It's All Very Sunrise, Sunset, Around The House These Days

Today, the Sweet Man and I helped this boy...

... buy his first car.

It's been very much an experience like what the Daddy goes through in

that great Suburu commercial (you know the one)...

... but I gotta say, it's not like I turned around

and The Boy went from the  mysteriously smiling seven-year-old

to the almost-twenty-one-year-old he is overnight.

Nope, I'm feeling every minute of the twenty years it took to get

from caring for these bitty babies...

... to having a son who towers over me.

HOWEVER,

like the above commercial, I am PAINFULLY aware of how vulnerable

the Boy and the Girl are when they get behind the wheel.

For the love of the sweet baby Jeebus, people,

 please stay out of their blind spots!

Don't brake too fast in front of them!

Don't even THINK about having too many drinks and drifting into their lanes!

Ahem.

*

*

*

*

Anyhoo, looking at the above photo of the baby Boy and Girl
makes me remember their baby quilts, which you can see behind them. 
I worked on those throughout my pregnancy, staying up late when I couldn't sleep,
hand-quilting them while I listened to Bob Costas interview random celebrities on Later. 

(I spent so many late nights listening to Costas, that it's a wonder one of the babies didn't emerge sporting a side-part and a tie.)

I finished the Girl's quilt on the night of August 6th;
the babies were born on the morning of August 8th.
 They came home from the hospital wrapped in their quilts,
and slept under them in their shared crib.

The Girl latched onto a silky-edged receiving blanket as her Lovey,

but the Boy loved that star quilt,

and carried it with him, and wrapped his stuffed animals in it,

and slept with it until it was raggedy enough that I had to replace the binding.

Fortunately, although worn enough you could poke a finger clean through,
it looked just fine all those years,

and not so babyish that a not-so-baby would feel silly taking it over to his cousins' house.

So, y'know, keep that in mind when giving a quilt to a new baby.
How is that quilt going to look when your baby is older?
When your baby is maybe six and cuddling his quilt,
what would he like to take to a sleepover?

Maybe... instead of giving a little guy a pale blue lambykins quilt, 
hows about a cooler shark quilt?

And would you rather see your daughter haul around a pastel pink heart quilt

or one with hot pink hearses?

Your kids will probably outgrow their quilts before they get their driver's licenses,

but you never know. So instead of a powder-blue teddy bear quilt...

Why not a sugar skull quilt that can double as a "seat protector"?

If for no other reason,
it's something you wouldn't mind seeing for the next however many years.

I'm On A Bunting Bender!

I already showed you the Jiji bunting...

Now it's time to do a tutorial on the primitive bunting I saw at the craft fair I worked!

As you may remember, the lovely Shannon of Random Sacks of Kindness

showed me some primitive bunting she made to 

decorate her booth and her camping site when she went camping:

I loved, loved how they fluttered in the slightest breeze;

and was determined to make some of my own.

To the crafting table!

I wanted to make these as quick as possible, since they were going to be looooong.

I started with an easy width:  six inches wide, so I could just zip across

my six inch wide ruler.

To make the triangles, I also wanted easy, so I used a triangle template I already had.

This triangle template came from a set I got years ago;

it's a "triangle within a rectangle" template.

As a bonus, I found a Mother's Day card in the template envelope.

Judging from the tippy writing,
I'm guessing I got this from the kids when they were about three.

Awww!!

 (*Takes a minute to get misty about those sweet little preschoolers, then recovers

when I realize my almost twenty-one-year-old twins can both now

drive their own dang selves wherever they want.  Hurrah!*)

Most of these fabrics are either batiks, plaids, or okay-when-viewed-on-either-side,
and I only used a single, unseamed, unfinished thickness of them for the bunting.

BUT, I did have this cupcake fabric I wanted to feature

that really wasn't that cupcake-y on the back side.

So after cutting the six-inch strips, I placed two six-inch strips together,

WRONG SIDE TO WRONG SIDE, 

marked the triangles instead of cutting them...

 ... pinned along the edges of the two strips...

then sewed a quarter inch on either side of the blue lines.

Once I did that, I cut along the blue lines, so I had a two-sided cupcake pennant!

Now it was time to sew!

I nerdily used a complex method of assuring there was a sufficient randomness

to all the pennants.

Then I stacked the pennants to the left of my machine, 
zigzagged over an eighteen-inch "attaching" tail,
placed the yarn above the upper edge of the first one,
and just zigzagged right over the yarn.

You can't see it, but I put a little Sharpie dot on my clear surface,

about an inch in front of the sewing foot.

When the sewn pennant was all the way sewn, I would line up the NEXT pennant

on the dot and put the yarn on it.

It made the spaces in between the pennants pretty uniform.

To keep the yarn corralled, I put it in the box taped on the edge of my sewing table.

I found the trick to the yarn to be keeping it nice and taunt.  I pulled it straight back, firmly,

so it wouldn't go wibbly-wobbly on the top of the pennant when I was sewing it.

I used about fifty pennants, and it made a looong string!  About eleven yards!

