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. 
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. 
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!
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!
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.
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.
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.).
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.
by all around score)! This means he gets a t-shirt and gets to go to a Brewer's game with his coaches. He was pretty excited about that (I know it doesn't look like it, but he always gets kinda serious when he sees me taking his picture).
I love them, and I've put 6.4 miles on them so far (3 separate runs), and NO knee pain! While I'm still not crazy about the actual running part, I do love the endorphin rush afterwards, and I'm feeling better overall. 
Isn't it cute? It was done on size 6 needles. I increased to 80 sts, and started the garter stitch when the hat measured 5" from the tip. I also did an extra decrease row on the flaps.
Last Friday I finally got to give it to her in person. Miss Ilsa will now have a toasty warm head for the rest of this winter. It's a wee bit big, but we all know how fast new babies grow, so it should fit her well in no time.
Not too bad?? It's not authentic (no raglan sleeves), but you certainly get the feel, no? By the way, did you know how much info there is out there on Star Trek uniforms? A lot. 
Are you wondering why I used hotpatterns as one of my tags? That's because I used the HP Cosmo Dress top as my base. It was handy and already had a bust dart. I eyeballed the v-neck, added length, and slimmed the sleeve. I like how the neckline turned out, and boy was this sucker fast to make. 
I also made a patch for Mr. Spock. Circles are kinda hard to satin stitch, especially when they are this small (this patch is about 2x3 inches). I used this site for the proper symbols for the patches. To make this patch I layered the black knit (from the neckline), steam-a-steam lite (because it was handy), and gold lamé. I fused a block of that, and then drew my patch outline. Two passes of satin stitching later, I cut the patch out. It was pretty easy.
I made it using lamé, steam-a-steam lite, interlock, and lots of satin stitching. More to come later.
The pattern is Thorpe, a top-down hat with flaps. I made a medium, and it's a bit big. Rav project page is here. Look at the cute baby variation she has too! I'll be trying that one next, for a friend who had a little girl last Thursday. Calvin also wants me to put a pom pom on top. As I said, I finished this at practice last night, and one of the coaches saw it and practically begged me to make one for him. :) So, Calvin and I will go back to Loop and he'll pick out some yarn for Dave's hat. 
On Friday, Caleb slipped on the ice on his way to school. He hopped home (he had only made it to the next door neighbor), and said, "Mama? I fell down." I took one look at his now very swollen ankle and paged the doc. She said to take him to the ER or the clinic, so I took him over to the Urgent Care clinic. Two hours and four x-rays later, we were sent home with crutches and a boot, with instructions to call later on in the day for the final radiologist report. That came back as a possible distal fibula fracture (and it is) and instructions to see an orthopaedic doctor. We did so on Monday morning, and Caleb now has a cool black cast for the next six weeks. He also now is out for soccer, out for the snowboarding/ski club at school, and out for the next few scout campouts. :( The cast is a chick magnet, though. :)
