Sewing with my granddaughters

Aislyn and Alyse wanted to learn how to sew on the sewing machine. They are 9 and 10 years old so it seems the perfect time.  One evening during a sleep over, they sewed sleeping bags and matching pillows for their American Girl dolls.  (Of course the dolls had come along for the sleep over.)  I forgot to take pictures, darn it, but the girls sewed beautifully!  They learned straight seams, clipping corners, turning, stuffing, and hand sewing the pillow opening shut.  They also learned to sew buttons on the corners of their pillows. Quite a bit for their first lesson!

The second sewing lesson came during another sleep over.  This time they wanted to sew clothes for their American Girl dolls.  We started with a trip to the fabric store to pick out fabric for a simple gathered skirt and matching headband.  They learned how to do narrow hems and casings, how to insert elastic, and how to turn a tube inside out.

My new sewing machine helped them this time since it's so much easier to control the speed.  Here Alyse concentrates on the seam for her headband.

Aislyn working at the ironing board pressing the seams.

And ta-da!  The finished skirts and headbands.

But why are there 3 dolls, you may ask?  Aislyn's doll is on the right, Alyse's on the left, and mine is in the middle.  YES!  I have an American Girl doll!  I figured I needed a model for sewing doll clothes, so I found this one on ebay for a great price.  She was a bit dirty and her hair was pretty tangled, but she cleaned up just fine.

Does a girl ever get too old to play with dolls?

Happy stitching!

4 Generations of Grandmothers

Several years ago, I took a class at a TNNA market on making a multi-media memory book.  The class was by The Thread Gatherer and they gave us the most beautiful packets of cardstock, fabric, hand-dyed ribbons, overdyed floss, etc. and chart packs on how to make fabric books and memory books.  Now, I'm not a big scrapbooker, but I like to learn scrapping techniques; so since I had all these wonderful supplies, I decided to make a memory book.  Here's the cover:

 

I used one of my favorite old photos as the inspiration.  Here I am as a baby being held by my great-grandmother with my mother and grandmother looking on.  We always called it the "4 generations" picture. Now that I have grandchildren, I decided to use being a Grandmother as a theme.

I made a page for each person in the photo, gave each page a quote about Grandmothers, and tied them together by using a matching button on each page.

The first page highlights my great-grandmother "Grandma Daisy".  I am fortunate to have memories of her.  She died when I was small, but I can remember visiting her at her big house in the country.  She did a lot of redwork, so I added a small redwork butterfly salvaged from a pillowcase she made.  Here the button is the center of a flower I embellishe with silk ribbon.

Page 2 is for my Grandmother Richardson.  She was a school teacher and liked to read to us.  I love this picture of her reading to me when I was little.  I added a photo of her when she was young and used the button to hold the tag with the quote.  The little doily is one she crocheted as a Christmas ornament.

My mother's page is a little different.  She was never into needlework but appliques these amazing flags, paints birdhouses, and grows flowers.  She takes pride in her restored 19th century house and makes it a welcoming and comfortable home for her grandchildren (and children) to visit.  Her page has a bird house that uses the button as the hole.  I had some bird and cat buttons tucked away just waiting for the right project.  This was it!

And of course, the last page is for me.  I have pictures of me with my granddaughters.  In one of them, Aislyn looks on while I show off the Lizzie Kate stocking I made for her.  I added a little cross stitch piece I did years ago and put the button in a row with other buttons for embellishment.

I really enjoyed sewing, stitching, glueing, and planning my book.  I'm not sure if I'll do another one, but I'm glad to have this one completed  Started in 2009 and finished in 2012!

Happy New Year to all my readers!
Sherri

P.S.  Since I started this book we have a third grandchild and my brother and sister are both grandparents now!

New Grandson and Another Finish

We had a new grandson while I was taking my break from the computer. I just realized I haven't posted any pictures of him yet. He was born in May.  TaDa . . . Leo

 

Note that in the 2nd picture he's wearing some of the baby legwarmers I knitted. His Mom made a special request for leg warmers and once I got started, I didn't want to stop. I took a sock class to learn knitting in the round and discovered that leg warmers are like socks with no feet!

Here are some of the most recent pictures we have:

You can't really tell, but he's wearing some of my leg warmers in these pictures, too.  Leo lives in Michigan so we've only seen him twice.  He'll be coming to visit for Christmas - I can't wait!

For my stitching friends, here is a recent finish.  It's a "Secret Needle Night" piece from The Silver Needle and Magic by Mona put together a finishing kit.  The finishing kit was fabulous which was good since I've never done a wedge before.

Happy stitching everyone!
Sherri

Learning to Stitch!

