Quilt #40: Little Learners Quilt, part 1

It's a miracle! I'm back with a new blog post! I made this little people quilt for my son's school. I've had several inquiries into how I made it. And since I didn't want to forget, I'm writing it all down for our mutual benefit! A few fun facts. This quilt is made of 622 individual pieces (yes, I counted!), 63 different fabrics (I raided my scrap bin), and 19 different colors of thread!

Last August I went to the Original Sewing & Quilting Expo in Pittsburgh, where I fell in love with this quilt:

About a month ago, I finally got around to re-creating the block pattern. (If anyone knows what it is called, please let me know in the comments). 

The people on the quilt I saw were pretty small, maybe 5"x7". When I decided to make a quilt with these blocks for my son's school, I decided to make them a little larger so that I could have a little fun with their outfits. My blocks were 9.5" x 12.5."

Despite making 18 of these blocks, I had to make two additional ones for this post because I never took photos of the process, mostly because I made a mistake on every one! I'm glad I did, because my notes weren't correct. Now both you and I will be able to make these cute blocks without wasting fabric!

So, we'll start with the boy, because he's a little easier. After you cut out the pieces, I like to lay them out to make sure I have all the pieces.

The head is the most complicated step, it took me a few times to figure out the right proportions. This is a good time to note that if I were to make this quilt again, I would choose a white pattern that didn't have a direction to it. That would have saved a lot of time and fabric, as some pieces needed to be cut a certain way.

First, take one of your little .75" squares and place it in the corner of your skin tone square. I used four different skin tones in my quilt. 

Because the piece is so small, I didn't draw a diagonal line or pin the pieces together. Just sew from one corner of the white square to the opposite corner.

Repeat with the other three white squares. Again, if you are using a background with a directional pattern, make sure that all pieces are placed in the right direction.

Use your ruler to mark a 1/4" and trim the excess.

Repeat all around.

It looks a little angular at this point, but it will look better when it's all pieced together. ***Note*** The photos here show a 1" square. In the actual quilt I made, I used .75" squares.

Assemble the rest of the pieces as shown. When I was making the actual quilt, I chain-pieced, but here you can see each step.

The main difference between the girl block and the boy block is the dress. As you can see in the finished quilt photo, I varied from this design a bit with the ballerina, tree hugger, and Elsa blocks. One the music lover block, I actually appliqued her skirt so that the music would run across her skirt. Much of the fun for this quilt for me was customizing each block. That said, here's the basic pattern for the girl block.

First, lay out your pieces. 

At this point, I hadn't yet created the half square triangles for the skirt. I always seem to need larger squares than the expert quilters recommend, so I used 5" squares to create 3.5" HST. If your lines are better than mine, you may be able to use 4" squares. If I were to make this quilt again (i.e., had I not already cut a ton of 5" squares, I would have split the difference with 4.5" squares).

Once the skirt pieces are made, follow the same instructions as the little boy block. 

Here are some close-ups of a few of my favorites.

Superman was a big hit with the students. I put my Silhouette Cameo to good use on this quilt. I'm still figuring out how to break apart images for applique, so that little S took WAY more time than it should have. On the plus side, I could make another in 10 minutes!

The artist is an example of how much more complicated my people got as I got into the project. This block was originally a simple girl in a yellow dress. I made a straight line skirt, but didn't like it, so I took apart the block and made the traditional yellow block. Then I had the idea to add the palette. You can see how tiny the pieces were!

While I was making this quilt, we had a French teacher staying with us for a month while she observed at our son's school. Sandy's favorite color is green, so I chose this fabric to represent her. To give perspective on the size of the flags, the arm to the left is 1". 

The inspiration for the ballerina came when I was at Joann looking at ribbon. D's school has new performing arts teacher who has taught my boy to dance (!), so I wanted to honor Miss J. You can tell that this is one of my earlier blocks because it was made before I realized it would be much easier to make one long white side pieces instead of three smaller pieces.

The musician was my practice run for the letters I would need for the school name and tagline. 

And here are close ups of some of the others. 

Once the blocks were done, I was able to figure out what size the middle section needed to be: 36.5" x 36.5"

In part two, I will show how I made the the applique logo and tagline.

Linked to:
Fluster Buster * Moonlight and Mason Jars *  Sew Much Crafting * Val's Quilting Studio * A Vision to Remember * Wednesday Wait Loss @ The Inquiring Quilter

11 years...

Today marks 11 years since I fell and broke my head.

I've written about it before here and here. With more than a decade of practice in not taking my health for granted, I've become more accepting of seasons when parts of my brain aren't working so well. I admit, that as a former professional writer, it's difficult when the ideas in my head no longer translate well to words on a page or screen. One of the reasons we started this blog--in addition to creating an album of sorts of our home building process and noting the ways we've turned this house into our home--is to simply remember my life. The fact that others have come along for the journey is just a well-appreciated bonus.

