Shameless self-promotion (Vote for ME!)

The (naptime) Pillowcase dress

So I've seen this tutorial a lot and wanted to try it out. The original design uses an old pillowcase. I do not have any sassy looking pillowcases, so it's my version of a pillowcase dress. I made it for the daughter of a friend and it was so easy to make. From start to finish it took me an hour and a half. That's including putting on a load of laundry in that time. I tried it on Mister when he woke up from his nap. He was not impressed. He just kept saying "no, no, no". Funny since he doesn't even know what a dress is! It's a fun little dress and it will probably fit the girl until she's 5. I think I need to make more of these, they're so cute!

In other "hey look at me!" news, I've entered a contest and I'm a finalist! My favourite local sewing shop is holding a contest to name their new privilege-discount card. They asked people to come up with a name for the card, and then they would select 5 finalists The contest details and all the entries can be found here. The finalist with the most votes wins a free member card (worth 50$). I'm asking everyone to help me win by voting for the name Couture Club. I would be very grateful if you could head on over to Emeline & Annabelle's blog to vote for me! The contest ends Monday June 27th at noon.

Slow progress

Slow progress, a photo by Pinkbrain and Mr.Chicken on Flickr.

Hi there to all my new WIP (work-in-progress for my regular, non-quilty readers) Wednesday friends!

I've been working on this quilt since, February? It's a pattern from Freckled Whimsy called Random Reflections. It was a lot of calculated sewing (and seam ripping) to make it "random".

I like how the straight line quilting (well, semi straight lines) looks in the center, but it's tiring and I think I want something different for the orange/pink part. I was thinking of doing large semi circles, covering both the pink and the aqua on the ends. Almost like water ripples. What do you think? I can't lower the feed dogs on my old sewing machine so I'm limited in how I can quilt it, no stippling (translation: loopy scribbly quilting). Any ideas?

Also? Can anyone tell me how to add a button to my blog?

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Thanks for stopping by!

Toddler Art School: Lesson 1 - It's all in the name

One thing I learned from art school is that it doesn't matter what the art object looks like, it's all about the title. I saw way too many examples of feces art (seriously were all the artists in the 60's and 70's artists completely stoned?) that really had nothing to do with visual art at all. Some of my snapperhead classmates picked up on this and would draw a giant X as their final drawing assignment, calling it 48:34 (the time it took them to draw the X until their pencil was all used up).

My young grasshopper has learned early the importance of naming his work. This of course thrilled me to bits! Woo hoo! A drawing developmental milestone! Behold:

"Airplane" Which really sounds more like hairplayne.

"Sunshine!" Sunshine is always an exclamation.

It's really cool to see when that hampster is working in that brain of his. He's processing information and putting words to it.

Box kite, bee blocks, birthday planning.

Box kite, a photo by Pinkbrain and Mr.Chicken on Flickr.

I've been sewing. A lot. Bee blocks. 80's swap. A quilt for a friend. A Hawaiian shirt for my brother-in-law (he loves Hawaiian shirts and he loves golf and I found the perfect fabric...I don't usually sew for him), and this bad boy.

A kite. A box kite. A very large, we-only-have-space-to-store-it-on-the-ceiling kite. A kite designed by an engineer with the help of a program from NASA. We went to fly it on Friday afternoon but the wind vanished when we went outside. Then it was too windy on Saturday, and it rained all day Sunday. Maybe next weekend.

Alex has been napping well most days. He's grown two more teeth (they were fast and painful this time, as opposed to the slow and painful molars). We're at the park almost every day (I know the local daycares and nannies schedules at the park quite well now) and Alex is full of words. Sentences! Three word sentences. My favourite from this week "Daisy, window. Funny" when Daisy was lounging in the track for the windows.

I'm trying to figure out what to do for his birthday party. Low key, maybe in the park, perhaps a cake with a cement mixer on it. I don't have any of that "awww my baby is turning 2 years old" that some of my friends are experiencing. Am I a bad mother if I say that I like Toddler Alex a little bit more than I liked Baby Alex? He's trouble sometimes, but also very sweet and generous with hugs. He keeps me on my toes (literally...I had to break into a sprint to catch him after he escaped from the fenced off playground).

He's a monkey alright!