Rarely when I make a baby quilt do I get to see the mother and baby open the package together.
This time was special. We traveled to Illinois this past weekend and I was delighted to present my friend, Kate, and her son Henry with a quilt I’d made for him. Henry is about 10 months old. It was so wonderful to finally meet him and so sweet to see him play peek-a-boo with the quilt.
The whole family—mom, dad and baby—loved the quilt and it was so special to be there to give them this gift.
This was a quilt of firsts for me.
It was my first Amy Butler quilt. I used Amy Butler’s “Nora’s Mid Mod 2 quilt” pattern for the front with a few modifications to the measurements and I used more kid-friendly fabrics. I love her designs and this one was quite easy to follow.
It was my first quilt using free-motion quilting. I did swirls along the green strips because of the size of the quilt it was about all I could handle. Someday I’ll try other patterns on a real quilt instead of my free-motion practice quilt.
I also learned a big lesson to buy a few extra spools of thread and also how to adjust my machine’s tension. This quilt had me going crazy a couple of times because the thread was pulling horribly on the back while the front looked beautiful. I finally played with the tension and in the end the back looked almost as wonderful as the front.
I quilted the Henry’s name into the quilt, something that I’ve always thought was so cool but until I learned how to free-motion quilt I never knew how to do.
It’s always bittersweet for me to give a quilt away but once I saw Henry and Kate’s faces I knew the quilt was well-loved.
We thought spring was here along with a taste of summer last week now we’re back to cold and rain. The flowers and gardening happening around our house make up for the cool and cloudy days.
Yesterday was the first Saturday in four weeks that I was not out in a garden in some fashion. We still have two vegetable gardens going this year with chard, onions, lettuce, beets and carrots that are already planted. On the front and back porch and basement are flowers, tomatoes and peppers waiting to be planted. The last two years I’ve planted everything on Memorial Day weekend and it’s looking like that is going to be another planting weekend.
Also in the back I’ve started a shade garden. Last year it had two hostas this year after splitting one of my hostas and splitting ones I’ve received from a couple of neighbors I now have about 19 hosta plants with some ajuga, Solomon’s Seal and a few ferns added to the mix. I bought a Guacamole hosta that I can’t wait to see full-grown.
While I wasn’t in the garden yesterday I was doing gardeny things like preparing terrariums (one of my new favorite things) for my mother and grandmother as Mother’s Day gifts.
We celebrated Mother’s Day a week late this year since my parents were on their three-week trip to Spain last weekend. Today I gave the terrariums to their respective recipients and the terrariums were well-loved.
Not much else is new around here. I’m preparing for summer reading at the library with a completely redesigned program for the kids. I’ve hired all of my volunteers and have orientation tomorrow. To promote summer reading for our library, we visit the elementary schools and the middle school. Last week, I asked a second grade teacher to video the story we told the elementary school kids. Here it is for your viewing pleasure.
