Easy Strip Quilt

Laurel's oldest is ready for a big boy bed, so it was time to make him a fun new quilt. As I thought about what to make and how to make it, I remembered a technique that my Mom learned from one of her sisters and then taught to me several years ago. It allows you to construct a quilt--backing, batting, and front--strip by strip so that by the time you finish the last strip, all that you have to do is trim the raw side and bottom edges and sew on the binding. No quilting or tying is necessary. This is how I did it:

My quilt information said that twin size comforters--to be used with a bed skirt--should measure about 68 by 86 inches. I chose six coordinating fabrics based on these three prints . . .

and, after prewashing, cut four of the fabrics into 9 by 9 inch squares. I needed 8 squares of each of the four fabrics. Then I sewed 8 of the squares into a strip, using 1/4" seam allowances to create four of the required twelve strips. Iron the seams flat. I made four of these strips, changing the pattern by one block each time. (I decided to do these block strips for added interest, but if you want an easier quilt, simply skip the blocks and use 12 solid strips.)

I also cut eight solid strips--four green and four white with matching green dots which alternated with the block strips. For the back, I used a solid brown, flat queen sized sheet--which I prewashed.  Out of the sheet, I cut twelve, 9 x 68 inch strips. This shows a backing strip and each of the three different strips that I used for the front:

 I also cut twelve, 9 x 68 inch strips of batting:

The magical thing about this quilt is that you can use up odds and ends of batting that are left over from other quilting projects. If the pieces weren't quite long enough, I simply basted them together:

Now the fun begins. Lay out your strips in the pattern you prefer, and, starting from the top, begin the layering process. Stack your first backing strip and your first top strip with right sides together. Place a strip of batting on top and pin along the top seam line:

Using a walking foot, sew your seam through all layers. To be honest, despite the fact that I have made many quilts, this is the first time I have used a walking foot. My old Viking didn't have one, but my newer machine does. They are amazing. They keep the many layers from bunching and stretching. This is what mine looks like:

Unpin, trim, and then turn so that the front is on top, the batting is in the middle, and the back is on the bottom. I pinned the finished edge just to hold everything in place and then pinned the bottom, raw edge and ran a basting seam to secure it while I added the next layer. (For sewing newbies, you can machine baste by using the longest straight stitch setting on your machine. The stitches hold things in place temporarily but come out easily. It is an extra step, but it makes things so much easier in the long run.)

Create the second strip by placing your completed strip on top of your second quilt top strip, right sides of top strips together. Place a quilt back strip on top of the completed quilt back strip, right sides together, and a strip of batting on top of everything. Pin raw edges.

Sew through all layers, unpin, trim, and turn:

Continue the same process for ten more strips. Pin and baste the final, bottom raw edge in preparation for the binding. For me, the trickiest part was trimming the raw side edges to make everything square and straight. I don't even know what to tell you; good luck with that. (Hopefully, Laurel won't measure eveything.) I cut 4 1/2 inch binding strips out of the left over backing sheet, folded them in half, and then ironed a crease to create a 2 1/4 inch binding. I pinned and sewed the  raw edge of the binding onto the right side of the quilt sides and bottoms using the machine to sew through all layers. (Be sure to tuck in and stitch across the raw edges of the binding at the ends.) Then I folded the binding over to the back, pinned it, and stitched the folded edge of the binding in place by hand. You can machine stitch this as well; it will just make an extra seam on the front side of your quilt.

I used left over pieces to create matching pillow cases. The only twin size bed I have is a bunk so the pictures aren't perfect, but, hopefully, they will give you an idea of what the finished quilt looks like:

Sleep sweet, little man.

Preschool Lesson: Letter "M"

I'm still loving this mommy-preschool rotation with my friend Kailene. Did I mention that I usually have a PowerPoint? I usually have a PowerPoint to go along with our letter. Something very simple. The first slide is always a lower and uppercase letter of the day. We then talk about the sound it makes and make the letter out of popsicle sticks or pipe cleaners. I then have a few slides of pictures of things that start with the letter of the week.

This time, for "M", I let my PowerPoint presentation pictures be my outline for the day. First, I had a picture of the moon.

