Doll Quilt Swap 9

It's that time again. I signed up for another round of Doll Quilt Swap. I think the last time I participated was Round #4 actually -- I sent a fun little orange and aqua number to Laura. Thanks to Doll Quilt Swap 4, Laura and I are now blog friends. I love that. And to all my non-quilty friends -- these doll quilt swaps aren't necessarily just for "dolls". I have several from past swaps that I have collected and eventually plan on hanging in my basement all together as an art wall. It's pretty cool, especially since several of them traveled thousands of miles from other countries.

All participants are encouraged to try and make a Flickr mosaic of quilts we like so our partner will have a better idea for inspiration. I'd never attempted a Flickr mosaic, but I figured it out this afternoon and voila:




1. Dresden Plate quiltie, 2. windmill quilt detail, 3. Carnival String Quilt - complete, 4. My Pillow Talk Swap from Little Miss Shabby, 5. Joseph's Coat Pillow - it's done!, 6. completed pillow for pillow talk swap 3, 7. Twinkle laid out , 8. Flea Market Fancy hexagon quilt, 9. Cathedral Window Pillow, 10. momma, 11. patchwork cushion, 12. dqs8 received, 13. finished ..., 14. Jacob's Coat Quilt-along, 15. Molly's Quilt - Front, 16. Union Jack Pillow with Liberty prints

This represents a whole load of randomness that I am really enjoying right now. But I want my quilt partner to know -- I would seriously love ANYTHING you come up with for me. Don't be limited or feel intimidated by this mosaic alone. Just the fact that someone is making something specifically for me is great enough for me. No matter what, I will love it!

Now the wheels need to start turning in my head for what I will create for the partner I was assigned. So many ideas...

Little Dresses for Africa (Part Cuatro)

This is it. The final saga. (Catch the first three parts here, here, and here.)

The dresses. Oh, the dresses!

I had mentioned before that my idea of a great birthday party would have been to have 20-30 dresses. Blow that estimate out of the water and that's what we got -- 100 dresses!

This post has been a while in the making simply because I (and my mom) have been slaving away since the party, working on finishing up all of the dresses. At the end of the party there were 38 completed dresses, leaving my mom and I 62 dresses to finish. Most of them just required a finishing step or two, but at least 20 or 30 of them needed help from scratch. Thank goodness for my mom. She's a workhorse, that's for sure, and I would've never gotten them finished by now if it weren't for her.

So here you go. The "stars" of the party -- the beautiful dresses. I am going to do my best to give credit where credit is due, but again, my apologies if I get any of them wrong. I tried to get each guest to mark their dresses with masking tape, but about half of the dresses ended up sans masking tape, and I've had to make my best effort in guessing who their creator was. Remember, you can click on any of the images to see them up close. In fact, I highly encourage you to take the time and click on the pictures. There are so many cute dresses to see!



This group was made by my Aunt Millie, her friends Stephanie and Linda, and my cousin's wife and daughter, Jennifer and Vivian.



These dresses were created by Stephanie and Linda and my Aunt Millie (I think).



Katie's dress is on the left, followed by Cassie (Kristi's friend) for the next two, and my quilting buddy, Sydney for the last three.



The first four dresses are made by me out of pillowcases donated by the world's best preschool director, Melissa (Hola, Melissa!). Seriously, she is the best, and I wish she could have joined us at the party! Then the 2nd to the right is by Erika, and the last one is by Lauren.


Ginnette made the first two dresses, followed by the ever artistic Kristen, and then the last two were sewn up by me out of donated pillowcases from my neighbor, Bernie.



The first two dresses belong to Lindsay (see, Lindsay, we salvaged that first hem, no problem!), the two purple pillowcases were donated by Amber, and the last two striped pillowcases were donated by Tiffany.



Courtney is the creator of this first mod pillowcase, and the next two were done by Christa, who was one of my brave seamstresses. She was pretty creative on one of those in how she tied a bow and sewed it in place. Super cute. The two purple paisley ones are by Brook and her friend, Alexis, and the last one is by Lorrie who was able to get her craft on even with her brand new baby strapped on her front in a sling!



I'm pretty sure most of this group (if not all of it) was done by Kristi's sweet friend, Fallon. I loved how people brought friends -- new people for me to meet, and boy, were they creative! Kristi brought both Cassie and Fallon with her, and let me just tell you, these girls went above and beyond the call of duty by collecting gobs of pillowcases! Kristi also is the beautiful gal that made all of those flower brooches I was telling you about in the first post, many of which you can see sewn to a lot of the dresses. We used every single one of them -- they were a big hit!



