Arts and Crafts

While I have been working on the circle quilt, Cora has been very interested in my progress. I thought it might be fun to give her a project sort of like mine. On Saturday, while Chris was running errands, I asked him to stop by the craft store and pick me up some fusible interfacing (I forgot to say "double-sided," though, so this was not quite as easy as I planned, but that's okay). I fused it to fabric scraps and cut out shapes. Then I cut squares from muslin.

Then, while I sewed my circles, Chris and Cora played with the scraps and squares. When they  had a square done, I sewed the pieces down to the muslin for them. These first two were Chris's, though he had considerable input on what he could and could not do. The pinwheel one is probably the most his.

As you can see, after the sewing down there was some additional decorating done with fabric markers.

This was Cora's first one. In some places there are four layers of fabric! She was especially thrilled with the spiral/maze stitching I did on it. While this one is fairly abstract, her next one was a scene:

Her restaurant, with a table and chair. My favorite part of the restaurant one is actually the back.

Where she drew us, labeled with our initials.

Once this cold spell breaks, I plan to get the other kind of interfacing and try this again. But this time I'll trace seam allowances on the muslin, and maybe make them larger. Like placemat size. We still have a lot of winter left, and it feels good to have some cabin-fever projects lined up!

I am finally posting some socks I made (actually, "Turkish bed socks" from a Churchmouse Classics pattern) that I finished in the first week of the new year. That makes them the first thing I made in 2011, a year that came with the resolution to "Make More"!

Finally, here is my 2011 poster. There's a make-your-own-keep-calm widget out there on the web that I used for this. I have it hanging in a prominent place, of course!