For some of the fabrics, I couldn't find a wide enough variety,
so I did a little fabric painting before sewing.

For example, I used some gold paint on some yellow-gold batik to make this pennant

for my Harry Potter Gryffindor bunting:

You can see below I also painted some of the red fabric for this string.

That's all the same string!  Like I said, fifty pennants made a lot of bunting.

Wouldn't this Gryffindor bunting be awesome at a Harry Potter party?

THIS PIRATE BUNTING.

The idea of it being used at a Pirate Wedding makes me clutch my heart and swoon.

This silvery-green bunting was hard to photograph to do it justice,

but it would make the coolest Slytherin bunting

OR

the prettiest, sweetest garden bunting for a wedding.

(Every once in awhile I make something that I'm tempted to keep,

and I can't stop imagining this around my own back patio.)

Sometimes, a girl would just like to get her princess on.

The pinks, purples, whites and creams would be great for a real girly-girl.

And what about that cupcake bunting?

Looks pretty good, no?  It's going to be a gift.

But all the rest will be available in my Etsy shop!

It's All About YOU

A while back, I posted a tutorial on making this Jiji bunting:

And ever since, I've gotten a steady hit on this blog for that post.

And I thought, it looks like people really like Jiji bunting!

So I've added some to my Etsy shop in 

purple...

...green...

...and blue.

Because I'm a giver that way.

It's all about you, my dear readers.

For Those Brave At Heart, Whose Daring, Nerve and Chivalry Set Them Apart

It's done!  And photographed!  And available in my shop!!

This is just a taste of the Harry Potter Gryffindor Quilt. 

Head on over to BadBabyQuilts to see the whole thing.

And if you decide you can't live without it, remember:

entering MINNIE at checkout will get you 10% off the price!


ETA:  I sold it!
But I made another, similar one, the same size.

You May Call Me MISTRESS Gardener

I adore nasturtiums.

 They belong to the category of flowers that used to be labelled "thrifty":

flowers such as geraniums and marigolds and sunflowers
that can easily be grown from seed and aren't too picky about the soil.

 I've read that they're good for planting next to vegetables,

BUT

my raised-bed veggie garden has soil as rich as chocolate cake...

... and that's not a good match for nasturtiums.  

The growing advice for these bright flowers, after all,  is
"Be nasty to nasturtiums."

The saying means that rich soil and plentiful water will

give a gardener lots of green leaves but not many flowers.

So I decided to make a bed-within-a-bed for my nasturtiums.

I started with a plastic nursery pot...

and buried it in my bed within an inch of the top.

I got some "gardening sand" from Home Depot...

and mixed it in about a ratio of about one part sand, two parts soil.

I filled the nursery pot,

then moved some seedlings from another pot into their new, lean beds.

Do you see all that space around the new seedling?

Yeah, that didn't last long, once the zucchini took over.

Next year, the zucchini are banished to their own pots.

BUT!  The nasturtiums that fought for space are flowering,

which means their new beds -- and soil -- are working out just fine.

Look At Your Dad. Now Look At MY Dad...

Just look at this guy:

You can tell right away he's a Fun Dad, right?

But he wasn't the kind of Fun Dad who just showed up on the weekends, 

took me and my sister out for ice cream, then disappeared for a couple of weeks.

Nope, he was the kind of dad who was both fun and there.

There for dinner, softball games, trips to the snow,

the lazy Saturday afternoons watching an old show on TV.

(Though a more accurate stock photo would show me on the sofa behind my dad, putting little pigtails all over his hair.  He adores head-scratches, and would put up with girly hairdos if it meant he could get his head-pets.)

He's also the handiest person I know; he could fix anything from

my favorite copper bracelet to my funny little Renault, a car he both rebuilt AND repainted.

(Ignore the unfortunate seventies perm, and focus on that sweet ride.)

My dad had -- and still has -- a big laugh and a great sense of fun.

I don't remember him ever labeling anything as "kids' stuff", so he went on

hang-gliding or trampolining,  roller-coaster riding or bungee-jumping,

 as long as he wanted to. 

(Not my actual dad.  I believe he was about sixty when he gave the big rubber-band a try.)

The best gift my dad ever gave me was the gift of craft.

Watching him pour a cement front porch, or install a shower, or build a brick wall, 

I learned at a young age the satisfaction of creating something with your own two hands.

And as this blog attests, I've continued to do that.

So, thanks, Dad!  I'm glad I had you for a father.

And for you and all the other dads out there:

Happy Father's Day!

ETA:  This is how extraordinary my dad is:  I didn't even remember to bring up that he was a wild animal trainer when I was a kid!

I mean, of course he was!  Didn't everyone grow up with monkeys and bears and big cats?
We spent a few months in Florida raising actual bear cubs in our house!

Yep, that's me, five years old with a bear cub!

And here's Dad, my sister and me riding a real, live, elephant:

So, yeah, 
top that, Internet.

Many thanks to my sister, Vic, who added her own memories of growing up with Dad
in the comments below, and provided the cool cheetah photo above.