These were also done by Fallon, with the exception of maybe one or two that could have been Kristi's? My mom got a big kick out of those black dresses and the cute fabric that Fallon picked out. One of them has the most adorable zebra fabric on it.



I think this group is mostly Kristi's, but with one or two from Fallon. I think. It's all starting to get blurry now. Dresses are floating in my head, haunting my dreams at night...haha. Just kidding.



This is a group of Kristi's. My mom really enjoyed sewing that bright tropical colored one in the middle, and I made a flower brooch to go in the center, a la Kristi. Or at least I tried. And that red and white cutie was a thrift store find (I think) that came with the adorable bow already on it. It made a perfect little dress!



Another Kristi group. The girl found a LOT of pillowcases. There are going to be a lot of happy little African princesses!



The first one is from my mom's stash in her linen closet that I doctored up. I'm telling you what, those vintage pillowcases are the absolute softest and coolest feeling cotton. The rest of the group was contributed by my neighbor Kim, her daughter Katie, and Kim's mother Corinne. It was such a fun surprise opening the door during the party and finding that Kim had invited her mother! Cool, too, that there were three generations represented from next door. Corinne told me that it was one of the most fun parties she's ever been to. That made my heart soar.



This group is all from my mom's linen closet. Again, I cannot emphasize how soft and cool the cotton feels on these little dresses. It was fun picking out the colors and trims to match some of these prints from the 1970s, but I think they turned out adorable!



Most of these are also from my mom's stash with a few thrown in from my own closet. The blue and yellow dresses in the middle were my absolute two favorite dresses I personally sewed. I love the bias tape at the bottom and how crisp and vintage these two feel. I made the appliques just by cutting some bouquets out of a printed fabric I had in my stash and fusing them on. If they were my size I'd wear 'em in a heartbeat!



The first two pillowcases were from my stash and the rest are from my mom's. I don't know if you've noticed, but we've received quite a few king-size pillowcases, and those are so great since the older girls will get to be included.



The last group -- all from my stash. That first dress has pockets that we created from fabric. Several of the girls were our inspiration for the pockets -- Fallon had brought extra fabric to make pockets for several of her dresses, and Ginnette had picked out some of the pieces of pillowcase fabric that had been cut out for armholes and repurposed them as pockets on her two dresses. I told ya' -- I've got some creative friends!

And there you have it. The world's most awesome party, not just because of how fun it was, but because of what a difference it will be making in the lives of 100 girls. 100! I still have trouble wrapping my mind around that number! This coming week I will be sizing them, marking them, stuffing them in Ziploc bags, and then mailing them to the Little Dresses for Africa headquarters.

I know I've already said it, but I just can't say thank you enough. Thank you to all of my friends (old and new!) and family for all of your generosity. I'm so grateful to each of you. And to you, my blog readers, I hope this will spur you on to have your own fun charity party, or even if you don't throw a party, to just find a way, no matter how big or small, to get more involved with doing good in our world. There is no greater feeling than being able to help someone else.

And there's just one last surprise that I'll show you sometime this next week, a fun little thing I stitched up as my own little momento to remember my unforgettable party...

Little Dresses for Africa (Part Tres)

(If you missed out on the first parts, do go back and catch up. You won't want to miss out on all the fun: Part Uno and Part Dos.)

Ah, the beautiful women.

I don't know how many truly beautiful women you know, but I know a whole house full! The women I know have hearts so beautiful, they would knock any worldly supermodels outta the ballpark. The women I know are beautiful not only on the outside, but more importantly on the inside.

These women showed up in droves to my Little Dresses for Africa birthday party. They came bearing gifts and turned these gifts into amazing creations. My mom and I were talking about all the unique personalities that were at the party and how awesome it was to see the different talents come into play and see all of the varied color combinations and ideas of using different trims, etc., to add to the pillowcases. Each person had a different take on how to finish off their dress, and it was such a unique melting pot of ideas.

Let's also not forget the women who didn't make the pictures. There were several neighbors, friends, teachers, etc. who also contributed pillowcases even though they couldn't attend my actual party. It was a joint effort of so many different people from different parts of my life that helped us to reach the 100 mark!

Here you go, pictures of the lovely ladies who came to my party. (I tried my best while the chaos of the party was going on to get pictures of every person that attended, but there's always the chance I missed somebody, and if I did, my apologies.)














































Look for Part Cuatro this weekend -- the creme de la creme, DRESSES!!!!

Buzz, buzz, buzz...

Today I finished up my first June block for Lael for my Honey Bees quilting bee.



