Lesson of the day: Stick with what you know

First of all, we have a winner in my Blog Hop Party Giveaway - Lisa C! - She has been emailed, and hopefully she'll get back to me soon with her mailing address.  Thanks, everyone, for playing along!  I see I am not the only one with hordes of UFOs lurking in every corner of my sewing room!

I've decided not to continue with the after-school program, Ready To Quilt, next marking period.  It is unfortunate that its beginning coincided with my Hurricane Sandy project, but the result is that I have had virtually NO TIME to quilt for myself in the past 6 weeks.  No many Christmas projects coming out of my sewing room this year!  I hadn't really considered how much prep time would go into this.  Shame on me - having been a teacher before, I should know better.  But I guess I always taught older kids and adults, people to whom I could just give instructions and let them go.  Perhaps during the final marking period of the year I will do it again, or maybe next year - it is a 3-year grant, and I have a standing invitation to return whenever I want.

I say this because while Saturday was busy with me gone ALL DAY, I was home all day on Sunday.  Time to quilt, right?  WRONG!  I needed to come up with an activity for the kids to work on by hand while I worked with them one-on-one on the machine.  That's what I did last week, and it worked wonderfully!  I had them play Quilt Bingo while we sewed the blocks together for our fair quilt.  I drew a 5x5 grid of 1.5" squares on a paper, copied one for everyone, gave them all a glue stick, and then dumped my tin of 1.5" scrap squares on the floor for them to choose from.

(and I nearly cried - with 30 kids that's about 750 1.5" squares that I can no longer use in my scrappy creations - oh, grow up, Erin, and share nicely!)

I created cards with categories - colors, stripes, stars, hearts, dots, animals, solids, 5 colors or more, something man-made, etc. - and let the kids take turns calling out the games.  The winners took home an embroidery hoop and a needle - we're about done with those, and I don't need 20+ embroidery hoops.

While that happened, we sewed together the quilt top (well, they sewed the blocks into rows, and then I sewed the rows together at home).

A and D are up there, my co-worker just has short arms. (hee hee!) Z will be in the bottom row, along with the name of the school and the name of the workshop in smaller letters that they colored and embroidered.

For today's meeting, I figured we could make something that the kids could give as a gift this holiday season.  Maybe a necklace, like this one I found at The Cottage Home.

I like it, but I struggled getting my beads into my little fabric tube, so I know the kids would, too.  Moving on...

Maybe this beaded necklace from MommaGoRound?

I couldn't find beads as big as hers, so with my little beads, it was pretty fiddly.  I could do it, but I don't know about the little ones.  Back to the drawing board...

A ric rac bracelet like this one from Elizabeth Abernathy?

This was easy and fun, but all I have is yellow and black, and don't want to have to go ric rac shopping today. Hers in red and blue, though, is super cute!

I have felt, so maybe some felt barrettes, like these from The Purl Bee? (by the way, there are also some rose barrettes there that took my breath away!  I definitely plan to try to make some of those for my niece!)

Not bad, the kids could do this for sure.  But what if they don't have a woman or girl in their life with HAIR to gift it to?  What if the females in their family look like me?

This is me (with my super short hair) working with one of my favorite students on our denim rag quilt 

Donald said he could make some for his cousin, which got me to thinking, I need to give them an option that would be useful to everyone.  Everyone I know has a NOSE, so how about tissue holders - they are always a hit on my ETSY shop and at craft shows.  I just need an easier version, maybe with the felt that I bought for the barrettes.  Using these holders from Martha Stewart as an inspiration (had to change the size, though, to 5.5"x7"), I came up with this.

But, darn it - I don't have enough felt for everyone!  What I DO HAVE, however, is lots of denim scraps from our denim rag quilt project, so I whipped one up in denim, too.

OK, by far my favorite project of the day!  I love denim!!

Whew!  That's a lot of prep for a one hour class!  See why I will be taking a break from it next marking period?  All that searching for the perfect project, and I should have just started with a project that I know and have made dozens of times!  But it isn't just about the results, it is about the process - and the process was fun!  If you are inspired to do some sewing with a little one in your life, I hope you find all the links useful!

Kid stuff

Some people wonder how and why I do all the "extra" stuff I do.  After all, I've got a full time job, a family, a hobby that keeps me busy.  But I gotta tell you, that "extra" stuff is what keeps me sane when the job is a drag and the kids are driving me bonkers and my dirty house makes me feel like an unfit mother and wife.  I can go into the karate studio just as low as can be, but after taking my black belt class and then teaching my intermediate class, I am flying high - every time!  And then Cub Scouts and the Ready To Quilt workshop at the elementary school - those are just more opportunities for me to be creative and hang out with kids!

The kids are almost finished with their colored and embroidered blocks for the Fair entry quilt we are making.

