Kindergarten Quilt

My sons kindergarten class helped make a quilt for their annual gala. They have a silent auction to help raise funds for their Educational Assistants for the following year.

While discussing odds and ends with his teacher one day she mentioned making this quilt and seemed rather bogged down by it. I told her if she needed any help with it to let me know, because sewing is kind of my thing. 😉 Her face lit up and asked if I could quilt. Heck yes!

A week later she gave me what she had done so far. She did an amazing job! All the kiddos put together the little critters. Cut, placed and ironed them. She sewed them together and pinned them in place, and sewed some of the appliqué background down. 

From here I took over. I sewed on the little critters first, and then purchased some fabric for the backing. She had used an old sheet but while sewing, some of it was bunched together and had become crooked.

 New backing was easier than seam ripping and re sewing what she had already done. 

I just loved this fabric. 

After basting it down I began to quilt the ground and tree, then the leaves, and then the clouds. I used a pebble pattern for the ground, and jagged lines for the tree to look like bark. 

I did non touching swirls for the tree leaves, and added white clouds in the sky. 

It seems Soooo easy typing it out, but man has it been awhile since I quilted. I totally forgot how much thread you go through. Myself and the hubby made several trips to Joanns for thread. And I ended up buying all of the brown 8190 and having to go to the other Joanns across town to get more. 

And the shoulder work! Whew! Felt like I was wrestling bears.

Here in this picture, I ran out of green three with just that much left to quilt. 😖 One of this heartbreaking moments of regret. Ha ha 

Turns out I needed another spool anyway. After I was done quilting I decided to add an appliqué stitch around the tree edges. So. much. Thread! 

I really fell in love with this quilt as a worked on it. I dreamt of auctioning on it and then making some kind of copy for all the kids who helped make it. Then reality hit and I realized that would cost hundreds of dollars and so much more time. But I will bid on it at the auction. 😉

The final quilt. 

I was super happy with it. I heard lots of parents were pleased with it and wanted to bid on it. Hopefully it brings in some money for their auction. I had lots of fun helping with it, and am so glad to be done with it and on to me projects! 

Seedlings 2016!

 January! Is that time of year again to start the seedlings! I'm going to rock this garden this year. Last year was miserable because I was miserably pregnant. I burned and froze my seeds. :( Ah well. Always a new year. :)

The weather was warm enough that we were able to get out and prep the garden beds. We had one in particular that needed some attention. My dumb cat decided in its non use, she would use a vacant garden bed as her litter box. 😡

At the end of the season last year I scraped off the top two inches of dirt and all the poop and flooded the bed. Then I put bird netting over it and left it. This week we scraped another inch off the dirt and flooded it again, then layered our chicken coop waste, compost, and left over potting soil from our indoor garden on top. We then flooded it again. Hopefully that will take care of it. I intend on growing pumpkins in the bed this year that we will no be eating. Then we'll add more compost at the end of the season again. 

Stupid cat. 

The tomato and melon seeds popped up amazingly fast! And, as usual, I planted waaaayyyyy too many tomatoes. This picture above was after only 3 days. I think almost all the seeds I planted sprouted, so I had to thin and replant more than a dozen tomato seedlings!   

 Here they are! Very little from the rest of the seedlings. I think I'll be heading to the store to purchase some new seeds. :/ but so far, we are off to a great start! Yay gardening season! 😘