Triangle Quilt

(fyi -- this post is really picture heavy)

Last week I finished the triangle quilt for the church silent auction. I cranked this baby out in 2 weeks!Here's the finished quilt. It's about 51" x 60", perfect for napping under. :)

Now, a crash course in how I made this quilt:
First, I had to cut out all my triangles. I did this during one of Calvin's gymnastics practices (3 hours of mostly uninterrupted time).

Since I wanted the various FQ (fat quarter) triangles to be randomly placed, I laid the whole thing out. I did this at a different gymnastics practice, since there is a nice big floor to work on. By laying it out, I was able to make sure the various colors were nicely scattered.

Once I liked the layout, I then layered each row from left to right (meaning, I took the left-most triangle and put it on top of the next one, then those two on top of the next one, etc., etc.). I labeled each row.

Sixteen rows ready for pieceing! Connor counted them to make sure I had them all. :)

Time to put the rows together! I put a FQ triangle with a background triangle, in pairs. I chain piece, then at the ironing board I clip them apart, keeping them in order. Then I put pairs together to make bigger pairs, repeat until....

.... I have one long strip. I like to work a quilt from the bottom up, so this is row 16.

Once I finish a row, I add it to the rest of the rows. Here are rows 14-16.

The quilt top is pieced and borders are on. Ready for quilting!

To layer the quilt, I put my backing together (it has one seam), then taped it to the floor (at yet another practice -- love that big floor at the gym), stretching it quite taut. Then the batting (Warm and White) was laid down and smoothed out. Lastly, the quilt top was put on, and the whole thing was safety pinned together.

I quilted a squiggly line down the diagonal sides of the triangles, making a diamond pattern. I stitched in the ditch around the border seam.

The borders got quilted with a meandering stitch.

After the quilting is all done, it's time for the binding. I wanted a 1/2" binding, so I cut my bias strips 3.25" wide (6 x the finished binding width + 1/4"), folded in half, and stitched at a scant 1/2".

Then wrap the binding around to the back and slip stitch into place (handwork that was mostly done at another practice. I get a lot done sitting at the gym).

After a trip through the washer and dryer, the quilt is finished!

(that's my peach tree in the background -- doesn't it look great? There will be a post about it coming soon)

First Day of School

School started on Tuesday. I don't really look forward to new school years. I like my kids hanging around and having lazy mornings. :) But, start it did, and here are the requisite pictures:
Caleb is an eighth grader now, has decided to play football this year (along with soccer), is now much bigger than me, and still gets annoyed that I want to take his photo on the first day of school. I did say I would be happy to walk him to school too but he declined. :)

Calvin is now in fourth grade, and also is now getting tired of the traditional first day of school photo. This year our neighbor up the street is in his class, which is pretty nice.

Connor had his very first first day of school! He is now going to senior kindergarten, in the mornings. What the photo doesn't show is how excited he was to go, and he made a friend the very first day and had a playdate planned with said friend 2 days later! There are only 10 kids in his class, which I think is great.

Now I have the mornings to myself for the first time in a long time. It's kinda weird, but I'll surely find lots to keep me occupied, like the quilt that has to be done next weekend. It's been all cut out and ten of the sixteen rows are already together.

Raffle Quilt

Today I'm starting on a new quilt. It's for a church raffle, and needs to be finished by September 13. Here are my fabrics:
The bottom 6 are from a fat quarter packet my mom gave me for Christmas one year. I added the top fabric and white background fabric. I'm going to be doing a triangle quilt like this one I made a few (aack, five!) years ago.

Oh my, don't the boys look little? Connor hasn't even been born yet!

State Fair

We went to the Wisconsin State Fair on Sunday, to see a band, eat lots of junk, and check out my stuff. This year I entered 4 items, and did pretty good! I watched clothing judging, so already knew how the garments did, but was curious to see how my jam placed (if at all). I had a really good feeling about my jam this year...

I was delighted to find out it placed FIRST! :) I don't know if I had a bad week or something, but finding out my jam placed first just made my day. Heck, I woke up yesterday morning still smiling about it.

Caleb's egyptian costume placed first as well. The judge liked that all my corners were nice and square, plus mentioned that quilting all that lamé is hard.

I was also delighted to see that this dress got a Judge's Favorite ribbon. I hope I get to keep the fancy ribbon. I think the judge liked the inner foundation and the underlining. Honestly, the judges don't really make much commentary on my stuff the few times I've watched judging.

My HP Cosmo dress placed second.

I'll pick everything up on the 17th, after the fair closes. Five years ago I had to send my mom to get my stuff because a certain baby decided to be born 10 days early and I was stuck in the hospital. Yep, can you believe Connor will be FIVE on Saturday?!?!

Raising Butterflies

On July 17, we found a caterpillar on our milkweed. We decided to take it in and feed it. About 10 minutes later, Calvin found a second caterpillar, so we had two to take care of. We put them in half-gallon canning jars.

They ate, and ate, and ate (they poop a lot too!). We kept feeding them milkweed and cleaning out the jars. On July 21, one of the caterpillars started to form a chrysalis. They hang in this "J" shape for a while.

The next day, we had a chrysalis! We eventually moved them to an aquarium I got from a friend.

On Saturday afternoon (August 1), I took this picture. Isn't it cool? You can see the butterfly forming.

