Hi everyone! How is your summer going? Has it been too hot for words? Yeah, same here. We actually spent a couple of weeks visiting our grandchildren, and I hoped that the shores of a Great Lake would be cooler, but apparently that 'lake effect' thing was broken because it was sweltering.
Being the amazing grandma that I am, I took a sewing machine and a bunch of scraps and fat quarters with me to fill up some of our time on rainy days. They loved it! I let each of them make a small quilt any way they wanted and it turned out great! They really took to the lessons and enjoyed mashing down that foot pedal. They also showed remarkable color sense! Take a look at the three little quilts:
Aren't those great? If they look wavy to you, I swear it's the ground, because there was no way that I was going to let them turn out crummy, you know?
This one is from the 6-year-old:
The colorful strips are off-cuts from another project that ended up in the bag. She put them together in the order she wanted and used a couple of the white strips after I suggested it. I expected her to alternate the colorful ones with the whiter ones, but you can see she had her own ideas. I did let her 'help' stitch everything together, with her sitting in the chair and me off to the side. Not great for the back, but great for the kid! The quilting is just a few lines of the serpentine stitch. Check out little miss personality's choice for the back:
This is the 8-year-old's quilt:
Stripes and florals! What great color sense! It's so funny because she was so precise and every square was put together individually in it's own place. A lot of short seams, but by the end I think she could have done it herself. I drew the quilting lines and she mostly followed them. (With lots of help and supervision!) There are a few wobbles, but I believe she may have natural talent. Here is her backing:
Those two are doll quilts, already well-used, but my 10-year-old grandson obviously was not going to make a doll quilt, so we're calling this small masterpiece a wall hanging. He and I use the Merlin app together, so he made a bird:
This was a blast to make. You'll see that he's quite a literalist, so we had to look up what a cardinal looks like and try to copy it exactly. He was quite directive and it took a little while to figure out how to do the black on the breast and the little cap on top. It took him a long time to choose the beak and the legs because apparently I need more colors. I did the quilting, except for around the green edge, which is all he was really comfortable with. He did give me a LOT of directions, though. It took some convincing, but I did get him to let me put a few 'feathers' on the bird, too. And look what he found for the back:
Serendipity! This is my favorite bird ever, and it was so much fun to watch him picking fabrics and giving me directions on where everything goes. (If you want to make birds, I used Lynne's tutorial, which is HERE.) Two suggestions if you're going to sew with kids: use your walking foot, which prevents wrinkles and tears, and set your machine speed to slow, because they really do like to use that foot pedal.
But wait, Mari, don't you have four grandchildren there? Yes, but number four, an 8-year-old boy, was so completely uninterested it wasn't funny. Not his thing, but you should have been there to answer all his questions about how the machine works when I was cleaning it! He was amazed that I could take it apart AND put it back together.
Now that the scraps and I are home again, I have to finish off an absolute behemoth of a quilt for my nephew and his new wife. It's easy, but it's huge. He's 6'5" and she's 6'1", so it's king size. Huge! I am chaining myself to the sewing machine until it's done. Wish me luck.
Since it's still sweltering, here's a nice lake picture to cool you down as we cruise into August:
Have a great day, everyone!
Sharing at Alycia's for Finished or Not Friday.