My Kindergarten through 2nd graders have turned out to be the most industrious. 

I guess I didn't realize until looking at these photos that they tend to self segregate by gender. But aren't they cute? 

Of course, I didn't have a real plan for the quilt design when we started, but yesterday I started whipping up some alternate blocks for them to sew their blocks to.  Here's a preview of how that quilt will look:

This will go across the top or bottom

They aren't sewn together yet - the kids will do that.  They outlined the letters with a backstitch and colored inside. 

Some ladies in my guild donated fabric for the Ready to Quilt kids, so I picked four the four largest pieces to combine in these quarter square triangle blocks.

And then, last Friday, the Cub Scouts and I were in the Christmas parade (whoever heard of a Christmas parade in NOVEMBER!?!).  We partnered with the drive-in movies again, and marched along behind a truck that was playing Frosty the Snowman on a big screen while we munched popcorn.  We made our "cars" again this year, but I gave myself a break and instead of making them out of cardboard (I swear I nearly got carpal tunnel from cutting so many boxes up last year!), I bought poster board and made them into "sandwich board" cars with some muslin strips across the shoulders.  The boys got really creative with their cars:

Yup, that's a deer peeking out the back window of the FORD truck 

My son even thought to put a seat belt on his driver!

Can you see that his lights are made out of tinfoil?  Who thinks to bring tinfoil to a parade? Clever kid! 

Can you see the little Christmas lights he drew around his windshield? Get my vote for most festive! 

Yesterday and today, the weather has been in the low 70s.  I'll admit to being affected by the weather.  This balmy weather has me skipping around and singing like a kid!  Just think, I'm on my porch in short sleeves and barefoot writing this right now, watching the sun go down...in DECEMBER!  For this child of the Maine woods, that is nearly unheard of!  The hubby and I like to joke about taking off for Panama when things get rough at home and work - well, guess where I got quilt blocks from yesterday?

Thanks, Marina from Panama! (Hubby wants to know why they quilt in Panama if it is warm all the time.  Don't worry guys, in time, I will educate him to our ways.)

And today, I got 71 more quilt blocks in the mail from Lola in VA and the Rainbow Plantation Quilters in AL.  Thanks, guys!

Luckily, I made room in my sewing room today - I mailed out 8 quilts to Blankie Depot in NJ.  That's 14 delivered so far by me, and I believe 3 or 4 more have been delivered directly from the people who have been kind enough to quilt quilts for us.  And there are many more to come.  

Do you know that I've received over 1165 disappearing 4-patch blocks so far?

That doesn't include the ones made by me or those in my quilt guild or those that were made and delivered to me in quilt form or all the orphan blocks and unfinished blocks and tops you guys have sent.  Together, we are making a difference in the lives of those who are still suffering the effects of Hurricane Sandy.  Everyone reach over your shoulder and give yourself a nice pat on the back!

And for my final bit of kid stuff - look at one of my little fellas drew for me in Ready To Quilt yesterday - just melted my heart! (and he obviously knows I love scrappy, improvisational quilts!)

Monday - 1, Erin - 0

Yesterday kicked my butt.  Getting back into a rhythm at work was rough.  After work, I taught the READY TO QUILT class at the elementary school, and they didn't assign me a helper yesterday so that was rough.  The kids were doing more embroidery, finishing up some of the letters we didn't get to last time, plus creating the blocks for the county fair quilt.  It will be an alphabet quilt, so the kids traced some designs that I brought onto fabric, colored them, and then started to outline the letters with a back stitch.  Their blocks are looking pretty good, but I swear, all I did was thread needle after needle after needle...

Then my son had basketball practice, and I took him to not one, but TWO wrong schools before I got him to the school where he was actually having practice.  He hates being late.  Poor kid, he got the wrong mother for that.

When I got home, I opened the Hurricane Sandy Relief Quilts mail:

There were 15 of these beauties donated.  I'm going to find a green to sash them and have a ball putting these together. Thanks, anonymous member of the Hooks and Needles Guild in SC.

35 more blocks - thanks, Hooks and Needles Guild in SC, Karin in South Africa, Ann in TX and Denise in OR! 

and that was it.  After I finished reading to the boys at bedtime, I got in bed to read for myself and was out like a light before I even turned a page.  My hubby got home shortly after 9 to find me knocked out, drooling on my book, lights blazing.

I keep thinking today will be better, but it is lunch time and I am in a foul mood.  I'm going to look ahead to after work - NO SCHEDULED ACTIVITIES!  I'm going straight home!  (well, after a quick stop at the library and the bank...)

Plus, a family friend (Uncle Ted) is coming for a visit from Maine AND I already have dinner in the CrockPot!  The day just has to get better, doesn't it?