• Songs: "Zoom, zoom, zoom, we're going to the moon!" and "I'm a Little Rocket!" 
• Book: Goodnight, Moon
• Music video: "I Don't Want to Live on the Moon." I want preschool to be creative and fun, not screen time. Yet I like throwing in a short video clip now and again, especially if it's an old-school Sesame Street song that pulls at my heart strings.

Next, we saw a picture of monkeys.

• Song: 5 Little Monkeys Swinging in a Tree
• Craft: I found cute, chunky monkey stickers at Dollar Tree, so after singing the song, we stopped to color and sticker a quick picture to tell the story. I love how SourPatch is so minimalist in his coloring these days:

Next, we moved onto monsters:

• Large Motor: We did some monster bowling using the cute Melissa and Doug bowling set my sister-in-law gave us.
• Book: We read The Monster at the End of this Book. Anyone else totally in love with this book? It's pretty great. 

• Music Video: I know, I know, we already broke the rules and watched a video! Yet Sesame Street does a great letter M, okay? We watched Monster in the Mirror.
• Craft: I feel like there's lots you could do with monster letter m's: eyes, fangs, fur, scales... we just had googly eyes and pipe cleaner (for limbs?). The kids still liked making them anyways.

• Math: We used these cute Monster Mash Roll and Coloring pages from Little Miss Kindergarten to practice number recognition with dice. We basically just took turns rolling a die (is that how you spell the singular of "dice?" Seems grim.) and coloring in the correct number on the sheets.

For our last picture, a moose, we read the classic If You Give a Moose a Muffin. I feel like a total traitor, but I think I like this book even better than its cookie predecessor. It also reminded us that it was time for a snack. After we ate our muffins and drank our milk, we made m's out of mini marshmallows and toothpicks. 

Another fine motor activity was building and playing with SourPatch's marble run. We made it through one round of the game Memory, too.

Last but not least, we had "Science Time" as we talked about magnetism. The kiddos loved this activity from The Measured Mom where we tested various household objects to see if they are magnetic or not.

Another preschool in the books. Thanks for a fun day, kids!

Plants and Flowers That Actually Grow In North Texas (and they might grow where you where you live too!)

My granddaughter came running into the house this evening and sighed, "It's magical outside!There are blossoms on the trees!" It's true; spring is in the air--at least for today. Which means it's time to think about flowers.

My parents were wonderful gardeners. I didn't necessarily inherit that talent, but they did pass on their love for things that grow. So as a gardener, I seek for plants that look lovely but don't require a lot of care. I usually choose perennials for my flower beds, and then mix things up a bit by planting annuals in pots. And don't be afraid to experiment. Many of my plants came from clearance shelves at Lowes; that way I can try new things without spending a lot of money.

Here are a few perennials that have worked well for me:

The tall plant in the front is canna. These plants grow from large bulbs and add wonderful foliage, height and color. The spiky leaves on the left are amaryllis. I have several in my yard, and all of them started out as house plants. Mine had already bloomed, but this is what the flowers look like:

This climber is clematis--delicate, beautiful flowers that come in a variety of colors, and lovely, lacy greenery. They do need something to climb. This is a better look at the blooms:

This hardy plant is sage. It smells amazing, is a great filler, and is drought resistant.

These are my newest favorites--Turkish caps. LOVE, LOVE, LOVE!
(And so do the hummingbirds!)

Lantana--very hardy and drought resistant. But be careful--these grow big 

and can take up a lot of space.

This spiky flower comes in blue and pink and grows into fun mounds.
(I can't remember/find its name, but if you see it in the nursery, it's a winner.)

Salvia--easy to grow, drought resistant.

I use begonias to edge my front flower beds. Technically, I don't think they are perennials, 

but usually about half of them come back every year. I think the fact that I mulch protects the roots.

Blue daze--a spreading, low-growing ground cover.

Cone flowers come in a variety of colors and are pure joy.

Just a few of my favorite annuals--perfect for pots:

The tall planter features geraniums and baby tears. The pot on the left holds an hibiscus, and the plant on the right is a gerbera daisy. I have them in my flower beds as well. I took these pictures late in the growing season, but here is what the daisies look like. So pretty:

The purple flowers are petunias. You can see pink sage and salmon begonias below.

