One Crazy Summer

I know summer's not over yet, but with Katie starting back to school in less than a week, I thought a little visual re-cap might be in order. Most of the pictures are from our trips to Grandma's and Sesame Place (just in case you thought Cookie Monster and Zoe were at Grandma's, too).

If the girls are Princesses, does that make me Queen?

OK, so this is a few weeks old, but we have been in constant motion it sometimes feels like. Really the reason is that our computer acts like it is 80 years old sometimes and I lose patience before I finish a post. :)

The top picture is a shot of Katie and Maggie dressed up to meet the Princess of Dutch Wonderland. She came to the Elizabethtown Library to host story time and the girls had fun getting all dressed up. Seriously, we spent 2 hours primping Katie as if it were her first dance, but that is part of the fun with girls, right? I've been waiting for the days that I could put her hair up in curls.
A shot of Maggie (in dress up Cinderella shoes!) with her ever-present pal, Monkey.

After some persuasion from big sister, Maggie joined in the picture of the three princesses. I'm thinking Princess of Dutch Wonderland could be a fun job for Katie in 10 years, right?

Maggie is now completely in fancy dress and dress up shoe mode. Never mind she has perfectly acceptable normal shoes to wear...her choices of footwear fall between dress up shoes with heels and Katie's flip flops. Yep, got her a pair of flip flops in her size. I'm told that they aren't big enough. Hmmmm....

Sunbonnet Suzy finished!

To read about how I made these blocks, see this post.


I finished the blocks during Joe and Layla's visit, as we rested our pregnant bodies on the couch. I only planned on making 4 blocks so that it would be a small doll quilt, so it didn't take too long to assemble. I made the quilt blocks 9 x 7 inches and the sashing was 2 inches wide. I decided to go with 4 inches for the border to help keep the look of the original that my great-grandma made.

This flowered print matched nicely for the back, and I made binding from the same yellow as the front.
Originally I thought that I would hand quilt it, but changed my mind once I basted the layers together...
Overall happy with how it looks.

Steeler Girls

Aren't they cute?

The Kindergarten Quilt

Yep...I managed to volunteer somehow to quilt the Kindergarten Quilt.

It really wasn't too bad, and kind of enjoyed getting to see blocks that all the kids colored in (There are special fabric crayons you can get from the Dick Blick website if you want to do this at home.)

However, I break out in a sweat thinking of doing some sort of stacking of quilt layers and turning right side out, so I just decided to go into Joann's and get a half yard of the star fabric that the teacher gave me to make a binding. So. Much. Better. = ) I didn't hand quilt it since I didn't have much time, but the machine quilting went fast and I was pleased with the overall look.

Here is an annoyed Katie humoring Mommy by pointing to her block.

Katie's Dance Recital

Katie practicing her arabesque before the show...

Maggie trying to get into the action...

Katie's dance class

Super cute Katie

Sun Bonnet Suzy

When I was little, my Great-Grandma Ritchey made me a quilt. It had 12 blocks of hand-appliqued Sun Bonnet Sue, sashed and bound with pink/mauve and backed with a flowered sheet. I loved that quilt and used it until I was teenager...now that I look at some of the blocks, there are repairs that will need to be made. But I didn't want to ruin my precious quilt until I knew that I could hand applique replacement parts. So I decided to make a mini practice "Suzy" block.

I found a block that was intact on my quilt and put a sheet of computer paper over it and did a crayon rubbing to get an outline of the applique pieces. I then used plastic template material to make traceable patterns. For my mini version, I used my printer/copier to shrink the pattern to 60% and made new templates.

I wasn't incredibly happy with my first, but I made 2 more, getting more confidence each time. I have to admit that it is relaxing to have such a portable project.

I now see that I need to trim the thread from the back, but I was pretty happy with this Suzy...I think I'll do one more and make it into a dolly quilt!