Memere to the Rescue!

 

Every time I go to California to visit my son's family. we take a trip to the South Coast Botanic Garden. This photo of my granddaughter was taken in August of this year when we visited the butterfly exhibit. I give my son and his family a membership to the Gardens each year. I love visiting as much as they do.

Yesterday my son texted me, "There are dinosaurs at the botanical gardens! And we lapsed our membership!"

HOLY TERROR BATMAN!

I tried to remember when I renewed the membership. I couldn't recall. So I got on my phone and brought you the Botanic Garden website and gave them a call. Discovering the membership had indeed expired, I renewed it for another year. After the staff person told me the membership was reinstated I thanked her, "Now I need. you to do me a favor. I need you to go out to the ticket office and tell the clerk that the membership for my son's family has been reinstated. I'm pretty sure my son is out there waiting with my granddaughter!"

She laughed and did just that. 

A few minutes later I got a text from my son, "Thanks Mom, they just let us in."

Turns out membership renewal notices are sent to the members, so my son probably saw it and thought, "Oh, Mom will take care of this." Now I have set a notice on my phone so I will renew the membership in time next year.

Memere to the rescue! 

OK! Christmas gift for the family... CHECK!

Happy granddaughter... CHECK!

Fancy Dress Up Day

 

It was Fancy Dress Up Day at my granddaughter's school on Monday. Naturally my daughter-in-law took a picture of my DGD and my son.

Pretty in pink, the two of them!

BTW, my seminole patchwork basics tutorial is available here, in my Etsy shop. The band on the bodice of her dress is more complicated than it at first looks, but the instructions are in the tutorial.

A Little Ham...

This is my granddaughter in the Pink Dinosaur Seminole Dress. 

Pretty sure she likes it. 

Seeing these photos (and the others my son sent), reminded me of what his pediatrician said to me during one of his exams.

"There's a little ham in this kid."

Clearly it runs in the family.

This and That

 

This is the final gift bag for my granddaughter in the City of Angels. The gift that fit in this bag was shipped out earlier today. This bag is the Artist (or large) bag, but I made it two inches longer. 

I don't usually get a double Amaryllis, but this one is pretty spectacular. This bloom is every big as usual, about eight inches across.

I got a box of fizzy bath bombs, so now my spa tub is completely decked out, and DAMN! It looks good. I'm pretty sure I'm going to try it out real soon. But if anybody thinks I'm going to be reading my iPad while I'm soaking in the tub is crazy. I've already lost one iPhone to water (the washing machine,) so that isn't going to happen. I have a real live paperback book I can read if I want, but to me the point of soaking in a tub is just to relax, so that's what I plan to do.

While I worked on the binding of the Allegretto quilt, I binge watched The School of Chocolate on Netflix this weekend and was extremely impressed with the teacher, Amaury Guichon. His feedback was excellent, and kind, which is a rarity in "reality TV."

Finally, Millie's kidney levels are very high, and the specialized food for that would be very good for her... if she'll eat it, which she hasn't done yet. If she won't, the vet suggests I get any food she'll eat, as long as it is designed for "Senior Cats." Advice and suggestions welcome.

Black Friday with Dinosaurs

I have a rule never to go shopping on Black Friday - the day after Thanksgiving. Instead I'll sit on the couch today watching whatever's good on TV while I bind the Diamonds & Dinosaurs quilt.

Go Slow and Sew

Sewing the diamond quilts together is an exercise in dealing with bias edges. These are 60 degree diamonds, and every block has at least two sides that are on the bias. So after I sew the blocks together, I place them on the floor, so they won't stretch.

Eventually I had to move it into the living room because it was getting so big.

Ironing can be challenging.

I had to cancel the Roomba's scheduled cleaning run.

Here's the finished flimsy.

Here's the backing. I used both the big dinosaur panels, some flower fabric from my stash,

 and the green "dragon scale" fabric I bought because my granddaughter said it was "green like T-rex." As you can see from the photo above, the scale (no pun intended) was too big for a lot of things, so it was perfect for the back.

The quilt will be going to the longarm quilter soon, and the goal is to have this in my granddaughter's arms on Christmas Eve.


And YES, this has been one hell of a quilt marathon.

Moving On

What I didn't like about the layout at the end of yesterday's post was there were too many areas where the large and medium diamonds blended together into too dark blobs. Those dark medium diamonds had to go. I tried moving them to areas where the smaller ones weren't close to the larger ones, as you can see from the photo above, but I don't really like that either.

I also removed some of the large diamonds and replaced them. Some were "lone wolves" and needed another one to carry the design around, and some just faded into oblivion and had to go. I'll let you figure which ones changed. I also flipped some of the large diamonds upside down, because this quilt really doesn't have a top or bottom.

I can't overstate how many extra pieces I have for the diamond quilts. I'm sure I could make another one or two if I could get over my artistic tendencies and just sew stuff together willy-nilly. At any rate, I used the leftover four patch diamonds in the current layout more as placeholders than anything, and what I found out was that they were too dark and blah. This quilt is for a three year old girl so bright diamonds are required.

Fortunately I have this thing called a "stash," so I went through it, keeping an eye on the developing layout and pulled some colors and prints I thought would work well.

This allowed me to use my all-time favorite dinosaur fabric after all. This fabric is glow-in-the-dark and while it wouldn't work as medium sized diamonds, it will work perfectly as four-patch diamonds.

So while up to now the quilt has been go-go-go, now I am at slow, sew, sew as I made the estimated 60 - 70 four patch diamonds I need.

This is where it is right now and of course it will change another few times before I sew it all up.



To Rebecca and NeverBored and others who: 1. liked the pink fabric with the fawn and owl and bunny and fox, more on how I got on that tangent and 2. how I actually got started on this quilt and how "Just begin," became a mantra of mine, hold those thoughts. They will be covered in another post later.

Dino Diamonds

The dinosaur fabrics have arrived. I cut big diamonds from these, from Spoonflower.

Dinosaurs and Roses!

I cut medium diamonds out of these fabrics.

My DIL and I had decided that I would use other fabrics in the large diamonds, so this wouldn't be an overly Dino design, and would have some longevity. I cut diamonds and threw them up on the design wall until I had filled every space. I used the leftover four patch diamonds to see what it would look like.

 So here is the first pass. It needs a lot of work, and I already know what it is, so save your breath. I never quite know what I want until I see it on the design wall, and now I am pretty sure I know exactly what I want this to look like.

Remember, this is for a three year old who loves dinosaurs, animals and flowers.

Marching Orders

We all know there are some people for whom we would do anything.

My granddaughter at the Natural History Museum

The other day I got a text from my DIL:

"So I was taking to "Little Miss" this morning about the possibility of getting her a big girl twin size bed and I told her that I would get her a new dinosaur blanket for it. She says NO, I want one like that, and she points over at the quilt...            

"She said I want diamonds on it with dinos in them. So Lynne, if you happen to know come across any kind of dinosaur fabric you know what you can use it for."

So DIL and I went back and forth. Both of us were concerned with how quickly she might outgrow the dino thing.

"Just so you know she doesn't think any of the dinosaurs are scary. Did I show you which one she sleeps with?"

So the goal is to keep the colors bright and happy and tuck dinosaurs in to make Little Miss happy. Later that night I got on the internet and went dino fabric shopping. I literally can't wait.

But we'll save this for the back!

Some Family Photos

Here are some pictures we took the last night I was in California with my son and his family.

We had a great dinner at Nick's.

After dinner, we went to the beach.

Woo Hoo! I got a kiss!

We are a Dino-sty!