girls. i reassembled with many of the original pieces and the block on the right above is the result. i like the depth of color and contrast much better now. and i got rid of that mini stripe that i wasn't loving. i've learned over the years and quilts to not use a fabric i don't like. some people can look at a fabric for it's color value and effect alone - i just can't. it's not worth being bothered by the offending fabric every time i look at the quilt. so out it goes.

 now i have 6 of the 14 blocks i need after just a few hours sewing. i'm amazed how quickly this block works up. today when i sat down to sew another block, i thought i'd time myself to see how long it was taking.

 but then i got interrupted by a dozen things - like a son working on math puzzles, a daughter who wanted to photograph all the bits she's sewn the last few days, a husband who brought soup, another little one who pinched her finger during a paper cutting spree. honestly, it was endless! my "quick" block took over an hour itself.

so this is where i am with t- 11 days til i wanted this quilt complete. that's nearly 3 of the 5 rows of blocks done. just 8 more wonky log cabins, a pieced word, some strips and we're done. for now, i'm just throwing them up on the board as i complete them. order and organization into the final layout will need to come soon.

now what?

 so that photo looks really blue and cold. yuck. anyway, that's not my main problem at the moment. first, i have all the wonky stacked coin blocks completed. yay! and i've moved on to the wonky log cabin blocks portion of the quilt now, having finished the first of those. also good. except i'm not liking the look of this first block. not at all.

do i just need to make a few more and see how it goes? try something different with color or value placement? redesign the whole quilt yet again?

i'm not even sure what it is exactly that i don't like here.
maybe it's because of the missing contrast between the pattern fabrics and the solid Kona Windsor blue. i just don't know.

in the actual quilt, these blocks are scheduled to be in a row over and under the rows of stacked coin blocks. (see my sketch here.) maybe the way i had them placed in the first photo doesn't help me get a good idea of what the quilt will look like. but even if that's true, i didn't like the block itself when it was complete.

 the inspiration from this block also came from the same book the wonky stacked coin block came from - block party: the modern quilting bee. see, the quilt and the block are right there on the cover.

 i'm looking at this and trying to figure out what's different from the book blocks and mine; why they work and mine doesn't.

for one, they seem to use some coordinating solids mixed in and i have none. perhaps i should add in strips of the Windsor blue and see how i like that?

my blocks aren't as wonky as the book blocks, but that isn't what's got me. that can be easily adjusted. i think i'm going to have to sit down and study the photos in the book a bit and see what i come up with.

or maybe just walk away for the evening and see what it looks like tomorrow.

any ideas out there, brilliant quilty peeps?

linking up with lee's wip wednesday at freshly pieced.

involved

 no one tell his dad that he was taking a break from his algebra and chemistry and laying out a block for his quilt instead of sitting at a computer working on calculations or studying for his midterm.

i was taking a minute to make that peace-offering of an apron and the boy wandered in to my sewing area, looking for a momentary brain reprieve. he saw his quilt pieces and started laying strips out into a block.

i can't tell you how pleased having him involved in this process made me, but perhaps the look on my face says enough. just take that smile and multiply it by infinity. (or a google, a number he was obsessed with as a littler tyke.) i wish i'd let him lay out all of the blocks for me. watching his mind work on it's creative side, which is considerable, makes me pretty proud as a parent. talking about the process with him is so fun and i love that he's had a part in designing his own quilt now.

he would have stayed and worked up many more for me, i'm sure, but i had to be responsible and send him back to his studies when this block was completed. i hope i assembled it to his high standards. i wonder if he'll be able to pick it out of the quilt someday down the road.