Three Kitchen Fairies

More on the bees.

Little by little I've been catching up with my quilting swaps and bees. Today, I managed to finished Miss Kendall's block. Her quilt from "Quilt around the world" is coming along nicely. It's filled with rusty tones of orange and splashes of blue, purple, and red here and there. Since I saw her first block I decided I wanted to make a tin man block for her. To me this is a kind of a playful block, perfect for this  young lady who is so creative a talented. Take a look at her blog, and here is her flickr too...

It's a tiny block only 8.5in by 10 in. I found the instructions in this book

101 Fabulous Rotary-Cut Quilts by Judy Hopkins and Nancy Martin. Another thing that I managed to do today was to sit with this little miss, and I helped her start a tiny quilt. Today she learned how to measure and cut her little 5X5 in. pieces of fabric. She learned what a 1/4 of an inch seam allowance is. She sewed the pieces together, and fearfully ironed them.

 

She's in the process of hand quilting the whole  9X9 inch thing eager to jump into the next step: how to sew the bias tape around it. I love our little crafty moments. Far from wishing she falls in love with what I love to do, I love the togetherness it brings to us.

  

 
 

Block swaps, quilting bees, and embroidery swap

For some strange reason last December I signed up for a bunch of swaps and bees.  All the blocks have to be sent by March, and the stitchery pieces are due on April. Some other blocks are to be made withing a week or in its respective month. As much as I love to participate in this groups I think I over did it this time. So here I'm doing my best and not letting anyone down, after all I will be receiving pretty blocks too.

The last couple of weeks, I made five out of six blocks for the Three by Six Sampler block swap.

This swap called for 12.5 in. blocks. I could have done anything simpler than this '31 pieces' block but no. I'm not only impulsive but also complicated. I have this block on a quilt I made years ago. I don't even know were I have the instructions for it so I re-draw the whole thing to make my 12.5 in blocks. I'm happy with the result, and I truly hope that my partners really like their blocks. By the way, I don't even know what's the name of it, do you??

Two blocks for "Quilt around the world." I only managed to take one picture. And I'll be working on another  block for this bee tonight.

Last but not list my second (out of six) embroidery for the Hoop Up, Stitch, and Send swap.

 

I confess I learned my lesson. I as much as I love sharing my time and my sewing, next time I'll be more realistic about how much time I have to participate in swaps and quilting bees. Next post I'll show you how worth it all these has been. My blocks and embroideries made by my partners are starting to arrive in the mail. Everything is simply adorable.

Our new game

February is for my one of the hardest months of the year. It's the time when I personally get tired of the cold weather, and I start a countdown 'til spring. It's around this month when we say that we're done with winter as long as we already had a snow day, which we already had; and trip to the hills to go sledding: done. Another usual thing around this time of the year is the colds. Horrible colds that trigger our asthma and keeps us in the house for couple of weeks at the time; exhausted, and bored.

But all this isolation also brings little curious situation, and observation to my attention. Like this new game my five year old is making me play.

She's (as many little girls do) carrying her baby doll "Idis" ("Iris" in real grown up language.) Couple of times she has been asked if "Idis" is her baby, if she is a little mom. She gave people the look, like "you know nothing, man" and she answers "no!! Idis is my little sister, my mom's new baby."

I can't dare call Idis a "doll," it can bring my girl to tears. She wants me to care for "my" baby the same way I cared for her when she was a baby. She wants to be a big sister, and a good helper. So here you have me this winter taking care of my adopted baby doll just because my little fairy never had the opportunity to see and to feel how is it to be a big sister. How on earth she came up with this idea?? Is it part of growing up?? I just want to think that she's so amazing that she is asking for this special part of my motherhood to be explained to her through this game. After all, hopefully, she'll be a mommy some day. As ridiculous as I may look, I do carry her toy baby carrier, and her doll , sorry "baby" on the streets, at the grocery store, at the doctor's office and even to my bed. Isa assures me that Iris is still to young to sleep away from mom... I guess I'll play along until she rests assure that she has the big sister's experience, and the knowledge to be a mom.  Wish us luck...

Deer love

One of my partners' theme for the "Hoop Up! embroidery swap" is wild life. I wasn't thrilled by the idea at first, but since I signed up for this swap so I had to come up with something pretty for this girl. I got to the computer and started searching for coloring pages, and I found this. Lovely, isn't?! I even printed out some pages for my little one who decided to work next to me that day.  To my surprise this embroidery piece turned out really cute.

 I was more that pleased, I was tempted to try this pattern as an applique.

 

After some 'heat and bond', and some pretty fabrics, these appliques went onto this t-shirt

for Fairy #3 who turned five years last Sunday.

But that wasn't enough. I still had one more 'heat and bond' applique  ready to go. I used it here.

  

...just added some grass and voila. A cosmetic pouch for my little sister who turned 19 years old yesterday. I had so much fun making these projects. That's why I love signing up for those wonderful Flickr swaps. Usually this kind of challenges turned out to be so inspiring.