The Day I Gave My Kids A Camera

In this day and age, almost every kid has some kind of technology "nanny" to make a drive or waiting room wait more tolerable for the parents.  I'm one of those parents.  I also have a rule that it can't be turned on until we are on the freeway or out of town on the highway.  Well, after the pleading and whining of can I start yet.  Then there is the toddler who doesn't have one and usually sleeps.  But on this particular day, I had 2 cameras in the car that day.  I hadn't taken them out from our end of year 4-H party yet.

So.  I took the ipad and the 3ds and gave them cameras.  The one handed to the toddler didn't have batteries in it.  Even if there was batteries, I'm sure it would have been lots of pictures of the back of the seat and his feet.  He still is rear facing so I'm not sure what kind of pictures he would have taken.
I gave the one with batteries to the big kid.  And said that if he got bored he could take pictures of our lovely desert.  And he did just that.  Some through the back window.  Some through his open window.  He even asked to stop to take pictures.  We were on a dead line and I didn't feel like getting stuck in the middle of the Mojave Desert in some deep sand while it was 106 outside.

And while it wasn't his first choice in our 1.5 hour drive, he did enjoy it.  And maybe I'll post some of the pictures on here.  I just have to figure out how to get them from the camera to the computer.

First Birthday Present

This past weekend was my youngest niece's 1st birthday.  And she was also the only one that doesn't have a quilt yet.  So I was busy quilting.  On Father's Day, my brother in law said that it was fine if I made her a quilt.  But that it had to be zebra and Minnie Mouse.  He wanted her name on it and a picture of Minnie Mouse somehow.  All of his kids have traditional blocked quilts.  So I decided to surprise them a little with freemotion/thread art quilting.  

What I did was take a yard of white on white polka dot fabric.  And put it over a yard of black and white zebra print.  I spray basted it since the majority of the quilting was done after I had the binding done.   And I applique'd her name on there with pink and white polka dot fabric.

I also put Minnie Mouse on there.  It wasn't how I wanted it to turn out.  But at least Minnie is on there.

Since the whole Minnie Mouse picture wasn't that big, I had to put some background fillers in.  I decided on flowers since Minnie was already sitting in some and holding some.

And then in the corner, I  put some polka dotted bows.  They didn't turn out as I wanted either.  But I wasn't going to color them in.  It's for a 1 year old and I'm not sure how well the colored pencil technique stays on there with lots of washings.

And to add a bit more color, I did a straight stitch to bind the quilt with hot pink.  And did a pastel zig zag stitch to make it look a bit more fancy.

And there you have it folks.  One Minnie Mouse and zebra themed quilt with a picture of Minnie and my niece's name.  I think it turned out pretty great.  Someday, I'm going to try the colored pencil technique.  But for now, I'm having fun with this.