Longarmer Bound

Whoo! Three quilts headed to my longarmer pal in the morning. 

 For me - backing fabric on the right

Between summer vacation - aka grandma camp - and the learning curve for the new sewing machine, quilting has slowed to a crawl. Hoping to ramp it up again… soon?? Maybe?

Cheyenne picked the colors for both the top and backing - this is one BOLD quilt. In my head, I’m calling it LavaLand. 

This one is for a friend. I was stuck picking the backing fabric so I asked Rachel for her opinion. Now I can blame credit her for the choice. 😜

Art Camp

Today was Jac’s and Donovan’s first day at a pay-by-the-day art camp that Mary found. 

Donovan said “no thank you” to having his picture taken.

Both of them are fairly shy and don’t care for new situations, so if they were going alone this might not have worked, 

 Donovan‘s King Blue Sea

but together they usually have a good time.

And they did!

Jac says, “axolotls are my favorite IN THE WHOLE WORLD!”

 Jaclyn’s Queen Marshmallow 

I’m pretty impressed with their art, plus on the way home they invented a world for Queen Marshmallow and King Blue Sea and played at it most of the afternoon. 

 Jac added seeds to the green stalks to make tentacles

They also had some free time after their project was done, so Jac taught Donovan to play Sorry! (the board game) and he loved it. Now they have something else they can argue about play together this summer. Bonus!

Bind-arama

One done,

two through,

three free, 

four no more.

These four have been done for awhile except for the binding. Once I got going, it only took 2 days to finish them. Only 2 left to go…  

* I tried a serpentine stitch, rather than stitch-in-the-ditch, on the top quilt and I like it! Definitely going to use that method again. 

Summer Is Here!

We celebrated the last day of school and the first day of summer 

 

with a trip to Padaro Beach Grill 

 

and a wander through the botanical gardens and nursery at Seaside Gardens in Carpinteria. 

Matt and Mary have really gotten into gardening and they went a bit nuts on their first visit to Seaside. 

 

It’s an amazing place. I managed to come home with just 4 new plants….

but I may need to go back when they restock their milkweed…

While we were at lunch, I handed Jac my phone and told her to see what she could find to take photos of. 140 pics later… she did so good! 

Jac and Leo got to feed the 2 chickens at the Gardens. Ok, Leo fed them because Jac was afraid they’d bite her…

All the pictures in this post were taken by Jaclyn, unless she is in them. 

May need to have a print made of this one…

Lizard!

Love this one

Drive-by stride-by shot

Water lily

Eyeball Sea

Jac decided today was Art Day. 

She dug through her big bin of ‘stuff’ - a 16x16” box crammed with craft supplies and odds ‘n ends - and got to work. (Click each picture for a close up view.)

She always knows what she wants to do and it’s always original. I just sit back and watch.

When I commented that today’s project looked like an eyeball forest, she said, “just wait, Grandma.”

“Now here’s the sea.”

“And look, I added a bit of throw-up.*” (We decided it was really kelp… 😂)

Definitely not something you see everyday. I love her imagination. 

* The ‘kelp’ is the green spot on the right, towards the bottom. She used cotton balls, sequins, gem stones, glue and food coloring (no paint). 

Bear Paws

This one took awhile, between vacations and sewing machine troubles, but it’s finally finished and gifted. Hooray!

I bought the kit in August 2023 while on vacation in Alaska (great souvenir, eh?) and started working on it in March, struggling a bit with the actual bear paw blocks (here and here). It went to the longarmer (here) and then sat, neatly folded, waiting (and waiting) until I again had a sewing machine capable of attaching the binding. (Still loving Princess Kokopuff!)

The backing looks like flannel but is ”just” plain old quilting cotton. I couldn’t resist that color plaid - it was too perfect to go with the bears. Hope my BIL gets lots of use out of this… as soon as it cools off. Of course we gave it to him on the hottest day of the summer (so far) when it’s 104° out. Think cool thoughts, Rich!

Lego Princess

Everyone but Jac had somewhere else to be today - 

Leia and Leo took a Red Cross certification class and Donovan had ninja training - so Jac and I sat and played Legos.

I dug out a no-longer-used thread box so she could sort her various pieces and use the lid to keep the cat (and Pop) from messing things up. (Pop moved her work tray  and pushed Jac’s color-sorted piles into one big group. The horror!) 

I’m not sure if she’s more thrilled with that (and the promise of another box when she opens the next bag of pieces) or the fish she made.

Ok, it’s the fish. How could it not be, with a tail and fins that wiggle?? Can you tell how pleased she is with herself?

Next up is an octopus! We’re both pretty excited.