Finlay's quilt

Gee, my granddaughter Finlay will be 8 months old this week, and I suddenly realized that I had never posted a picture of the baby quilt I made for her! On Facebook, yes, but not here. I discovered Magrieta's Quilt Shop in St. Augustine, and they sell the most luscious fat quarters of fabrics I totally fall in love with. So Finlay's quilt is wild and crazy as it's made from all sorts of cool fabrics I just loved so much I couldn't narrow down my choices as to what to include in the finished product. Their only unifying theme is that they all have some of the same purple shades, and there is an asian feel to the patterns.

Even the back is a quilt! And a little less busy than the front. Here I got to use the butterfly fabric I had also bought that I just could *not* work into the front of the quilt. I like making baby-sized quilts. They can be done pretty quickly, though getting the letters of her name right was a bit finicky. But all in all it was a fun project and I like the quilt!

Art projects with my grandson

One fun thing about having a four-year-old grandson is being able to do art projects with him! The Art Guild of Orange Park decorates Christmas balls every year, so I had a few at home I picked up at the meeting last week, and let my grandson decorate them. It's hard to go wrong with these. You just drop paints inside the balls and then turn the balls this way and that to let the colors swirl around. You get great marbling effects and they look all lovely and shiny because of the glass on the outside. I just got out all my acrylics (slightly watered down) and let my grandson pick whatever colors he wanted to drop into the balls. And I think they came out great.

"Hurricane over the Mountain" - by John Cusick (age 4)

 Of course we had lots of wet lumps of paint sitting on a paper plate when we were done, and I hate to just waste it and throw it away. So I got out two pieces of 300-lb watercolor paper cut to a 5x7 size, and we each had two minutes to paint a picture. John gave a running commentary as he did his painting:

 "I'm making a BIG mountain. It's a big dark mountain. Now a big storm is coming. It's a big hurricane over the mountain".

"Sunrise" by Debbie Cusick (age undisclosed)

This is my two-minute painting, which I call "Sunrise". :-)

After that we still had a bit of paint left. So we finished up with "Blobbies". We fold a piece of paper in half, then open it up, and drib-drab paint on one side of the paper. Then we fold it again and press down on it hard! Then we re-open it and have our Blobby picture. They are usually quite fascinating. 

"Blobby #1"

We managed to finish three blobbies before we ran out of paint.

"Blobby #2"

But I'm sure there will be a next time!

"Blobby #3"

Christmas Craftiness

My grandson John was 3 months old for Christmas, 2009. His other grandma is an excellent seamstress, and she made him this cute little elf costume to wear! He sure was adorable in it on Santa's lap.

So this Christmas my granddaughter Finlay will be 9 months old, and my daughter-in-law would love for her to be an elf also. But at 9 months Finlay is much too big (and too chubby) to fit into John's little overalls. The elf hat and shoes still work at least. My DiL said her mom was wasn't able to make an outfit this year so asked if I could do it.

She had hoped fabric could be a brighter green to match the hat and shoes, but the felty fabric John had only seemed to come in dark forest green.

So I decided a Florida elf could get away with lighter fabric and went with a pretty dotted cotton.

And this is the result I came up with. I'm pretty happy with how it came out! The green color is right, and is cheerful, and I think I made it look a little more "feminine". 

And since John's elf outfit was reversable I made Finlay's reversible also. John's was red so Finlay's is also red in the same dotted cotton as the green side.

It truly is reversible as each side has a small button on the bib which can be covered with one of three button covers.

The pattern I used said I needed a yard of each fabric, but I had a lot left over! At least I had just enough to make this small 3-foot by 3-foot quilt top using the two fabrics plus white. Now I have just scraps of the red and green, not enough for a 4th row. So I'll probably just add a border around the quilt to make it a little bit bigger.