Watch me grow!

When I go visit my parents I can still see the pencil lines on the kitchen doorway where my mom marked the growth of all the grandchildren.  The kids loved to have her measure them and make their mark.

I want to create the same kind of memories for our grandkids so yesterday I stitched up a growth chart to hang on our wall. I found this fun monkey fabric in my stash and made it up as I went along.  I still have to figure out how I am going to mark it.  Any creative ideas?

              

27 inches and thirty inches tall so far.  We have a lot of wonderful growing up years ahead of us.

And another one…

Of course I couldn’t stop at just one bag…no…Nanette’s pattern was just too much fun to put together. 

I had some favorite fabric strips that were saved together and thought they’d be perfect for this, except the pattern calls for 4 inch strips and I found that mine were only 2 to 3 1/2 inches wide.  Drats! 

So I donned my thinking cap, jimmy-rigged the pattern a bit, did some extra piecing and came up with this.

Woohoo!  I like it.

Other than the lining, I used only scraps.  No two strips on either side are alike and there wasn’t even enough to make two handles of the same fabric…they are similar but not the same. 

 

A new bag and a little lighter scrap bin.  I’ve used those favorite fabrics nearly down to crumbs.

Scrappy Afternoon

I just got this pattern by Nanette of Freda’s Hive.  Also Jodi at Pleasant Home is inspiring us to use our scraps… so I rummaged through my scrap bins for pieces to make this and enjoyed a quiet afternoon at my sewing machine. 

Those little bits of leftover fabric are now being put to very good use.

That was close!

I nearly lost the top of my little pinkie today!  While zipping through the fabric with my rotary cutter, I suddenly realized I’d made a careless mistake.  But whew!…it just got the nail and the tiniest sliver of finger….no blood…no pain…and one very lucky me! 

There are safer ways to trim ones nails so I will slow down and be more careful now. 

Little flowers for little girls

 

 

While watching TV today I stitched up a whole bunch of these flowers for my sweet granddaughters.  I got the instructions from Polka Dot Pineapple where Lettie is absolutely amazing at creating gorgeous flowers from fabric and paper.