(Click on the picture to see it bigger. No, really. I'll wait.)


I must have been crazed to pick such a block, but once I started it was too late to turn back. I found a paper-piecing template online that was adorable, and I didn't let all the teeny tiny pieces scare me off. (Ignorance is bliss, I tell ya'.)

It said it would make a 10" block. It did not.

No problemo -- I added white sashing, which I wanted to anyways, to make it 10". It is not absolutely perfectly square because it will not lay absolutely perfectly flat, which is driving me bonkers, but due to the extreme cuteness of the block, I'm hoping Lael will not mind...

Do I love this block?

Oh heck yes and then some.

And I am dang proud of myself, if it's okay to admit that. I would've never been able to attempt this except for the paper-piecing skills I learned over the past year in my other quilting bee. (Thanks, girls!) The three pages of templates that printed up were not the same scale, so I had to have my husband try and recopy them to match scale-wise. (So if you get a wild hair and think you want to click over and attempt this block, keep that in mind. If you don't rescale them all to match, it won't work out.) There was a lot of seam-ripping, a lot of holding my breath, and a lot of please-Jesus-let-this-turn-out-after-all-this-effort going on. Jesus might have a few bigger matters in the world to attend to, but that didn't stop me from hoping He wanted my block to turn out okay. Ha.

The second block has not been started, but it probably won't be quite as intricate as this wonky little farmhouse, just to put that out there. What to do, what to do...

Pickin'.

This morning I awoke to a darkened bedroom and the sound of thunder.

Normally I would think it was heavenly as I prefer gloomy dreary days sometimes, the better to cozy up in. You know the type, perfect for reading a fantastic book under a quilt, taking a nap, cleaning the house (if I'm so inclined to), cooking and baking and the like. Especially in the summer, as cool rains are a refreshing gift. But not today.

I groaned when I saw the rain pouring down outside my window. Today was supposed to be blueberry pickin' day, my absolute favorite summertime activity!

My mom is always up for blueberry adventures as well (we traipse out every stinkin' year), so we agreed to hold out and hop in the car as soon as the rain let up. Sure enough, around 9:30am, it was lookin' pretty good, so we sped off east of town and hoped for the best. We are serious about the blueberries. Real serious.

When we got there, all was right with the world. After a week of sultry nasty temperatures (at least in my opinion it is too dang early to be this hot here) we stepped out of the car into cool temperatures. Such a nice relief. My mom and I both had our rainboots on as we are seasoned berry pickers, and the boy was prepped and primed to search "only for the dark blue ones -- no purple, no red, no green". We were ready to muck through the rows of bushes in search of big fat berries.

I don't know if you've ever picked blueberries, but it is by far the most pleasant of all berry picking. No thorns, no seeds, and the ripe berries practically jump into your hands. I am what most would call a picky berry picker, searching long and hard through the bushes to find the clumps of the fattest and darkest berries. So is my mom. My boy could care less and popped about seven berries in his mouth for every one that made it to the bucket. But he was happy off on his own adventures down the rows of bushes, searching high and low for cool bugs and the "bestest bewwies". Um, let me just say, compared to us picky berry pickers, I don't think my boy could get hired on in the quality control department. Ha! But he had fun and loved it, and that's all that matters.



(Please try and refrain from jealousy of my awesome blueberry pickin' outfit or my puffier-than-all-get-out-because-of-the-humidity-awesome-hairdo or my don't-you-wish-you-had-on-sunglasses-to-shield-your-eyes-milky-white skin.)

We were the only ones there for quite a while, and it was so nice and peaceful. We each split up on one long row, and it was kind of nice to have our own little space. The only sounds were the chickens and livestock around the property, and there were two ducks a couple of bushes down from me, taking a bath in a giant puddle.




If it wasn't the most perfect Charlotte's Web/Laura Ingalls type scenario, well, I don't know what was. I half expected Wilbur to come sauntering down the path and join the ducky couple in the puddle. Now, I'm sure as far as blueberry pickin' experiences go, pickin' in Oklahoma isn't quite the same as if we were pickin' in Maine or Michigan or other states known for their blueberries, but for us Okies, it was quite idyllic.

At the end of our adventures (less than two hours worth, although I would've stayed there all day if I could've), we had plenty of berries to show for our labor. My mom and I each picked two buckets full -- about five and a half pounds each -- and the boy had almost a pound and a half in his little bucket (as well as probably that same amount in his belly!). And the best part was they were already rinsed off from the rain. Can't beat that with a stick!




