Pattern Testing, Thrifted Sheets, and More Books!

Over the past couple of weeks, I've been test sewing a pattern for Karen Wilson. It's a fun dinosaur themed quilt, and I figured with all my boys I could use a good dinosaur quilt!

Her directions are easy to follow and the quilt worked up quickly, despite it taking me several days to complete. It would have been fast anyway, if I could have gotten three minutes in a row to myself! HA. Not in this house :) But even with just being able to work a few minutes here and there, the pattern came along nicely.

I especially love how detailed her directions are. She includes instructions on which direction to press the seams, so nothing is left to wonder about, and it all comes together beautifully in the end. I still have to quilt and bind mine, but I wanted to let you know about the pattern now, as she has the pattern listed in her etsy shop now.


Of course what post would be complete without some kid pictures? :)


This one cracks me up. I found the 2 year old eating his cereal this morning with a fork. Dry chocolate ball cereal. It wasn't working so well, as you might guess, and nobody is quite sure where he got the fork!

Today I made my weekly pilgrimage to the local thrift shop, as always, in search of books! Most of the books that catch my attention are children and young adult books. Since we started homeschooling, I can't get enough of books (ask anyone who has helped us move - HA). Today I came home with another 20 of them or so. I haven't counted. All for $3. One of them was one I've seen recommended, but never read. The book is "Bud, Not Buddy" by Christopher Paul Curtis. As soon as I got home, I was thumbing through it to see if it would be worth reading, when these two paragraphs caught my eye. I love this description of a library. I'm now really looking forward to reading the whole book. Here's the quote...

"As soon as I got into the library I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I got a whiff of the leather on all the old books, a smell that got real strong if you picked one of them up and stuck your nose real close to it when you turned the pages. Then there was the smell of the cloth that covered the brand-new books, the books that made a splitting sound when you opened them. Then I could sniff the paper, that soft, powdery, drowsy smell that comes off the pages in little puffs when you're reading something or looking at some pictures, a kind of hypnotizing smell. I think it's that smell that makes so many folks fall asleep in the library. You'll see someone turn a page and you can imagine a puff of page powder coming up really slow and easy until it starts piling up on the person's eyelashes, weighing their eyes down so much that they stay down a little longer after each blink and finally making them so heavy that they just don't come back up at all."

- from Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis

I found quite a few good sheets today too - only a dollar a piece! Now what to make them into? Most will probably back other quilts or become reusable grocery bags.