Quoted

I was just informed tonight by an acquaintance (a neighborhood mom I know from a playgroup) that I'd been quoted in this magazine (which has been on my coffee table for a month). "Cloth Paper Scissors" is a really inspirational mag for me - it's all about collage and textile arts... So of course i love it. But though I'd read much of this and carried it around with me for weeks, I'd had no idea that my little quip was included in print. Funny.
The quote was just an emailed answer to the question: what art supplies do you travel with? ... But it still is fun to see your name all glossy...

Giant yoyos

Months ago (I can't find it now) I posted a pic of an amazing Anthropologie quilt made of giant yoyos. Here is my own humble beginning... Shown with my toesies for scale.

Just some afternoon painting

I bought some canvases for the kids and I to paint ... And today we got to work... Z made the tree and hedgehog (with a small amount of help from momma), Mimi did the "doggie in the forest" and I made the mushroom.

Going to camp

The kids are having a great time with a week of day-camp at our local park. (ok, it's not walking distance to the hood where we live, but it's close enough that it's part of our daily life... And my bet is that this park is one of the best in the entire Los Angeles park district.)
Today is "under the sea" dress up day for Z... (he chose a penguin)... And Mimi has sports dress up day tomorrow.
I, for one, have enjoyed my first ever week where both kids had an activity for 5 hours together that left me with free time. I've spent the week doing work on the house, getting new big kid furniture and desks setup, setting up organizational things and "spring-cleaning" in summer.
I now see what things could look like in a few years when I actually will have chunks of time free... But that may be a little further off than it looks... We are praying and preparing to attempt another go at foster care again in a few weeks. (pray for us!)

Fruit Cocktail Tree

Today we went out and picked the last of the summer's treats from the fruit cocktail tree. It was a battle with the birds for yummy territory, and they got away with a lot, but I believe this bowl proves we won.
(I realize i haven't been posting as regularly lately... Chalk it up to the fact that I'm "doing the summer thing" - driving the kids all over and in my off time, I'm doing small organizational house projects. We are getting ready to step back into foster care *PRAY FOR US!* and I believe I might be nesting a little)

Quilt - Made for baby Cade

My pal, Christy, gets lots of love here for being a fun and talented creative pal to me... This week was the baby shower for her long-awaited precious little "snowflake" baby. 

Since Christy is one of my sewing pals who has recently taken on quilting, like me, she had to be the recipient of a special baby quilt, right? 

I had a lot of fun making this for her... 

I make mistakes - free charms

Hey. I make a lot of mistakes. The ones that are the biggest bummer is when I make a mistake while hand stamping a sterling silver charm. It feels like throwing money away. And though I've been making these for over 4 years now, I still make mistakes.
I'd love to get rid of these. Do you know anyone who wants one? Know someone with one of these names?
Send me an email and I'll send it to you.
In case you can't read the names in the pics, they are: ELIA, GRACE, BLAKE, ANDREW, HOPE, BRODY, NOAH, and SIENNA.
Just be warned, they aren't my top quality or I'd sell them...

Just desserts - bee happy quilting bee

I love being a part of a quilting bee. Every month I get a homework assignment that challenges me creatively. Each month I get my package in the mail from my bee partners and I have a small amount of creative panic (the good, deadline kind... Deadlines motivate me... In my corporate design days they were my best creative motivation.) I'm always nervous also that i will have the worst square in a quilt and the motivation to not let the gal of the month down also really inspires me to think through what I'm making.
This months' squares are for Lori, a very creative and vibrant artist who is a really inspiring person to follow on flickr (link later). She's also super nice. So I loved getting such a creative assignment, using these yummy Anna Maria Horner GoodFolks fabrics... And I did my best to make some yummy treats for her Just Desserts quilt.
I used a little appliqué, a lot of piecing and fussy cutting, and as much color as possible. (I cant wait to see the other squares for the quilt... So far I've seen one and it's amazing! What a quilt this will be...)

Vintage Corelle

I was taught growing up to not like Corelle. My mom has a funny lip curl she does when she doesn't like something and Corelle dishes are one of those things deemed worthy of a lip curl.
Still, as I thought about the cute, but very PLASTIC and not so healthy melamine plates we were using for the kids, I knew I didn't want to use them for long. And even though i have to handwash everything, and never microwave plastic, i eventually found the melamine flaking one day and threw out the whole lot.
I went onto eBay that night and bought a bunch of different vintage Corelle dishes in different "clashing" patterns (um, they're from the 70s, everything was brown, orange and yellow... They all match)
Corelle is great. The kids can drop it and it doesn't break like my nice dishes do. You can microwave it, cook it, freeze it and even lose it (it's cheap). And hey... It's got that vintage flair, which I happen to think is nothing to snarl at.... (mom).
... My patterns shown are Indian Summer and Butterfly Gold ...

Bee sampler

So as I've been settling back into life on the ground, making friends with my sewing machine again, I've been catching up on my quilting bee squares that I've been behind on... And while I was doing research on those, i realized that all the partners in my bee are making a quilt-along sampler - where each months blocks get sent to the gal whose they are, but then they make one out of their own fabrics to keep as a reminder of the year. At first I thought that was too much extra work, but then I realized that i would love a keepsake of this experience, so today I decided to catch up on the previous 4 months' blocks. I picked fabrics I knew I would never otherwise use - that's kind of a fun game for me.. (can i use a bunch of fabrics I don't love and make something I do love?)... And here we go.

The next question that i have to figure out is once I run out of these scraps, what will the next blocks bs made of that will coordinate? For me, these are fun challenges that stretch my creative muscles. (and they're great at "busting my stash"!)