Kids Archives - Yearning to Create

Rag Quilt for Kat

My Kat was turning 7 so I made her a blanket for her birthday.
There were three reasons for this:
1) I realized I had never made her a blanket,

2) she was seriously outgrowing her little Disney Princess blanket, and

3) I had all this cute fabric I had found at a garage sale last summer (it was even pre-cut!)

Isn’t it cute? It’s called Free Spirit and cost me $4.

For the backside I simply used fleece – just wanted something soft for her to snuggle up with! The pink came from scraps that my friend Shirley had given me. I was able to cut 24 squares from it. I bought the yellow from Walmart for $12 and . . . love this part – after I had cut out the 72 squares that I needed, I had exactly none left!!! Don’t you just love it when things work out perfectly!

I bought three fat quarters – needed a little more fabric, and raided my stash for a little bit more. So this whole project cost me just over $20 – how awesome is that!!!

Let me mention here that my guy strongly dislikes all this fabric – the colours and the patterns. I’d show him things and gush over how cute it was and he’d just roll his eyes and say things like “Looks like the 60’s”, or “Our house is in earth tones, why are you doing this?” He was a little better once he realized it was for Kat’s room – he thought it was going in the living room!

My squares were 6 1/4 inch and I had 96 of them. 12 rows with 8 in each row.

I arranged them all on the floor to make sure the colours and patterns were evenly spaced apart. This photo was very handy to refer back to once I started sewing – just to make sure I was putting things in the right places.

Let me mention that Kat got very good at averting her eyes whenever she would come into the room and see me working on her quilt. With her being home-schooled, she’s always here, so there was no way I could keep it a secret from her. So while she did see bits and pieces of the production (even picked her Top 10 favourite squares!) she never did see the completed quilt til her birthday.

Before the sewing began though, I had to create my little sewing oasis. I put this desk in the closet in the office. During construction I had a light and outlet installed in this non-closet closet just for this purpose. Now all I need are some shelves on the walls.

It’s sew nice to be able to have a spot where the sewing machine does not have to be put away! (sorry, couldn’t resist the pun!)

That paper and pencil was the little pattern I made of how to space my pink squares evenly throughout the yellow. How would you mix 24 pink among 72 yellow? I’ll show you how I did it in a minute!

This is the easiest quilt ever – which is why I make it!

After cutting out all your fabric, just sew a top piece to a bottom piece by sewing an X through it. If you want it thicker you could put some batting between the layers (like a sandwich). But cut your batting a little smaller than these squares so the edges don’t show in the rag part – unless you want them to!

I just eyeballed my lines, going from one corner to another – and didn’t even need to worry about backstitching.

Do a continuous strip from one square to the next – no stopping or backstitching needed.

Then you’ll get a nice a long strip (thanks for holding it Jen!). I cut these apart and then sewed them again, doing the other side of the X. Then I cut them apart again and now had a nice pile of 8 squares that needed to be sewn into a strip. Be sure to keep them in the right order – I referred to my picture a few times!

I forgot to take pictures of the next part. I sewed my 8 squares together (5/8 seam allowance) into one long piece – with all the raw edges showing on the top side (totally opposite of what you usually do!). Don’t forget to backstitch for this part – you need to secure these seams!

Then sew your strips of 8 to each other (that photo came in really handy here to make sure I wasn’t sewing anything backwards!).

When it’s all sewed together, put on a good movie and start clipping all your edges – be sure not to clip any of your stitching!!! That would be bad.

This kind of quilt is great for novice sewers like me because if your squares don’t line up properly, no one can tell! It only shows on the bottom side, which is fine because – it’s the bottom!

I only had time to wash and dry it once before her birthday – it’ll get shaggier with more washing. I just used my own washer – it didn’t make too much of a mess because the fleece doesn’t really fray. I shook it outside though until my arms were going to fall off to shake off excess threads.

The outside edge is simply stitched around (5/8) and then clipped as well.

Okay – I think it’s totally adorable!!! Love all the colours.

Can you see my pattern with the pink/yellow fleece?

Here’s the back view.

I did three yellow between each pink, with staggered starts. It looks like my corners matched up pretty well for the most part – phew!!!