Overnight, the chrysalis turned black. I was told that this meant the butterflies would be emerging within a few hours. So we kept watch.

We missed seeing the first butterfly actually come out of the chrysalis, but saw it soon afterwards. The butterfly's body is so fat and the wings are so little!

A few minutes later, you can see that the wings are already 'growing'. We then decided to camp in front of the aquarium so that we wouldn't miss the birth of the second butterfly. :) About 30 minutes later, it emerged!


I know the video is a bit dark, shaky and blurry, but it's still cool to see.

After a few hours, it was time to let the butterflies go. We let them go in the back yard.

One of the butterflies took its time flying off, so Calvin got to hold it for a bit.

Beautiful!

We found another caterpillar down at the beach last night, so the cycle starts again!

June Adventures

Oh my, June has zipped by and we're almost halfway through July! Time to catch-up:

Caleb built some alternative energy models for the Human Ecology Fair at school. This is a hydroelectric generator. When they ran water down the chute, it generated enough electricity to make a buzzer go off.

We spent Father's Day at the Boerner Botanical Gardens. David's dad and wife came to visit also.

I took five boys with me on our annual camping trip....

....where they got to make ice cream, along with spending a day playing on the beach, general hiking around, and all around fun.

Caleb left for a week to camp with his Boy Scout troop.

I turned 39, and to celebrate....

....we went to pick strawberries....

....and peas....

....and made a lot of jam.

Graduation Dress

I've been working on an eighth grade graduation dress for the daughter of a friend. They asked me back in February if I would be able to make one, and how much. I said 'of course!' (I mean, come on! I have all boys. I leapt at the chance to make a girly dress!), and said I do like the barter system. :) It's win-win -- her daughter gets a lovely, one-of-a-kind dress, I get some babysitting, or meals, or housework....I haven't decided yet.

Anyway, here's the dress. She brought me a magazine photo of a dress they liked, and we started with Vogue 2481. I flared the skirt and added straps. C is pretty much a perfect pattern size 8, so I did virtually no adjustments to the muslin I made. She has that perfect 14 year old figure, with the willowy waist. Ms. Belinda does not have the perfect 14 year old figure (and definitely no willowy waist), so I pinned the dress onto her as best I could.

The dress has an inner foundation, which I think is going to be great for C. The foundation keeps the dress secure and held in place, so she shouldn't feel the need to hike up on it all the time. Calvin and I had his gymnastics banquet the weekend before last, and a lot of the girls were wearing strapless dresses and constantly pulling on them. Not a good look! For the foundation, I used muslin, and cut each piece twice. Then I layered the pieces, stitched the channels for the boning (I used rigilene), and constructed the foundation.

I took care to match the pleats on the left side seam. The fabric was purchased at Joanns. They fell in love with it, and bought the whole bolt (only 2.5 yards), and thankfully it was enough. It's a polyester, but it feels really nice and is a very good imitation silk. I prewashed everything, and underlined the dress with white lining.

We lined the dress in pink, because isn't it fun to have a pretty lining? Besides, white is so sheer, you'd see all the seams through it. I prickstitch my linings (instead of slipstitching)down to the zipper to prevent them from rolling and getting caught in the slide.

To finish the bottom for the hem, I did a hong kong finish. 'Cause it's pretty. :) Graduation is tomorrow, I hope C loves it as much as I enjoyed making it.

(btw -- the boys wear suit jackets. I think Caleb might need a cool stylish suit jacket next year, no?)

Busy

Spring is definitely here in Wisconsin, which means I spend nearly every nice day working outside in the yard. Last year my big project was the landscaping of our natural fence. This year my big project is our vegetable garden and the beginning of landscaping around our back patio (I say beginning because this is going to involve tearing out a lot of grass -- that's a lot of work!).

In late March I started by ripping out a bunch of grass next to our patio and porch. This area gets a lot of sun and faces south. It also looked to me to be the perfect size and location for a set of raised beds, for vegetable gardening. I ripped up the grass and flipped it over so that it would die and start to rot. PHEW! I was tired after this (but not as sore as I thought I would be. woo! Also, note how brown the grass is, and the bare dirt to the left by the white rock.).

This stayed like this for about 6 weeks, though I would go out there occasionally and smooth out areas or tear up big chunks of sod. Meanwhile, I started my seeds.

In the beginning of May, we bought our lumber to build the raised beds. We built 3 separate beds: 4'x8', 4'x5', and 3'x6', using 2"x8" pieces of wood (which really means 1.5" x 7.25". weird).

Last weekend we bought the dirt to fill 2 of the beds, and Connor helped me smooth it out. He had a lot of fun with that. We tore up the rotted grass and put that in the bottom of the beds. Oh, and see the plants growing up now where the white rock is? That's our raspberry patch.

I transferred our strawberries to the 3'x 6' bed, and the 4'x 5' one now has broccoli, sweet red peppers, jalepeños, serrano peppers, and lettuce. The rear bed will be getting the roma tomatoes and tomatillos sometime this week. The grass is also much greener now, no?

I also bought a new half-moon edger and have been working on cleaning up the edges of the flower bed. In this photo I'm working my way towards the peach tree. For now, I'll just clean up the edge, but eventually, a bunch of that grass around it is going to be gone. You can see the bird bath the family gave me for Mother's Day too. Most of the iris are in full bloom and those peonies are going to be next. Things are looking really good.