Life's been busy lately. Not in a bad way, just busy...to the point where when my son's kindergarten teacher sent home a note about how her last day of school is approaching quickly before she goes on maternity leave, and it dawned on me that I had not made a baby quilt for her. Eek! It was on my To Do list, I had managed that much, but it just hadn't made it to the top yet, so this weekend I bumped it to the top of the list.

The munchkin's big birthday party was this past Sunday, and I think it went really great. He says he had an awesome time at his birthday party and he can't wait to have another one next year. I sure can! Birthday parties sure can be a lot of work, but admittedly, I had a lot of fun working on this one.

The party theme was Legos, so we had lots of fun Lego decorations from the party store as well as a Lego crown that I made for the kiddo, using some fun Lego fabric I found on Spoonflower. I also picked up the Batman Lego minifigure shirt he's wearing in this photo on Etsy from a super fun shop called I Heart Bricks. They had tons of variety, from Ninjago to Star Wars and so on.


We had the party at a local park, so the kids made good use of their two large playgrounds. We also had a brief scavenger hunt, where the kids searched for five paper Lego guys throughout the area of the park we were in, which was great until my munchkin ended up in tears because he didn't win. He snapped out of it when one of his friends consoled him by saying, "I don't always win, and it's okay," which was wonderful.


For snacks, the kids had rectangular Club crackers with circles of Swiss and Cheddar cheese, as well as lots of ready-to-go snacks, like Pirate's Booty and Craisins. They also loved the Lego cookies I made, using some simple royal icing. The adults really enjoyed the Funfetti cake dip that I made and paired with animal crackers and Teddy Grahams. It was ridiculously tasty!

I made the main cake for the party, a Lego cake, using some basic decorating instructions I found on the Betty Crocker site. The birthday boy was especially excited when he saw that the Lego knobs were actually marshmellows! The cake itself was one of my favorite cake recipes, the Barefoot Contessa's Beatty's Chocolate Cake.

After cake time, the kids had some crafting time, with great coloring sheets from the Lego site as well as a scrapbook inspired activity, where the kids could glue their own hats, shirts, pants, and skirts to their own paper Lego minifigure. It was a great way to wind things down after all the fun.


Once we got the party cleaned up and packed up into the car, we ventured down to the beach area of the park and had a bit of fun running around on the sand and inspecting the plants and wildlife. It was gorgeous, until the mosquitoes started to take over.

All in all, the party was great, the munchkin was a very happy, excited boy, and while it was great fun, I'm looking forward to getting back behind my sewing machine this week and working on my Juki machine cover! I hope you're having a great week so far :)

I'm heading back to school today...to my son's preschool, that is, to talk about quilts. It's Q week at school, and well, are there really any better words in the alphabet that start with Q? I don't think so! My kiddo is so excited to have mommy come to talk to the kids about what quilts are and how I make them, and I'm excited too, because I know that I won't always get that kind of a warm reception from my kiddo.



In other news, I've been working hard on a few deadline projects that I can't share at the moment, but the good news is that one is nearly finished, and here's a sneak peek of it. Playing with these gorgeous Art Gallery Fabrics has been a lot of fun, as always. If you haven't tried Art Gallery fabrics before, you absolutely must. From the fantastically soft hand and drape to the gorgeous colors you'll find in their collections, you will be a very happy fabric hoarder/quilter once you give them a try! You can find Art Gallery Fabrics at Intrepid Thread, Stash Modern Fabric and soon at Pink Castle Fabrics as well. Have a wonderful Thursday :)

The munchkin goes back to school next week, for his final year at preschool before kindergarten. He's so excited he can hardly stand it! We've been busy gathering all of the things he needs for school the last few days, so we're making sure to spend these last few days of summer having a lot of fun. My mom has been visiting for the last several days, too, which has been a lot of fun for both me and my munchkin.

Yesterday, we all trucked over to the beach. We love going to the beach, especially the munchkin. Sand is his friend, big-time. He just loves getting covered in sand, and digging, too. He had a lot of fun with two dump trucks yesterday, pretending that one was a bad guy that kept dumping sand on the good truck. It was a gorgeous day for the beach, not blazingly, stiflingly hot like it has been lately, and with a lovely breeze. We all had a great time, and even saw a pair of dolphins frolicking near the shore. Naturally, I couldn't grab my camera fast enough to get a picture of them, but it was really fun to watch them splash and play together.

How is it possible that you are three years old already?  Wasn't it just yesterday that you came screaming your way into our lives?  Where did the time go?


I can't believe that over 1,000 days have passed since you entered our lives.  It's hard to remember what life was like before you came along.


This year, you asked me to make many things for you, but for your birthday, you asked for specifically for a polka dot blanket.  Ask for a quilt, and a quilt you shall receive, my little boy.  I sure hope you like it.
This quilt was so much fun to put together!  I was inspired by both Sarah, with her stringy polka dot quilt, and Megan, with her crazy 9 patch quilt.  At first, I worried that I wouldn't have enough polka dot fabrics for a whole quilt of them, but sure enough, I had plenty - and a bunch to spare, too!  I went kind of crazy with the wonky 9-patch blocks.  I made a bunch of them, at first intending to make a twin size quilt, but I ultimately scaled it back to a 71" square quilt.





I think I'm glad I scaled it back to a big square instead of the twin size.  He's got a twin-size quilt already, and this will be a nice companion that he can drag around the house if he wants to snuggle with it on the couch or he can add it to his collection of quilts and blankets in bed.  On the bright side, as I finished the binding on this quilt, I started to feel like I finally gotten a good handle on the technique of hand-stitching the binding on.  I used milliners for the first time, and I must say, that made a huge difference for me.  They were so much easier to manipulate the way I wanted to.  Two thumbs up!


Quilt Stats
Name: A Legion of Dots
Size: 71" square
Fabrics: Various polka dots all from my stash, sashed with Kona Ash and Kona Ocean.  The binding is from Riley Blake's Colorful Chrismas collection.
Quilting: All-over meandering stipple.  I had thought about straight-line quilting this one, but time wasn't on my side here.  I'm a lot more confident with my stippling, so I tend to move a lot faster that way.
I'll be linking this finish up with {Sew} Modern Monday this week.

I started working on this wonky 9-patch quilt for my son's birthday this week, after much internal debate about what pattern to do.  I had way too many ideas and sketches for this one, and ultimately, I decided to go simple and started cutting.  Managed to give myself my first rotary cutting injury in the process, but don't worry, it's just a tiny nick.


I'm going to sash the blocks with two different colors, but naturally, I'm debating about that too.  These blocks are so colorful, I was kind of thinking about using a few different colors for sashing, to keep up with the rainbow effect of the blocks, but I'm not sure yet.  I really need to put this aside to make some quilt backs this weekend.  It's going to be tough to stop on this quilt, because I'm really in love with it...


I'm not quite done making blocks, I think I'll do one more set of wonky blocks, but here's how it's coming together so far.


By the way, this quilt is so far totally nameless...though I can't seem to stop calling it A Legion of Dots in my head...

Don't forget, the cutting instructions for the quilt along are up.  Stacks of gorgeous cut fabrics are showing up in the Flickr pool already!  Have a great weekend everyone!