And what did the birthday girl think of her new quilt . . .

. . . well, she was hugging it before she even opened it up to see how it looked. She was actually very excited about it – which was nice for me because, face it, a blanket isn’t the most exciting thing for a seven year old to get on their birthday!

And as for my guy . . .

. . . he tolerated the colours and patterns to have a snuggle with Kat for a birthday picture.

There she is in bed – g’night Kat!

Isn’t it fun to make things for your family? Although, my oldest daughter will soon be Maid of Honour for one of her friends and needs to sew a dress – eek!!! That’s a little out of my league! Hope she does a good job! She’ll be calling gramma for advice.

Back to the rag quilt, the size I made fits the top of a twin size mattress – doesn’t hang much over the edges. She’s on a top bunk so we didn’t need edge hanging, but if you’re copying my sizes, you might need to add some extra rows.

Birthday Cake Traditions

I have four daughters with birthdays in March – that’s our version of “March Madness”! And to make it worse, they’re on the 6th and 7th and the 22nd and 23rd!!!

So, just to make life a little easier, and because it’s a birthday tradition, they decorate their own cakes! Well first of all, they get to chose their own dessert – might not even be a cake (because honestly, can’t you think of lots of desserts that taste better than cake?).

Jo here chose Rice Krispie squares with caramel icing (she needs gluten free foods).

Her “cake” was too gooey to get much decorating, and too hard to stick candles in. So they’re just sticking to the caramel and were flopping over. Blow quickly Jo!

Jen planned hers all out carefully and worked with much care to get her cake perfect. She chose a marble cake.

Perfect! I like how she used candle holders as flower clusters rather than as candle holders! Love the pink and yellow colour scheme!

Okay, I did this one . . .

. . . it says Happy Birthday and has two candles – one for each decade!!! (Do you think it’s too much?) She was too busy finishing up college and starting a new job to decorate her own cake. She chose the delicious Tres Leche Cake (always love making that cake – gives me a reason to open a can of Eagle Brand and lick out the can!)

Note: I can’t believe I have a 20 year old daughter. It’s really hard to fathom since I’m only 25 myself!

And finally . . .

. . . Kat requested a rainbow chip cake with purple icing. Here she is with her finished cake and toothless 7 year old grin.

Then a few hours later, she decided she needed to add a little more . . .

. . . and now we have a finished cake!!! Wow! It took more than a few minutes to pull all that out of the cake before we could eat it. All those animals and ballerinas came from my childhood. Mom used them to decorate our cakes. The tradition continues!!!

So . . . it works for everyone – they have fun decorating and I have time for other birthday preparations. And then we put the cake stuff away until the other three birthdays in the fall. My guy and I usually chose undecoratable desserts for our birthdays – like coconut cream pie or black forest in a bowl!

Bedroom Caddies – A Recycle Project

I love making something cute and useful from garbage!!! I got these from the Primary cupboard at church. I had to empty out the cupboard a little to make some more space and so I lugged these to the garbage can that I had just watched the Young Men empty a few hours before. So rather than fill up the garbage can, I decided to carry them home and put them with my recycling.

So on my trek all the way across the parking lot to my house, I realized that they were pretty sturdy little boxes that could be turned into something very useful for some of my girlies.

The first and only task for my girls was to choose the paper they liked best – this was probably the most time consuming part of the whole process!!!

Eventually they chose these – two for each. And they also chose what pieces they wanted on the front and edges – again, very time consuming!!!

Then it was my turn to get to work – me and the mod podge. Have I mentioned before how much I love mod podge?

Anyway, I had no real plan, I just started. It seemed like the sensible thing to start with the edges, and it was.

I just applied the mod podge with a small foam brush and put the paper on, smoothing it down and around the edges.

I didn’t bother to cover the back any more than this.

After I had all the paper in place, I let it dry overnight and mod podged over the whole thing the next day. I didn’t need to wait overnight, but I had to clear off the table and get supper ready (can’t wait for a craft room in my new house!!!)

How cute is that? My practice one is covered, so I tackled the other two together.

I just laid the box on my paper to figure out the approximate size of the angled pieces, then trimmed to fit.

Cute paper eh? I’m really loving shades of teal these days.

