Exploring my Creative Childhood

My mind, this month has been filled with ideas that I want to use for the Sew Along with Lori  DeJarnatt. The theme this month is "Something from your Child hood".
I was lucky to live next door to a couple of girls  Sarena and Mallie. With them I could  imagine and create things from simple things. I remember seeing a dress on one of their dolls that was not bought from the store. It had uneven stitches but the girls made it by THEMSELVES. I wanted to learn how so very much I was about 5.. I was curious about scissors too. I even discovered I could cut my own hair.

  I even had a doll that I could make her hair grow. Crissy doll, she had huge hands and feet I remember holding her on my hip like a real baby.

I don't remember if I was allowed to use a needle. But I was very fascinated. I played with Barbies and made furniture and accessories from things the family would throw out.  So I added some Barbie Fabric. I drafted the Paper Pieced scissor block and primitively wrote cut.

My parents realized early that the toys I would play with the most were creative ones, not premade ones. I discovered after his death that My Father kept the crayons I had in Kindergarten. I remember him arguing with  the Teacher that he did not want to limit my creativity with just 8 colors. So my crayon box had 64.

As a child of the 70's I remember tie-die clothes and  psycadelic prints, peace and love. I had some of these prints in my stash and added it to the border.

I also remember collecting frogs after the rain. Where we lived the tiny frogs would come out of their hiding spots.I would carry a bucket to collect them to see how many I could get. My record was 20.

My Dad also shared his love of Ladybugs with me, so I added a piece of fabric with ladybugs.
To signify my love of fabric from an early age I decided to design the square in
a square block.Then I designed the scissor Paper pieced block and the needle and thread block.

My friend Lisa from Preschool taught me the Cat's cradle string game and we played it often. It was a great game that did not take up any room to carry a string. I found this as a drawing on Pinterest and then created the Embroidery.

The most fascinating thing that has happened is that after 40 years,  I have finally been able to reconnect with both sets of childhood friends. What a treasure they are and the Memories too.
Here is the completed "Memories" Border

Until next time,

Tanya

In my sewing basket

When Lori over at Humble Quilts asked if her followers wanted to participate in a sew along, I was curious. We were challenged to make a basket block for the center. I decided to plat along.

I looked through my pattern stash to see if I had anything to spark my interest. I decided to draft my own.

Then I decided to sew it onto a white background. I thought one blue stem would add interest and help the marbled fabric not look so crazy.

I was happy to find the basket weave fabric. At this point, the I felt the colors were very strong. I like bright colors and fun prints too, but there was something that I felt needed to change. So I auditioned a different background, and I liked it. 

I have been working on my hexagons too. I dug out these Denim Hexie's, they are my oldest UFO to date. I started these when Ieada was in the hospital with Cancer. I would bring these along in a plastic container. I put them away when Mark wanted it to be king size. Just one more Hexie flower to go.

The other Hexie quilt 

I am doing is the New Hexagon sew along from Katja Marek.

I also visited a local Quilt Show in Baytown Texas. My dear friends Billie and Susie met me there and we enjoyed the quilts and a Bed turning. 

One of my favorite quilts in the show was the Bonnie Hunter Mystery Quilt made by my friend Connie Sheffield . I was able to get a quick picture of her and the quilt. 

She has inspired me to get back to my Mystery Quilt. 

Last but not least I met Carolyn Koenig. The famous Quilting designer from Austrailia. It was a pleasure to see her enthusiasm for quilting and how she studies Vintage quilts to reproduce them. It was my pleasure to see her trunk show and learn about her new fabric line.  

Yes I added the Hexie's to my shirt too. 

Thanks for visiting.

Tanya