A Mother's Day Chuckle

This week involved no free-motion quilting, I'm sorry to say. However, things moved along swiftly for the two donation quilts, headed for the Center for Women and Families.

The quilt-as-you-go blocks are joined in rows; all that's left is topstitching the front joining strips (I'm out of matching thread, otherwise that would be done), then squaring and joining rows and, finally, squaring and binding the quilt.

While waiting a day to purchase the thread, another "Lucy project" (for my baby granddaughter) was pulled from the drawer for some further work. (If knitting isn't your thing, just skip the next paragraph and move on to the funny Mother's day card.)

Using all six strands of embroidery floss instead of regular sewing thread. Faster and more secure.

The buttonhole band is being joined to the sweater at the same time the buttons are being sewn on to the button band. It's the only way I could think of to align the buttons and the holes properly, as the bands are, per directions, knitted slightly shorter than the sweater edges (to keep the front edges from stretching with wear), and--big mistake--instead of calculating the percentage of the button-band length to the sweater-front length and sewing it up with a precise stitch count, I eyeballed it. Not good! After that I couldn't just sew the second band (the buttonhole band) to the sweater in the same manner and expect the buttonholes to be spaced exactly like the buttons. So instead I measured the overall button spacing on the button band and marked it with safety pins, sewed the first button on, and then stitched the buttonhole band as far as the first hole, making sure the hole landed directly opposite the button. Then I buttoned it and began the same process for the next button. This should work as long as I don't get cross-eyed in the process...but it's still eyeballing. Lesson learned. Next time I'll do some counting and get out the calculator. Or better yet, come up with a standard percentage for band length vs. sweater-front length. Someone's probably already done that. I should Google it.

Moving on. With Mother's Day on the horizon, I wanted to share one of my cards from last year. This came from my older son and his wife (Lucy's parents) and still cracks me up.

All year long, I've kept that card on my bookshelf. Notice what's sitting in front of it....

...'nuff said. (I think the painted one is a dinosaur.) Actually, the piece on the left was made by him; the one on the right was made by my other son.

Here they are, by the way, our two wonderful, grown-up boys, each pictured holding Lucy: Papa Alex on the left and Uncle Aaron on the right.

And here's Lucy and her Mama, our awesome daughter-in-law, Shannon.

Happy Mother's day, beautiful lady. Thank you and Alex for your incredible gift, to this family and to the world.

Lucy Maeve, 7 weeks old

Linking up here with some other moms and their quilting blogs:
Confessions of a Fabric Addict's Whoop Whoop Friday
Lizzie Lenard's Vintage Sewing's Free Motion Mavericks
A Quilting Reader's Garden's WIPs Be Gone

Happy Mother's Day to them and to all who are mothers or who have ever nurtured another human being or animal. We need lots more of you on this planet.

Linda