a t shirt quilt for Brendan, or how to spend almost the entire night sewing to meet a self-imposed deadline

My brother recently moved out of my parents' house and I wanted to do something to help spruce up his new apartment, and of course, being a quilter, the first idea that came to mind was to make him a quilt. But, with all the baby quilts I'm making over the next couple of months, I didn't think a larger quilt would be possible for a while and I wanted to make something soon. Then I had the brilliant idea of making him a t shirt quilt. Normally I would do anything to avoid making a t shirt quilt because I think they're ugly and I don't like working with knits, but my brother is a hoarder and could stand to part with some shirts, specifically the ones he's been saving (and wearing!) since, oh, elementary school. So I figured this would be a way to help him clean out his closet and provide him with a little apartment warming gift, both figuratively and literally. He gave me a giant stack of shirts a few weeks ago and they sat in a pile while I finished up some other projects at the sewing machine. His birthday was last weekend so I thought it would be nice to finish it up in time to give to him then. It was Saturday, the night before his birthday, and I don't know what got into me but I decided to I was going to have the quilt done on time! I had about fifteen hours to complete it, and that was if I stayed up all night which, for my own health and sanity, I knew I should not do. So at about 6:00 pm I took the boys outside to play in the backyard and I brought my cutting mat, ruler, and rotary cutter out onto the patio table. I cut into the shirts outside for about an hour and then took a break to bring the boys in so they could eat a quick dinner, take a bath, and get to bed. They were asleep by 8:30 so I continued cutting and worked on the layout on the dining room floor as I cut.

Once I was done cutting I started piecing the quilt top, joining sections together until I only had a few places that had partial seams. I was psyched to be able to finish it up, and after it was done I trimmed a twin size fleece blanket to the right size and sandwiched the two pieces right sides together, but Finn woke up so I decided to call it a night, hoping I would have enough time to finish before church in the morning. It was 3:00 am at this point so I really couldn't stay up much longer anyway! Like I said earlier, I really don't know what go into me. It's over a week later and I think I'm still paying for that late night! Anyway, I went to bed and prayed the boys didn't wake up too early. I slept like a rock! I don't think it was until around 8:00 that we all woke up, and back to the sewing machine I went. I stitched along the edges, leaving an opening for turning (so it's not a true quilt as there is no batting or binding), and then I stitched along the edge of the quilt to finish it, closing the opening as well. I didn't even trim the loose threads! I just stuffed it into a gift bag, got us all dressed, and handed the boys granola bars as I hurried them into the car so we wouldn't be late for church. We made it there with ten minutes to spare!

After church we headed to my brother's apartment where we all had lunch together, and Ezra gave him the quilt. His words were, "This looks even better than I thought it would!" Ha! I'll take it :) I think it took me about eight hours in total. I always try to keep track of the time it takes me to make things but with all the interruptions (child care, bathroom breaks, chocolate chip cookie breaks, etc.) I tend to forget to do it. Making this blanket in such a short span of time cut down on that so it was pretty easy to keep track! Now hopefully I won't have to make another t shirt quilt in my life, but if I do I know it won't take me too long ;)

If anyone is interested in making a t shirt quilt with a layout like this, you simply cut everything to be divisible by any one dimension (the sides of my "blocks" are all divisible by four - 4x4, 4x8, 4x16, 8x8, 8x12, etc.) and then fit all the pieces together like a puzzle. I like to save some t shirt scraps in case I need to fill in any gaps in the quilt top. I used a few sleeve pieces and some blank areas to fill this one out.

Ezra turns 2! | a school bus birthday party

I've been putting off writing about Ezra's second birthday party because I was overwhelmed by the amount of pictures that Matt took, but I finally sorted through them and chose some of my favorites to share here. We held Ezra's party on a Thursday morning because of some weekend scheduling issues that couldn't be resolved, but it ended up working out quite well. The party was school bus-themed because Ezra loves watching the neighborhood children getting picked up in the morning right outside our house every day. After Matt's return home from work, I think it's his favorite part of the day.

Matt started snapping before I had everything completely set up, and once the toddler party guests arrived my carefully staged dining room was quickly dismantled (as it should be at a party!) so there aren't any pictures of the full set up. The paper products are all from Target (plates found in the dollar section and the rest are Mara Mi), and I borrowed the yellow striped tablecloths from my mother-in-law.

They're hard to see, but I made little flags for the cupcakes out of white and yellow ticking. A matching garland hung from the two shelves in the dining room.

I replaced everything that's usually on them with a few things that coordinated with the party theme - yellow tulips in a mint julep cup, an embroidery hoop displaying a square of school bus fabric (Kokka Beep Beep, in case anyone is wondering), a wind up school bus toy, a framed illustration of a bus, the silver E from Ezra's room (it made an appearance last year, too), a wooden school bus I found on Etsy, and a candle. Yeah, the candle didn't have much to do with anything, but I needed something to fill the space. Of course pom poms were involved (will I ever stop making them?).

We served banana bread, pumpkin cupcakes with cream cheese frosting, cinnamon rolls, and mini bananas.

