For the Love of Spring

We are on the cusp of two majour events in our household--travelling and sewing, two of our favourite things!

Ri is going away for her first big girl trip with Pop and Achoo (aka G'ma and G'pa) this weekend. They are coming over to pick her up later this week, and she'll be staying with them for three days in snowy Idaho while Hubbie and i get our acts together, seriously, and clean up this hot mess of a pigsty we live in. :o) And do some touch up work to paint &/or move furniture ...

In this housing market, we are noticing a need to be sans house in order to make an offer that will please sellers, because around here, people selling farms are getting really tired of making contingent offers--especially because they've lost so much money due to updated changes in flood plain maps (so the developers won't come knocking on their doors to purchase the property as potential short plats for a million or 2 dollars.) Real estate agents aren't really encouraging either when they give you "that look", you know the one that you'd give your child when they are caught playing with dried doggie doo, when you tell them you have a house to sell. So as you can imagine, a house still full of stuff that needs to be packed, purged, and cleaned is causing me a great deal of anxiety!

And after 3 days of a great deal of cleaning, i will be driving over myself to collect my little cookie monster and enjoy a couple more days in ID with the parentals.

While she is at P&A's, i think some serious biz is going to go down. Achoo has a little surprise for Ri...not that she will get it this trip, but that eventually P&A are planning on gifting a small Singer to Ri. This was all borne out of our last visit when Ri shared her ideas with Achoo about dolly undies. Two of Ri's beloved dollies have no britches to wear under their skirts and that caused a great deal of distress for Ri. So down they went into Grannie's sewing room and stitched some up. Ri's traced the pattern on several scraps of fabric while Achoo sewed. I'll have to post a picture of them...they are super cute!

Well, now Ri would like to do a little sewing of her own. While thrifting with me one day, Ri and i found a doll quilt. She loved it from the moment she saw it, but there wasn't anything special about it in terms of vintage-y-ness or style. So i asked her would she rather make one herself? Almost instantly she was on the phone with Achoo, asking if she would help her make a doll quilt. :o) And of course, grandmas are obligated, by law i think, to always say "Yes" to their grandchildren's wishes (as long as no bodily harm is to come from it.)

Yesterday, with the help of my friend, J, Ri and i happily ended up sidetracked in a cute little quilt shoppe located in large retail craft center. And she picked out the greatest fabric:

Initially, we were on the hunt for a few more bird prints, as we had a bit of this cute chicken print (don't you just love that black spotted white chicken with all the feathers?)



and a bit of pink flamingo print which inspired Ri to want to create a bird quilt. However, penguins, parrots, et al evaded us, so we were perplexed as to what we would do next. Especially because Ri really wants to use that chicken fabric.

Then, as if delivered by Devine Intervention itself, we found this

which Ri *immediately* fell in love with because it reminded her of our chicks.

Then i found this and we both started giggling!

So yes, Ri's quilt will look like this: an homage to the lifecycle of a chicken. :)

And i think this gent is totally diggin' the vibe the fabric is giving him...i couldn't believe while i was photographing this fabric, he was sitting on our phone wire watching me through the window in our dining room!

So, we were all ready to stop there--one doll quilt would be enough for a short trip like this, i figured--but then Ri found the good stuff! Repro-vintage *FAB*ric.

She picked these doggies

adorable koalas and bunnies with balloons

these cute kittens

And this favourtie find of mine...

the circus!

so if all goes well, she will hopefully come home with 2 new doll quilts for Lorali and Lola.

Ri has such a good eye for picking out colours that work together. Like today, she wore my favourite punk rocker red plaid pants with her dark/lite pink and brown striped (and ribbed) shirt. And she looked totally cool. When is it in the process of growing up that we dumb down our child-like sense of adventure with pattern and textures? Because i want to prevent that from happening to my little "haute quilterist".