This afternoon I've been drying them off and bagging them up to freeze so we'll be able to enjoy our spoils throughout the year. I'll keep some of them fresh and make some of that divine Pioneer Woman cream sauce tonight, and we'll be livin' high on the hog with our little blueberry stash. You could dip cardboard in that cream sauce, and I bet it would taste divine. And the rest of the summer I'll be daydreaming about my second favorite fruit-picking experience -- picking the Honey Crisp apples and golden raspberries come autumn in our beloved Minne-SOH-ta.

Ah, berry pickin'. Nothin' quite like it.

'Tis a gift to be simple...

Even though I specifically requested no presents for my birthday, it was inevitable that some people in my life would defy my orders. I guess some people just have minds of their own. Ha.

Anyway...

remember how I told you I have some amazing friends?

Yep, the girls in my life are uber-talented. I'm constantly spurred on by the creativity I'm surrounded by. (And I'm including all of my cyber-friends in this statement as well! Constant inspiration, I tell ya'. And remember, I'm a copycat.)

Check what my girl Katie made for me!




Okay, so she didn't exactly make the adorable Alice in Wonderland plate...




but the clever girl DID turn it into something even more fun! She bonded it to a glass candlestick and turned it into a tiered cake plate! Cute, right?

Never in a million years would I have thought that one up. But you can bet your bottom dollar that I will be keeping my little crafty eyes peeled for cute plates and candlestick holders in order to copy this idea!

I am going to use it in my crafting dungeon rather than only drag it out for food purposes. I think it would be quite lovely holding sewing notions or something like that, don't you agree? Then I can see it every day. Seriously, she knows how to pick 'em. Alice in Wonderland? Love it. Goes with my bloggy blog title? Love it. Aqua and red? Love it. A winner all around.

Katie, in turn, had a birthday this past week, so I seized the opportunity to whip up a little something from a tutorial I had bookmarked on my laptop. A cute little gathered clutch, complete with dividers and card/driver's license pockets!






Who dreams up these stinkin' cute tutorials anyways? If I had to make a tutorial, it would pretty much end up being a tutorial of how to watch paint dry because I rarely come up with clever ideas on my own. But my friend, Katie, she is so nice she would probably tell me it was the best paint-drying tutorial she'd ever seen! Oh yeah, she's super nice like that.

Thank goodness this turned out. I'm the type of dope that tries something new in the 11th hour -- you know, like trying out a new recipe right before guests are coming over with no back-up plan whatsoever, not even frozen pizza.

Yep, that's me.

And this tutorial involved a zipper {insert violent shudders here} and not only that, but it required me to cut my own zipper to the correct length {insert wailing and gnashing of teeth here}. Both of which I survived by following the steps one at a time. Baby steps, people. I got this finished with baby steps.

Now I have no idea what I was supposed to really do with those fancy zipper tabs. I couldn't figure that step out, so I fudged it. And I added a strap to make it a wristlet. {Cue choirs of heavenly angels and sunlight streaming down from heaven.}

And now I totally want one for myself.

Who's got a birthday comin' up? I've got loads more tutorials I'm itchin' to try out...

Rule-breaker

Remember in school how it was NOT okay to copy?

Well, now that I'm an adult and I'm in charge (picture Eloise, hands on hips, in the middle of the Plaza Hotel type of take-charge-attitude)...

I love to copy. Ideas. And I always try and give credit where credit is due.

And in true copycat fashion, I snagged a great idea for this summer.

This gal writes one of my favorite blogs. If you haven't met Meg before, click on over and start following! She's got a great attitude, fun ideas, and is one funny lady. She's done this idea every summer, and I knew it was the perfect thing for our family this year, especially since it is the last summer before my boy {sniff, sniff} starts his big kindergarten career.

Check it out...



(As always, you can click on the picture to read it more closely. If you have x-ray vision, you should be just fine...)

Growing up, summer was always something to look forward to. NO SCHOOL! As a parent, well, um, my attitude might not always be quite the same. Sure, I'll admit it -- it scares me to think, how in the heck am I supposed to entertain my kid all summer long?

Don't judge me. It's a tad bit harder with an only child since I am mostly his only form of entertainment.

Anyway, like Meg says in her blog, this is a way to keep things more intentional. To make a point of getting out and having fun -- fun which doesn't always have to cost anything. Many of the items on our chart don't cost much at all.

So, that's what we're doing. This poster is taped up on the walls of my little guy's bedroom, ready to get those boxes checked off. The best part is, I'm just excited about it as he is! Even my husband jumped in the fun and helped think of things to add to our list. I wonder how many we'll be able to accomplish?

What about you? How do you make summer more fun?