Today I took Thing One and Thing Two to a favorite summer destination of theirs,
The Friendly Farm in Dublin, New Hampshire. Dublin is also home to the fabulous Yankee Magazine
While we were there, they helped collect eggs, they fed bottles of milk to the baby goats, they fed the goats and chickens, held the baby chicks and watched some chicks hatching, watched the peacock open his beautiful tail, and they chased the sheep (and were chased by sheep in pursuit of food) around the sheep pen. We had a real blast...it was great because last year Thing Two was too afraid to interact with the animals very much, but this year he was right there feeding them and playing with them (well, not the baby chicks, but all the rest). Such fun! :-)
Along the way, we stopped at Joann Fabrics and I got the supplies I needed for my happy villages: vareigated thread, tulle (6 different colors, just in case!), black felt. I also bought a few extra DMC floss colors (65!) and a zipper for an upcoming project on my list.
After we got home and the Things were all chilled out, I got my Happy Village layered and basted. I started quilting it and completed maybe 1/4 of the quilting. So far so good. I can actually see a bunch of mistakes in the project, but for a first try, I'm quite happy. Things that I know to watch for next time: make sure things are overlapped enough when layering so that the quilting doesn't shift it and show the underlayer. Also, watch the quilting (maybe I should use the walking foot instead of doind it free motion. The other big thing I will watch for next time: frayed edges and little thread pieces stuck under the tulle, which will forever haunt me. Oh well, you can't see those things from across the room when it is hanging on the wall :-)
Thing One has announced that SHE is going to make one of these herself. Oh Boy. I'm going to need a BIG chill pill to be able to supervise that. I think I'm too much of a control freak to manage that.
4 comments:
What a lovely quilt. I really like the Happy Villages I have seen popping up in several blogs, and think I will have to look out for the book for myself. I wish you the best of luck helping your daughter make one - perhaps she could try it in paper first (then she might be satisfied and save you a lot of grief!)
love the "window unit" you created and added to your village... I've just started my second village with completely idfferent fabrics from the first, and like you, have a few "rules" I learned doing it once to follow/check this time...
This is really cute. I like the color combination. when we lived in new england we had a subscription to Yankee magazine. It was so much fun to read and oh the recipes were great.
You got that together fast! Looks great. And thanks for spelling out what you'd be careful about. I am DEFINITELY going to make one of these!
Post a Comment