These two potted plants came from dear friends. I think of them every time I pass by. On the left is a large, happy coleus, and the bird bath holds bamboo. Red sage is planted below.

And finally, sweet potato vine on the left, hosta in front, and aloe vera at the far back right.

Think Spring!

DIY Storage Bench

4/23/21 Four years later, this bench is still going strong! We did decide to recover it in a new fabric; click here to see the process!

Can we talk about how much I love window seats? My dream house definitely has a window seat, perhaps flanked by bookshelves so make it a reading nook. If our current place was actually ours and not a rental, I'd already be scheming to build one into our bay window.

As is, when I decided I needed a better storage solution for the toys in our living room, this DIY bench seemed like the perfect solution. Target had a basic storage cube on sale for $45 (if I was mother, I realize I would have built the bench. Alas...) Looking now, Ikea lowered its price of a similar shelving unit to the same price (it was $60 last month. Blechy. Why is furniture so expensive?)

After buying and assembling our storage organizer, we needed items for the cushion. We bought a giant, 3-inch slab of foam from Smith's (who knew, right?) for $20. We later saw the same size foam for the same price at Home Depot. We cut the foam to fit the top of our bench: 57 & 3/4 inches by 14 & 9/16 inches. Since we didn't have an electric knife (the cutting tool of choice for cutting foam at JoAnn's), we just sawed by hand using a serrated bread knife.

This left enough foam for mom to take home for a bench of her own, so in the end the foam was only $10 for each bench! Love. 

Now, I was tired with a newborn and not thrilled with paying money for MDF board and then bothering to drill and screw the cushion to our shelving. I thought we should just cover the cushion, put it on our cube unit, and call it good. Luckily, mom was in town to help me and insist that, like the tutorial, we affix the cushion to the bench. At Home Depot, a helpful employee suggested we use "hard board" instead of MDF board for our project. What is hard board, you ask? It's basically a strong and thin white board, and a giant sheet costs only $10. Plus, they cut it to size for free! We put the foam on the hard board and then draped them in quilt batting, as per Mommy Vignettes suggestion, to keep the cushion smooth.

Tightening the batting as I went, I stapled it to the bottom of the hardboard for a smooth, finished look.

We found some awesome fabric on clearance at Joann's for... how much was it a yard, mama? I forget. Okay, you'd better shpeal everyone on the fabric, come to think of it. I'll just add the picture.(Aside from Mom: Fortunately I was there during a JoAnn's 50% off Red Tag event, so we found our Waverly upholstery fabric for $3 a yard! We chose an outdoor fabric that we hope won't fade from the sun coming in the window and will be relatively spill proof.) 

We cut the fabric amply big enough to wrap around the foam, batting, and board with three-ish inches overlapping onto the back of the board. You can see we measured and lined everything up upright on the cube organizer to make sure it would look just right, but finally I had to carefully flip the cushion pieces over to staple the fabric to the back of the hard board, pulling it taut as I went. The corners were the most time-consuming part; I tried to take extra care so the fold lined up at each corner to prevent asymmetry or puckering.

Now, how to attach the cushion? Mom was convinced that we could use the large Command velcro strips. That way, we wouldn't have to drill holes into the shelving unit should we decide to use it in another capacity later. As much as I love these damage-free miracles, I was skeptical that they'd be sturdy enough to really secure the cushion (or that they would even be thick enough to adhere to each other. After all, there's quilt batting and fabric along the edges of the hard board). I was so wrong! These work like a dream; I put one large strip at either end of the board (one side on the hard board, the other on the top of the shelving unit), and these two strips alone work great for us so far. Unlike the blog post we followed, we didn't add legs. The height seems just perfect for us without them. I think it turned out splendid. We scored some bins for $5 a piece at Shopko to hold and hide the toys. 

Plus, because mom is awesome, she made these matching pillows and promised to make curtains in a coordinating gold fabric that was also on sale at JoAnn's. Tutorial forthcoming, mama?

Again, feel free to check out the recovering process four years later!