Quilts for Babies

My daughter is trying to get me organized. She does it professionally, gets paid for helping people take care of their piles of files, makes them set up webpages, get business cards. She understands the details, helps explain it all to me, the technologically challenged.

So my assignment is to go through all my picture files and start organizing them by subject. Archive for portfolio. Label things better.

This quilt I made for upcoming baby shower. New baby=new quilt! It's a boy! Using up my plaid collection...started that collection with a "Mad About Plaids" class Flying Geese Quilt Guild member Linda M taught years and years ago.

Where do I get my inspiration for quilts/art?

Busy weekend!

Copy cat tendency much? It's a complimenet, right, to see something and repeat it in your own home!

I see things that make me think of other things, ways to apply it, details I would change, what I want to share, what I wish I could take home with me...

Today at my sister's. My favorite art work she had displayed on her mantel:


I love the blue background, the white mats, the idea behind the 5 of her children's hands (Seb starts on the far left, #1...) And the CIRCLE above the photos, the great graphic quality, square, circle, soft hand, hard edges. Nice combination. Sweet without being overly sentimental. Nice way to show your family, through their hands! Must copy this idea soon!


This is Gabe's hand, #2 in birth order...


And Luanna carrying baby Pete (see Grandma Carlson's crocheted blanket?!) with Bob right behind her. Cute couple!


And Pete! He smelled so good. Soft skin. Sweet eyes. A beautiful nephew!


Luanna's bathroom artwork, painted damask on stretched canvas:


Spent Saturday in Hershey, PA for quilt show.

My favorite quilts from the show on Saturday included this by Sieglinde Shoen-Smith:


WHOLE CLOTH QUILT--really. It looks like complicated applique. This is a close up:

Description:

I love the painted colors, bright, wonderful...very inspiring and encouraging. This is a collaboration I would love to do, someone else quilt, and I could paint in the fabrics! From further back:




And the quilt that I wish I had made but encouraged me to think of things I would do differently when I quilt people into quilts next, (another collaboration quilt):

Time Flies Yearbook Play

Leslie Perry, (YW President and friend from Church) yearbooked herself on facebook. I was curious, googled, it, found the website and spent way too much time.

This is better than those old-time Western photos you can get on the boardwalk! Same idea, your face (mostly, face shape changes make a huge difference), props and costumes/hairstyles and the disguise is real.

Which looks the most like me? Like John?

What if I wasn't 1 years old in 1966?


Or already had 5 kids in 1998:


In 1954:


1990? John didn't REALLY look like this when Emma was born!


Or in 1978 when he was a wee lad?


1960 me, when my mom was still in high school...


1950 John, looks eerily like his dad...


If we had met in 1952...



Fantastic! Nice when the website is super user-friendly. Play with the rotations and the sizing and even skin tone to match...

Quilty letters

Finished the giraffe nursery!


From blankets to wall:
Cut out for changing table...

From Pottery Barn kid nursery giraffe collection blanket to pretty grey wall: There is a paint brush in the giraffe's mouth with paint drips so it looks like it just finished painting baby's name.

When they get carpet in and furniture I will go back to take photo with everything in place. Good luck to the new parents-to-be!

Summer almost over

Tomorrow I am finishing up a baby nursery, giraffe themed:
Max is home from tour, concert on his birthday and I made him key lime pies!

Few more chances to go swimming before school starts up again!

HUGE family

I have a big family, I mean, really, really huge. I have cousins I have never met, and 2nd cousins I stay in close contact with, and aunts and uncles spread across the country.


young Grandpa Harold Carlson

While looking at facebook yesterday, found some great, happy photos! Here are two grown-up cousins, Barbara and Karen at Barbara's daughter's wedding reception in CA. I was struck by how much Barbara looks like her dad, who looks like my mom's dad, Harold. Family resemblance very strong.



On Mom's mom side, this wedding photo of her grandparents, Jane Sutherland and Daniel Davidson I had seen before...

...but never this one of Jane Sutherland Davidson (on right) with her sister, Maggy, on the left!

And my favorite that brought tears to my eyes, first time I have ever seen THIS photo, 4 generations with Daniel standing on far left, his son, Roland on his grandfather's lap, and his dad, another William Davidson standing on the right, taken in Scotland, 1909. These are my people, my family. They look familiar, their genes and physical features have trickled down into these aunts and uncles and cousins I can tell you so much more about.

SF, the other one, in CA

(Found this pineapple paper-pieced quilt I made for nephew Simon. Favorite scrap of fabric is a mantra, "I will sleep through the night")



I've been researching public domain pictures, found these gems. After the big earthquake in San Francisco. Sobering stories. Would I know how to manage?




On Tuesday I met a young married mom whose husband is doing his internship at Hopkins. We were making lunch at young women's camp together. We started talking, found out we graduated from the same high school in SLC.



And they lived in SF right after they were married.

San Francisco! What great family stories we have about that town!


I told her about my great grandfather who was a carpenter and buried his tools to keep them safe after the earthquake, the mirror he was paid with for some work at a rich lady's home. My grandparents who were students at Berkeley and their romantic date foiled by a skunk spraying Grandma Lucy when she reached in the garbage bin to pull out some papers for their cozy fire. He was either planning to ask her to marry him that night, or felt so sorry for her that he asked her then anyway?!



When Maxwell was a newborn John was driving all three little kids around in our Trooper listening to the radio, so I could either do homework or take a nap... The station was sponsoring a contest, whoever could arrive with a Tweety Bird pez dispenser, fake vomit, Mr. Bubblebath, and something else I've forgotten, would win 2 free airline tickets to San Francisco! How he knew where to get fake vomit? He won! We found babysitters!

We had a wonderful time (I pumped the whole trip and remembering pouring the milk out a little sadly, but thankful for the away time, first trip alone since our honeymoon--which was a trip 3/4 across the country).

I firmly believe that one of the best thing you can do for your children is be strongly united and in love parents! Dating helps! Taking spontaneous trips together help! Communicating, phone calls, email, reading each other's blogs, night letters, naps, dates--even short ones--make a difference.