My granddaughters were wanting to learn to cross stitch, so one day I gathered up some scraps of needlepoint canvas, perle cottons, big needles, threaders and blunt scissors.  (They are 6 and 7.)  We made some personalized scissors fobs with alphabet beads, which they loved.  My daughter in law stitches, so between the two of us, we showed them how to thread the needle, gave them a few tips and set them loose to play!

They both had a great time and pretty soon were using nice little straight stitches to stitch hearts, flowers, grass, and even their names!  They would want to get out their stitching whenever I came to visit.  One day I got an email from my son saying they asked to get out their stitching on their own one Saturday morning.  He sent this picture.

Aislyn and Alyse stitching. 

Aislyn, who will be 8 in October, started learning to make x's so we moved her up a step using a small pattern I used to use for kids in the shop.  Her Mom marked the pattern on 6 ct AIDA and yesterday, I got her started cross stitching for real!

Such concentration!

She's very proud of her progress, as she should be.  And notice how she learned to park her needle on the magnet?  Maybe she'll be ready for counting soon!

Aislyn's first real cross stitch.

When she finishes the piece, we're going to make it into a book mark.  Both girls love to read so I guess I'll always be able to spoil them with stitching projects and new books!

A Halloween Birthday Party

My DIL Jamie loves Halloween and loves throwing parties for Aislyn and Alyse.  What a great idea to have a costume party for their combined birthday party.  I think all kids like to have excuses to wear their costumes more than once.

I'm sure there were some great pictures taken that day (not necessarily by me) but I got a few decent ones to share.  What self-respecting grandma attends a birthday party without a camera?  And this party was special in that it's the first of their parties that I was actually able to attend!

The festivities started with ghost cookies, jack-o-lantern rice krispy treats, and other assorted goodies.

 Jamie had to miss the part of the party where the Mom's visited around the table.  But they seemed to have a nice time.

The birthday girls (aka Bat Girl and Spider Girl) got to open lots of presents.

Mom and Dad finally had to cut open the pinata!

My costume for the day was a Biker Babe.  I even got an airbrushed tattoo for the occasion.

And a good time was had by all . . .

Looks like Bella was more pooped than anybody else!

I'm finally back on line!

I decided to treat myself to a "computer free" holiday so I could concentrate on enjoying family. We had Christmas at our house since we're the ones with the new house this time. I so love having a bigger house now and this kitchen has 2 ovens which was great for cooking the big turkey and ham dinner. A good time was had by all and do I have pictures? Of course not! This fact seems even more ridiculous when I tell you that I got a new camera for Christmas! What kind of idiot gets a new camera for Christmas and has absolutely no pictures of the family, the decorations, the meal, the present opening or anything. Aaaaargh.

But I did manage to get a couple of picture of the snow. We actually had a white Christmas here, much to the chagrin of our company from Michigan. I took these pictures early in the day on Christmas Eve but the snow kept falling and Christmas day was absolutely beautiful!




One fun thing about company - - - seems like we all either showed up sick or left sick! I was completely wiped out with some wonky cold/flue thing for an entire week. Bob missed the first go round but ended up with a head cold that I have now, too.

So this week I've been playing catch up. All the laundry is done, clean sheets and towels put away and guest beds remade. The Christmas decorations are put away and the house is somewhat clean. Then I decided to completely wipe out my computer and start over with a fresh install of Windows. Now I'm baaaaaack!

I had a surprise package in the mail from Lisa, a dear stitching friend in Hartsville. She sent this cute plaque which was immediately given a prominent resting place in my stitching studio. The orange roll thingy opens up to reveal a grocery bag style tote. I love the colors and it will tuck nicely into my glove box so I'll never be caught without my own bag again.

It's beautiful when it's opened up with stuff in it.

I participated in the stash exchange on the Legacy Embroiderer's Guild. I forgot to take a picture of the stuff I sent to my secret sister but I did remember to snap some shots of what I received from Valerie.

Of course, I have finished all the chocolate already! The cute "wishes" bag had 3 nicely wrapped presents in it.

What great gifts! A new paid of embroidery scissors (great excuse to stitch a new fob!) a fat quarter of cream Belfast linen (I can use that for sure!) and red, green, and white metalic threads (now I'm motivated to start next year's Christmas ornaments!). Thanks so much, Valerie!

I've been enjoying catching up with my blogging friends and seeing all your wonderful posts. May 2010 bring us all many happy stitches!

Pictures from my phone!

Wow, I finally figured out how to upload pictures from the camera in my cellphone. It took buying a USB cord and downloading some software, but now I'm all set. Of course, the pictures are not as good as from my digital camera, but when I don't have the camera with me, I can get by!

Last friday Bob and I were on our way to dinner at Colter's BBQ when I noticed all these birds lined up along the roof at this strip center. I thought it was so cool!

