Another yellow brick road pattern – I’ve made so many of these in different colors and styles, and love every one of them. The fabric at the far left of the picture is the wonderful batik that will be the border.
Author: Boyd
Sometimes the old technology was better …
Oh, Mr. Greist, where have you been my entire sewing life? Though branded to go with my vintage Viking 6020 machine, this is really just a Greist buttonhole attachment I found on e-Bay for $15 – best sewing money I have ever spent! It makes absolutely and perfectly consistent buttonholes with one of 13 cams. And you can adjust bead size and gap spread to your heart’s content – an amazing piece of antique sewing technology!!!
A fun little project …
The machine embroidered bookmarks I made for Juliette’s kindergarten class. They are a surprise gift, made in each student’s favorite color, that I will give them as the year’s final Book Nook reader on Thursday. Time consuming, but so much fun to make, using lots of different decorative stitches on my Pfaff Performance 5.0 machine. They all say “I CAN READ” on them!
A new dress for little Miss J
She was so excited when she woke up today and asked about her dress and I told her it was done. She insisted she wear it to school today. It is the Tiered Pillowcase dress tutorial from Polkaditchair.com.
What a beautiful combo
Finally I found a table made for my vintage Viking sewing machine. They look fabulous in my sewing studio!
Time for a change
Well, I certainly seem to have been neglecting my blog recently, haven’t I? I guess I’ve gotten so used to Facebook, that’s pretty much the only place I visit regularly. But Google sent me a nasty-gram last night, telling me that my web site was not friendly to mobile devices and if I didn’t do something to change that, my site results would start moving lower and lower in their results and …. EGADS! … we can’t have that now, can we? So here is a new “responsive design” theme that works in browsers and on mobile devices too. So maybe I’ll kick myself in the rear and get to adding some blog posts soon. They take more effort than the quick posts on FB, but you can say and show a lot more too. I think I’ve also fixed the photo gallery which wasn’t working for some people at all, unless they used Chrome as their browser. It’s working for me now in all browsers, so hopefully it will work for you too!
The first day of school …
So, it finally arrived. Juliette’s first day of school. After a flurry of scheduled activities to get her and us ready for today, she woke up this morning eager to get dressed and get going. And I have been fine through it all. Nary a tear and not even really feeling sad, primarily because she was SO happy and excited to start. It’s hard to feel sad for yourself when your kid is so full of joy over something. And I must say I held it together really well this morning, until the moment came in the Kids & Company room to hug her goodbye and let her get on with her day. It just came on like a ton of bricks, all of a sudden. It felt as though my heart jumped up into my throat, and I could barely breathe and I fought against my feeling until I got out the school door and could let go of the fight. I had to sit there a while in my car before I was in any condition to drive. And I’ve been thinking all morning, about how this represents such a major milestone for her, and for us, how this is the first of many little and big acts of letting go, where we continue to love her and care for her with all of our being, but have to ease up on that firm grip we’ve had until now. As Harald pointed out last night, from now on we will have her to ourselves only a few hours each day as teachers and peers become an increasingly important influence and part of her daily life. So there is part of me that is so sad to see those first five, precious years end. And yet, this is what we have wanted all along, to raise a child up to be part of the next generation, a contributing and vibrant member of society, and this is all part of that process. So it is a bittersweet day, tinged also with plenty of satisfaction and anticipation.
The oldest surviving stave church in Norway
The oldest surviving stave church in Norway, the one in Borgund, near Lærdal, which is on the Sognefjord. To learn more about this fascinating building, go to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borgund_Stave_Church
A quilt for dear Inger
When I saw a package of Tonga Treats Balinese batiks last year, I instantly thought of Inger. The colors and the life in them reminded me so much of her, I knew instantly I had to make a quilt for her out of those fabrics. So I bought them and got to work. I completed the quilt in time to take it to her when we visited her near Beitostølen, Norway this summer. I had no idea how her house was decorated, and after arriving was afraid it wouldn’t match anything in her decor, so I told her to feel free to take to their home in Cypress or wherever she could use it, but I was delighted to learn her whole bedroom was done in soft shades of pink and the quilt looked very much at home after being put on the bed. It is a Terry Atkinson pattern, Merry Mosaic, and it was quilted by Mary Brandt.
A quilt for Per & Regula
This is a quilt I made for Per & Regula and I took it with us to deliver to them when we arrived in Norway. I’ve wanted to make a two color quilt for a long time, and this one came from a design I saw someone post on Pinterest. It was an easy block to figure out and to make. And it looks gorgeous with the quilting done by Mary Brandt. I am so pleased with how it turned out and I think Per & Regula liked it very much too!