This project used exactly two 12 x 12 pieces of paper. I used contrasting papers, but you don’t need to.

Love lime too!

Boxes are all covered – time to get on with other things and let everything dry.

The next day I attached some names and mod podged over everything.

Now for the decorating . . .

Lee’s name was attached with pop dots to make it, well, pop!

Jen’s was antiqued with ribbon and flowers added.

And Kat’s is more cutesy – she was thrilled with the bow and flowers!

Aren’t they adorable???

The light through the blinds makes them look wrinkly, but I promise you they dried beautiful and smooth!

Still can’t decide which one I like best.

Lee loves hers and . . .

Jen loves hers and . . .

Kat loves hers!!!

Want to see what they’ve done with them?

Lee filled hers with this sort of girly stuff.

For now Jen has animals living in her caddy.

And Kat’s holds her library books!

My Jo wistfully said to me “Mom, you know there’s another one of those in the Primary cupboard and you could make me one.” I replied, “I know, but it’s holding Primary things.” What she doesn’t know is that I’ve been thinking that I could easily find another container for the Primary things, and use it to make one for ME!!!

Easiest Quiet Book – Ever!!!

Made this quiet book for Kat when she was almost two, and now it’s being enjoyed by another child. We personalized it for Kat, but Mac doesn’t seem to mind that at all – she just enjoys looking at sisters book.

It’s the easiest thing ever and you can get your other kids involved in helping too.

First you have to buy an album – dollar stores are great for this!

This album is the size that fits one standard size photograph per page. My album is pretty thick (80 pages) because I wanted lots of original pages for her to look at. Hopefully we’d be half-way through church before she was finished it!

And now for the fun part – get creative and make pages! Dig out photographs, chop up old books, magazines, calendars, use the computer to prints pictures, phrases or quotes. Add coloured papers, stickers, stamps, die cuts. Tons of fun!!! I’ll share some of our pages to get your creative juices flowing . . .

You can see that she decided some artwork was needed inside the covers!A page autographed by Daddy!

I love the four cousins a few months apart!!!

Warning: Animal pages can be noisy if your child starts barking in the middle of church!!!

Or meowing!!!

Sisters in the various seasons.

Pages for all the colours. I chopped up a kids sticker book after they had finished it – had great clear, coloured pictures.

A page for each letter of Kat’s name.

I hope that gives you some ideas. We made this book and gave it to Kat for Christmas.

And if you want the truth, this Quiet Book keeps more than just the baby occupied in church!!!

Gangsters and Win-A-Lot Game

Craziest sight ever!!! I walked out of my office to find these characters had taken up residence in the family room!

For some reason, some of my girls decided to dress up rather like gangsters from the 20’s, complete with fat bellies and moustaches.

(Hope you put all dad’s clothes back girls!)

One of our gangsters looks rather like a hippie!

The reason for all this? My eighth grader was learning about the Stock Market and wasn’t quite getting how it worked. So my older girls decided to help her out by playing a Stock Market game called “Win-A-Lot”. It’s similar to “Stock Ticker” but I like it better.

My mom had her old NZ edition of this game which was very ancient. I don’t even know if this game even exists anymore, but one Christmas my talented sister made us our very own version.

The game is pretty simple. There are four commodities – Silver, Cotton, Pearls and Zinc – which you buy and sell each round, hopefully at a profit!

At the start of each round, you are each dealt one of these cards:

So the card you are dealt will determine your actions, and by watching what others players do, you can follow their leads too. Obviously if I have a Zinc Up 4 card, I’m going to buy Zinc now and sell it later (and hope someone else doesn’t have the Zinc Down 4 card).

Notice in the top left corner there is a Bear card and a Bull card, which either make everything go up or down.

After everyone has done their transactions each turn, the cards are turned over and the little tokens on the board are moved up and down. Then on to the next round.

The homemade money.

Here are the rules:

So at the end of the game, our gangsters have dressed down a little!

They’re holding up their fingers indicating which place they finished in.

So the eighth grader finished last, but at least she understands a little better how the stock market works!!! Oh, and this is a good math game too – lots of buying and selling at different prices!

Now I feel like playing! Any one up for a game?