Kids can be such a joy, Oh yeah and some quilt tops!

Since this is a quilting blog, I will talk quilts.  Though I am today more in the mood to talk kids.  To start with I have finished quilting the top of one of the 2 strip quilts I made.  I am a member of the Salt Lake Modern Quilt Guild and I have been struggling with this whole modern thing.  I keep going to our guild meetings and I never have any thing modern to show off.  So I have been trying to fix that this strip quilt above is an attempt to fill that void.  I love it, but my straight line quilting seems to be lacking this week.  As you can see in the picture above, the lines are pulling at a angle.  I tried to change the way I quilt across the quilt on this one, to see if I could improve the quilting and get less puckers.  As you can see I failed and caused many.

This next quilt is one of those spur of the moment quilt designs (well, standing in the quilt shop) and buying the fabric to match a crazy idea in your head.  I first mentioned this quilt idea on this post, but after starting to make the quilt (the first row was the bottom left corner of the quilt) when half way sewing this together, I realized that I was a tad short (13 2 1/2 inch strips of fabric short, so a little more then a tad).  The fabric for this quilt is really interesting it is Natural Instincts by McKenna Ryan a Hoffman Fabrics Line.  So last weekend I made a second trip to the fabric store and bought 2 times what I did the first time (9 colorways by 1/4 yard the first time and 9 colorways by 1/2 yard the 2nd time).  So I still have roughly 3/8 of a yard of each.

Now for the important part of this post.  My kids are more important to me then all of the quilts in the world (OK, maybe that depends on the days, some days I would trade them for quilts).  Today I want to show off the joy of Julia and her believing that she is a big girl.  Somehow to Julia, being big means I can now open drawers, empty everything out of them and then climb inside.  My office has a set of drawers the shot above is my set of drawers one on the right (the picture above) and one on the left (shot below) the bottom 3 of the 4 drawers are Julia height.  She daily comes into the office and takes every item out of the drawer and tosses them on the floor.  The first time she did this she tossed almost 300 business cards onto the floor (one at a time mind you) before she was noticed.  She was mad that I tried to put them back in.

 

Weeks ago we gave up on keeping our items in the drawer, so now they just hold items that she regularly pulls out of the drawer and tosses on the floor and when we clean up we just toss them back in for the next day.  She now thinks that once the drawers are empty they must be filled.  From the 2 pictures you can see that she fills them with herself.

Then fun sadly has not stopped with our office.  Down in the sewing room we have this wonderful cabinet which until recently, had all the things in it that Julia could not play with (the serger, Rebecca's machine).  Sadly it took me some time to find the camera, but she climbed in the left side, closed the door and climbed out the right side.  That angry look on her face is that I was trying to take the item out of her hand and she was just not willing to give it up to me.

Jared also has continued to grow and be cute.  Saturday we went to Scout-O-Rama which is a yearly scouting event held at the South Towne Expo Center (where HMQS will be next week).  I took a few pictures of him, but was most pleased with his attempt to climb the wall.  He did not make it to the top, but he had a great time.

Last note of my kids, Rebecca my older daughter has been taking a sewing class this year in high school and she has learned many things.  One of which is to sew dresses, these 2 shots are her 2nd attempt to sew a dress for herself.  It is not perfect, but it is pretty cute and modest so I am so proud of her.  She started and completed the dress Saturday and will wear it today to church.  

Last, but not least our son James, he has no picture in this post. He has been too busy to get a picture taken.  He is going to graduate high school this year and has a "Real" job or so he thinks, working at the local amusement park, Lagoon as a ride operator.  It is so neat and exciting each day he works, he comes home and for 45 minutes or so gives me a blow by blow of his exciting day at work (and as a good dad I try to look interested   I really am proud of him.  Any way I don't always talk about my kids, but had such a fun day today I had to share what they are up too.