Just when I snapped the picture, they all flew off directly over my head and landed on the utility lines. Good thing I haven't watched Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds" lately, or I might have fainted dead on the spot!
Last month we rode with the Longhorn Harley Owner's Group to the Texas Hill Country. It was an amazing ride! I only thought I had been to the hill country before. Of course, I forgot my camera and didn't remember until the last day that I could take pictures with my cell phone. Here is our Road King parked in front of the cute little cottage we stayed in.


Notice the big bush next to the cottage with the red berries? I'm not sure what it is, but I thought the berries were so beautiful I had to have a close up.

Next to the berry bush was an interesting "ferris wheel" made from a bicycle wheel and some plastic electrical outlet boxes. For those of you who don't know about my father "The Bike Man", suffice it to say that anything made with bicycle parts attracts me right away.

The center of the ferris wheel is decorated with a cut out wooden flower. If we had one of these in our yard when I was a little girl, I would have played amusement park with my troll dolls and given them a ride!

This is a chicken pin cushion that sits on the table in Sandy's X-Stitch To Go shop in Hendersonville, NC. If any of my readers know where I can get the pattern to make one of my own, please let me know. I love how the wings are scissors holders.

This is the very first picture I took with my camera. Mike and Sam playing Corn Hole on Memorial Day in Ravenswood. I attempted to send it to Facebook, but I didn't know what I was doing. It's probably still floating around in cyberland somewhere. BTW, I learned how to play, but I'm not very good!

Play-Doh

One of my favorite things to do when visiting Aislyn and Alyse is to make things with Play-Doh. They are so creative. We got started one day making birds with nests and eggs, then after they saw my zebra finches, they started making play-doh zebra finches. Now Daddy sends me pictures of things they make.

Alyse has graduated from zebra finches to ducks!

October is the perfect month for pumpkins so Aislyn is showing off her jack-o-lanterns.

Wedding Photos

Elizabeth has posted some fabulous wedding photos and I just couldn't resist sharing a few of my favorites here. This first picture is here so you can see the straight hairdo that started all the hulla-ba-loo, but I also think it's a good picture of the three of us.


I wouldn't be a good Grandma if I didn't share this picture of Alyse and Aislyn. They were such beautiful flower girls and, as you can see, were taking their job very seriously.


I left my camera at the table during the tree planting, so I'm glad I can finally share this part with you. Since Liz and Jeff were married on the property they plan to live on, they planted this willow tree as part of the celebration.


This next one has to be my very favorite. As soon as I saw it the theme song from "Green Acres" started running through my head!

Liz, I hope you're not bothered by the Green Acres reference. This is such a beautiful photo and so symbolic of the start of your lives together. Just the two of you standing where someday a home and family will be living and growing together. And that's what this day was all about!

The Wedding!

Elizabeth and Jeff had a vision. To be married on the property where they will build a home. This was no small task, but with the help of family and many friends, the event came together beautifully. Unfortunately the weather wasn't what they had hoped for. It was unseasonably cold (even for Grand Rapids) and rained a lot of the time. A good attitude and sense of humor made all the difference. The wedding was fabulous and couldn't have been any better if the sun was shining!

Jeff even agreed to continue with his fireworks show. Due to the rain, a good portion of it didn't fire, but it was impressive all the same. Quote from Woody "now all the married men here are feeling pretty bad that they didn't do fireworks for their bride!"

I received such grief from my friends about not taking pictures when Katie was married last year! So, here you go. Obviously I couldn't take pictures during the ceremony and I left the posed shots to the professional. I put my "behind the scenes" photos in a video with music that you can see below, or you can simply view the photos with captions here.

Needlepoint start and wedding trip

I know I keep posting about the cross stitch projects I'm going to start, but I just couldn't resist getting out this Laura J. Perrin design. It has been speaking to me ever since I picked up the fibers. Mainly because her designs are so much fun and I love the colors in this one. It's called "Desert Rose" and is a freebie designed for Rainbow Gallery. Maybe I also like it because I collect desert rose china which has the same colors. Probably not a coincidence :)

This will be my traveling project. I leave for Grand Rapids tomorrow to help Elizabeth with the final countdown to the wedding on Saturday. I'm sure it's going to be beautiful and we're looking forward to having a great time celebrating the start of their life together. Vows, dinner, dancing and Jeff's fireworks display will make for a wonderful day. BTW, here is one of their engagement pictures taken at their river property which is where the wedding will be held. Liz and Jeff will eventually build a home on the property. Won't it be nice for them to sit on the back porch and look down towards the river to see the spot where they tied the knot?

I probably won't be blogging next week. See you all after the wedding!

Future Flower Girls

Another wedding is coming up in the family in August. Aislyn and Alyse will be flower girls for their Aunt Liz in Grand Rapids. Here they are trying on their dresses. They are so beautiful I couldn't resist being a shameless grandma and bragging.

We are so looking forward to living in Texas again so we can watch these girls grow up!