Toddlerless Tuesday #5! Tuesday's Treasures, Too!

Hi, all!

Well, I was toddler-less - and yet focused on toddlers anyway today!  I got a commission to make two reversible dresses and a t-shirt for a two-year old for the holidays - so I worked to see how much I could knock out on those today.

These little dresses are fairly simple to make, but so useful - if one side gets dirty you just flip it over! 

So I did manage to get one dress done except for a little hand-embroidery and the buttonholes and buttons, and the other dress's applique is fused on, ready for the satin stitch!  A good start....

I also did a test block for an upcoming quilting bee.  Our church is building a house for a family whose house was essentially destroyed in the May flood here in Nashville, and we want to make a quilt for them.  But finding a good pattern that a group of women, all at different skill levels in sewing, can make look good can sometimes be challenging!  When I saw Vickie Eapen's Flight of Geese quilt in the Fall issue of Quilts and More, I thought it might be a good candidate.  Today I did a test block, and I cannot praise this pattern enough!

The flying geese blocks are super simple - you don't even have to have a 1/4 inch foot to make them!  (Of course, it would be handy for putting the rest of the quilt together!)  If you can sew straight down a drawn line, you can make these flying geese!  So thanks, Vickie, I love this pattern and can't wait to see how it turns out!!  Be sure to check out her blog, Spun Sugar Quilts. She's always got something interesting going on and is a great teacher - check out her tutorials!


and now for Tuesday's Treasures.......

Lilli wanted to participate today, so she gave me Forsie to put in the picture!  My sister found this wonderful stuffed animal in an antique store in Birmingham.  He used to have a cute felt bridle and reins but Lilli carried him around by the reins one day and they went bye-bye!  So I have some red grosgrain ribbon to replace them with; just haven't gotten around to it yet!  Besides, I think Forsie likes to run free....   Lilli asked if she could take him to Target the other day; I said he could go in the car, but couldn't go inside the store.  She looked at me and said, "It's OK, Nana, I'll make sure he doesn't bite anyone!"  So of course, Forsie got to go in - - - how can you refuse that logic?  And I must say, he didn't bite anyone!

And underneath Forsie, you can see the wedding ring quilt that my great-grandmother made for me when I was born.  This has been a well-loved quilt, and it shows - some of the patches are very thin - so I'm really careful with it now.  Somewhere, I have a patch for the back that my great-grandmother typed on fabric that tells all of the great-aunts and other relatives that helped piece and quilt it, too!  I never met this great-grandmother, even though she was alive until I was about seven - she lived in Kansas, which always seemed like a very exotic place to me (probably because of the Wizard of Oz!)  But she wrote really good letters and between those and the quilt, I felt like I knew her.

So all in all, I think it's been a good, productive Toddlerless Tuesday!  What did you do today?

Later!

Sarah