I realize I haven't posted an update this November. I can't tell you how many times I've thought about posting, or even sat down at my computer with a goal on sharing something that I've done recently, but the writer's block has been become a wall. It has taken me over thirty minutes to write this paragraph, including three trips to Thesaurus.com to help me find the word I wanted or at least was close enough. Frustrating!

If my words were flowing more easily, I would write more about our incredible two week trip that I highlighted with our day at the International Quilt Show in my last post. For our son, it was a dream trip. We visited the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, AL, Stennis Space Center in Hancock County, Mississippi, and Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX. The high point of the latter was getting a private tour from blogger friend and NASA employee Sarah.

In December, my days were filled preparing for Sinterklaas (and making gevulde speculaas), our son's birthday, and Christmas (including our Sparkle Box tradition). I finished a few quilts and other sewing projects, but mostly enjoyed time with my family.In January, in addition to ringing in the new year, I celebrated my birthday last week and brain-aversary today.

 It's taken a little longer to get back into a routine with 2 rounds of croup for my son in December and 3 snow days in January, but hopefully we are on track now. We have a new guest in our home, Sandy from France, who is observing at my son's school for the next month as part of her education. She will also learn about living with someone with a brain injury.

And so I begin another year of my new normal. Life in the slow lane is peaceful. I love my family and I am loved. On good days, I quilt and play board games and maybe even write a blog post. On bad days, I sleep and thank God for the parenting respite called "iPad." On my average days, I do what I can and give myself grace for the things I cannot. Every day, I am thankful for the life I have been given.

Astronomical Quilt Block Revisited

Several months ago, I wrote about a block I made for the the Astronical Quilt Block Challenge. It was really fun to combine my love of quilting with my son's love of space.

When we made plans to take our son on a tour of NASA facilities this year, my only request was that we timed it to be in Houston for the International Quilt Festival, the world's largest quilting event. It was on my bucket to go someday, but with the NASA quilt blocks on display, I really wanted to go this year!

I also figured that it would be easier to get the boys to spend the day with me when they had things like this NASA display. 

Our first pleasant surprise happened when we learned that astronaut Karen Nyberg, who came up with the idea of the challenge, was going to be attending the festival the same day as us! We had a few hours before Karen's talk, but we couldn't help but start with the block exhibit. About a month before the deadline, I read an article stating that over 600 blocks had been submitted. Imagine our surprise when we learned that over 2,200 came in! Rather than seeing one big quilt, as we expected, a team of quilters put together 28 panels of blocks! There were also five albums of blocks that were either late or the wrong size, but still on display. 

I was wondering how long it was going to take to find my block, when my eagle-eyed hubby alerted me to surprise #2: my block was on the same panel as Karen's!

Karen's block--the one she made while she was on the ISS--is the red, white and blue one on the bottom.

What is especially fun about the placement of my block is that it is easy to spot on all the different photo ops with Karen, like this one:

Source: NASA

Then came surprise #3. As we were admiring our panel, a woman nudged me and quietly said, "You know, Karen is here." To which I replied, "Yes, I know! My 5-year-old son loves NASA and we are so happy that we were able to come on the same day she is speaking." The woman smiled at me and said, "No, I mean she's here right now, over there." I looked over there and saw Karen standing with another person from NASA. I pointed her out to my son, and he immediately ran over to her saying, "Miss Nyberg! Miss Nyberg! Excuse me! Miss Nyberg!"

She looked over and smiled at our son. He introduced himself and asked if he could show her our block. When she said yes, he took her hand and they walked over to our panel. 

After chatting about his dreams of being a rocket scientist, others noticed Karen and we moved on to admire the other blocks. 

One block I was happy to find was that of my new blogger friend, Sarah from saroy.net.Saroy.net.

I wish I had thought to take full photos of all the panels, but fortunately, Cindy Campbell did. I took a ton of pictures of my favorite blocks, which can be seen, along with other photos from the show, on my Facebook page.

Edited 10/18/18.
I was looking for a pattern and was led to a blog by Valerija Mezhybovska, who shared this picture of Karen, surrounded by some of the star blocks. Valerija's block is in the top left corner. Mine is directly under hers! So cool!

October 2014 Recap

The theme of this month for our family has been travel! The month started with a trip to Michigan for a funeral and ended with an amazing family road trip that included stops at four NASA facilities and a day at the International Quilt Festival. (You can see my pictures on my FB album).