Drinks were kept simple - just water and apple cider.

I found these cute school bus wrappers for Hershey's chocolates, so of course I printed out a few sheets and Ezra and I spent an afternoon cutting and sticking them on. (Of course I was in charge of cutting so don't anyone get worried. Ezra was in charge of the glue dots.)

Lucky for us, my dad works part time for a bus company so he was able to drive a school bus over to the party and take us for a ride! I was beyond ecstatic when his request was approved because I thought it would be the perfect party activity and I knew Ezra would be excited to ride with his Grandpa.

We rode over to a playground near our house and let the kids burn off some energy for a while. 

Obviously it's very difficult to take a picture of twenty toddlers and preschoolers with their moms.

After about twenty minutes we all piled back on the bus and headed back home for birthday cupcakes!

Ezra had been waiting for this moment since he woke up. He had been practicing blowing out the candles since his friend Amelia's party. You know, just blowing on anything or nothing after half singing "happy happy!"

I think Ezra ate the frosting off of three cupcakes and left the rest. He basically ate cupcakes for breakfast, lunch, snack, dinner, and dessert that day. What can I say? A boy doesn't turn two every day.

A week before Ezra's party I decided to make a child-size photo booth prop. We didn't do a fancy backdrop, but the kids had fun pretending to drive the school bus around our house.  

Babies got in on the action, too!

We sent everyone home with yellow school bus crayons and little school bus coloring books I made using Microsoft Word and free school bus coloring pages. Apparently I didn't get any photos of the books and crayons... just the bags. Oops!

Two and a half weeks later and Ezra is still talking about the 'coo bus' ride with his friends. And the frosting. He certainly hasn't forgotten the frosting. Thanks to everyone who celebrated with us!

P.S. I'm happy to give the cupcake flags and garland to anyone who's local and can pick them up! Just send me an email...

four years

We're celebrating four years of marriage today and I'm counting the ways I'm thankful for the relationship we've been blessed with. Matt is my best friend and he's Ezra's favorite playmate. It helps that he fixes everything around the house, but that's just a bonus. I'm especially thankful for Matt's hardworking nature. He provides for us so I can stay home with Ezra and spend all day with our little guy. I love you, Matt!

Happy Monday

I'm skipping this week's menu post in favor of some photos from Easter (and because I already recycled my menu planning sheet and can't remember what we ate without racking my brain). We spent yesterday morning at church, brought Ezra home for a nice nap, and then headed to Matt's aunt's house for dinner. Ezra and his cousin Jacob had a blast searching for eggs in the flower beds and playing with a giant bubble wand and three bottles of "Super Miracle Bubbles," although their older cousins may have had just as much fun...

 

 

After looking through these pictures, I've noticed that Ezra is usually running away from the camera, so there are few images with his face in them. We're recovering from the festivities today, just a little grocery shopping and a quick trip to the library earlier and now we're at home napping. Well, Ezra's napping and I just wish I was. Instead I think I'll go have a piece of rice pie.

eleven months!

Eleven month photo shoot status: occurred approximately nine days late but successful! I'll take it. If we crop that first one I think it would be perfect for Ezra's RI license photo.

Ok, so the shoot was successful except that Ezra took his sticker off after the first snap of the shutter. I decided to be the bigger man and allow him to stick it on the gorilla (who was much more complacent), which he was very intent on doing.

Ez clearly didn't want anyone to feel left out so the aardvark had a turn with the sticker next.

Sticker-less and loving it!

Ezra taking a few tentative steps onto the pelt of a long dead baby polar bear. Just kidding - it's faux sheepskin from Ikea.

Ezra's to do list: demolish artfully arranged display of picture books in four seconds - check.

Ezra's first self portrait. I'm going to go set up his myspace account. 

[the aftermath, month eleven]

ten months!

So here we are back in time again, this time by about a month and a half. Ezra was uncooperative once again, which I guess is to be expected from a ten month old who doesn't exactly understand the concept of posing yet.

As much as I wanted to have 'professional' photos each month, I kind of like these funny face-blurry-too dark-or-too bright memories of Ezra, since that's what he and I were able to produce together...

... as I'm not anywhere near close to a professional photographer, although I would say Ezra is a professional baby, what with all the crawling, teething, and babbling he does.

My friend Kate gave me some tips for taking Ezra's one year photos to try to ensure a good result, so we'll see how that works in a couple of weeks. 

nine months!

These photos are a dead giveaway that I've been slacking in the blog department (note the 9 sticker on Ezra's onesie).  He already looks so much bigger to me, as he should - he's a little over eleven months old as I write this.  

take one: sans onesie

Ez & friends

complete fascination. and it wasn't even oscillating.

the view from above

and from the side

how I love those little fingers

and we're back to the fan

There are two more sessions of month photos that I need to post before we get to the big 0-1 in a few weeks, so please bear with me and the little guy in the white onesie. The sessions became increasingly unsuccessful (decreasingly successful?) with each passing month, but I hope to catch some good ones at the one year mark.