The Kids Make Dinner

They found the recipe.

They shopped for the ingredients.  And they prepared the dish all by themselves.  I so proud.

The kids continue on their cooking way.  Here's two more examples of their handiwork:

 BLT in a bowl.

 More fruit salad.

 Fried rice.

 Even dinosaurs love fruit salad.

Today we met up with my sister and went for a little hike with the dogs.  It was hot, humid, and swarming with those damn yellow flies that bite, but it was good exercise.  Molly pulled so hard on her leash she made goose honking noises.  She had a burning desire to be first.  After about 30 minutes she quit pulling quite so hard.  She needs a little more leash work than she gets.

Labels and Borders

Big History Top Pieced

I'm still working on some of the embroidery in the blocks, but the top is sewn together.

The Need to Finish Pile

Our Halloween Quilt.  We embroidered the pictures we drew and then put them into blocks.  It needs to be machine quilted and then the binding folded over and stitched.  I'm just working out how to do machine quilting so we'll see how it goes.  I started trying to handquilt it but since I didn't know how to handquilt either, that wasn't too successful.

One of the ghosts from the Halloween quilt.

Mami Wata, African Mermaid.  This is small, like 9 x 11.  It's mostly finished.

 Pieced from scraps of clothes--an old shirt of Yifan's, a housecoat, and other bits--and solar prints I made and printed onto muslin. 

 Close up of solar print:  the Buddha, my father as a little boy and chrysanthemums, on top of a night sky.

  Cactus garden.Eight blocks, appliqued and embroidered.  No idea how I'm going to arrange them or put it together yet.

 I made these blocks of Australian animals, but somehow I got an ostrich in there.  What was I thinking?  I meant to do an emu.  I must have been drinking.  It all started with the koala wine label.  Then the kangaroo wine label and before I knew it, I was sucked into making Australian animals.   I guess that's a feral ostrich that escaped from a farmer. (I had to research that bit.)

 Close up of one of the blocks.  I did reverse applique, I think it is called.  I pieced a section of  random fabrics, cut the animals shape out of the orange fabric and but the pieced section underneath.  I folded under the edges of the orange fabric after clipping it to make it easier, then sewed around the edge of the orange fabric, very close to the edge.

  This is a scrap quilt piece made from pieces left over from Sam's bed quilt.  I haven't decided what to do with it yet.  Maybe it will be the center of something.

My goal is to finish these up before I move on to something else.  We'll see.  I might be too distracted by something new to follow through on that goal.

Border Patrol

So every block has some sort of border.  I'll adjust the width as I figure out how to fit them together. Threshold 1--Big Bang

 Threshold 2--Star formation

Threshold 3--Chemical elements

 Threshold 4--The Earth and the Solar System

 Threshold 5--Life

 Threshold 6--How Humans are different

 Threshold 7--Agriculture/Agrarian

 Threshold 8--Modern Era

I want to keep them in order, but they are all so different in size it will be a challenge.

 I finally finished the last block.  It is the tattoo from the left shoulder of the Siberian Ice Princess--a fanciful deer with flowers blooming from the end of it's antlers and its hips twisted and contorted. 

Big History Quilt--Threshold 8: The Modern Revolution

These are the fabrics I'm thinking of using for the Modern Threshold block and making an urban landscape.  Still undecided though.  This is roughly the idea for the pattern for the block.

 I tried out different colors.  I kind of liked this one but I thought the background might not work in thin strips.

 Smoggy city look.

 I liked the background, but the pattern of stars would be lost when I cut it and resewed it.

 I finally settled on this one because it reminded me of rain.

I'm debating windows on the buildings.  Should I or shouldn't I?  I also have to embroider some antennas on tops of buildings.

These are the other blocks in roughly the position they will be in.  I have to figure out borders and fill blocks.  I like that part, the problem solving piece.  I also have to finish the solor system block with embroidery. Hopefully, I'll be finished by the end of the month with piecing the top.