Speaking of quilts, I only had one finish this month, but it was a big one! A few months after I first touched a sewing machine, one of my very good friends, Erin, married her love, Bob. I promised her and new husband a quilt, but said they probably would get it until their first anniversary. I would have made that deadline, had my original design not turned out a little girly. As it turned out, it was perfect for a little girl I knew, and they graciously agreed me to gift their quilt to someone else. Because the movie "UP" was such big part of their engagement and wedding, they asked if I might make them an UP-themed quilt. I thought about it for months, trying to figure out how to make the balloons and colorful house. Then, on October 26, the unthinkable happened, Bob died of a heart attack. They were only married for 15 months. I worked nearly all my waking hours--and there were a lot of them--for a week to finish their quilt in time for Bob's funeral. I learned a lot about applique and got bit by the art quilt bug. Most importantly, I was able to wrap my gift around my friend in person.

When we got back from the funeral, I took a week to catch up on sleep and life. I stared at my Mom's Western Scrabble quilt and found lots of ways that did not work to finish the top. I really wanted to incorporate photos into the design, but the fabrics and photos clashed too much, so I finally (in November) gave up and found another option for the borders. Hopefully I can show off the finished project in my November recap.

The only other sewing I did was the ten minutes I spend making a stretch strap. On my penultimate day of physical therapy, I was looking at the stretch strap and figured I could make one to use at home. I made a few mental notes and whipped up my short-girl's version. On my last day of PT, I checked mine against the real thing and was happy with what I came up with. I've been putting it to good use ever since!

In a different kind of art, my son's kindergarten photos came in, so I was able to update his growing up gallery. 

October can be a difficult month for a lot of parents. On October 15, we, along with other parents who lost a child too soon, noted Pregnancy & Infant Loss Remembrance Day. This year I posted a poem my mom wrote for me in honor of our three children, two in heaven, and the one we get to raise.

One of the highlights of our two road trips this month was meeting four of the fellow December 2008 mamas. There is a group of us who "met" online six years ago when we were all expecting. These amazing women have been a lifeline to me as I have learned to navigate the waters of parenthood. We are vastly different in our beliefs, opinions, and values, but we all love our children and support each other through each milestone. One of the greatest benefits of driving, rather than flying, to our destination, is the opportunity to meet up these wonderful woman and their kiddos. 

In fact, we were super social this fall with playdates, fall happenings, meeting new friends, and reconnecting with long time friends.

Between our first trip and our second trip, we spent some time enjoying the beauty of Ohio in the fall.

I worked on a few projects this month. The big one was finding a solution for displaying quilts in our great room.

I also made some homemade vaporub using Wellness Mama's recipe. We've put it to good use in November as we've been battling colds and allergies.

Finally, something big happened this month: Niels voted for first time as an American!

Ikea Quilt Ladder

Even before I started quilting, I have loved the feeling of something cozy on my legs when I am sitting down. Whether reading, watching TV, working on my computer, or snuggling with my boys, I just love to have that extra layer covering me. 

Of course, once I started quilting, I wanted to be able to enjoy my quilts, whether they were on my lap or not. I have been looking for display ideas for quite awhile.

If you've been following me for awhile, you may have seen the quilt display I have in my craft room. 

 It's just right for displaying quilts for photos, but not so convenient to hang quilts ready to use. So, I was off to the internet for inspiration. You can see all the ideas I found on my Pinterest board, but here are few of my favorites:

Molly from The Nesting Game repurposed the railing from her front porch into a metal quilt ladder.

I really like the look this extra wide wood and copper quilt rack by Debbie at Ideal Stitches. (Click the link to see what it looks like filled with quilts!)

Woodworks by Brooks sells this swinging arm quilt holder that reminds me a larger, wood version of the IKEA Gruntal towel holders that I use in several places in my house.

Speaking of IKEA, we were in visiting out not-quite-neighborhood IKEA (two hours away), when I saw the IVAR side unit.

It comes in several sizes, starting at 12" x 49" (with 3 rungs) for $8, and going all the way up to 20" x 89" (which 5 rungs) for $20, which is what we bought.

It's only available in untreated solid pine, so it cost a little bit more (under $4) for a can of spray paint to get the white glossy look I wanted.

The large size is just right for our tall great room. The quilts I have on it now have all been made by friends and family. I keep giving the ones I make away! 

Growing Up Gallery: Updated!

One of my most popular pins (thank you, Pinterest and Craftaholics Anonymous!) is the growing up gallery we put up shortly after moving into our new house.

I wanted to add a quick update to show that I'm still loving this idea, and this gallery is one of favorites. I pass it several times a day because it is just outside my craft room. Our son's kindergarten picture recently arrived and was added to the gallery. It's actually the second photo we've added since putting up the gallery. The gallery is now halfway filled (sniff!)

What has happened to my baby!?!

How do you display school photos?