big cat quilt week

whenever it's getting close to time for a big holiday or the end of the school year, kids tend to get twitchy and have a hard time concentrating on school work. it's almost a losing battle to try to do anything that will require serious brain activity, so i decided that this week, our last school year of 2011, we would spend the week learning about big cats. national geographic has a channel that's all animal shows all the time and this week their theme is big cats, so that was my inspiration. i knew brooke would love it and it was the perfect way to spring board us into a short unit study about a topic that won't be difficult to keep her engaged in. we cleared the shelf in the library for all their big cat books, we've been watching lots of educational shows and we've been making christmas presents for our people.

this was also a good way for me to have enough time sitting still when i wasn't exhausted or straining my eyes for hours in the evenings to work on some of the projects that i've got going for gifts. the big one that i just finished yesterday is a quilt i made for my niece's american girl doll. since i can't spend much money this year, i've been finding things i could give that were free or almost free and this was the perfect thing.

i dug through my baskets of fabric for scraps and pieces that color coordinated and then cut enough squares to make a little blanket just big enough for the doll. i took some pictures of the process from start to finish.

this thing is made out of an old pair of jeans, a skirt, a dress, old pajamas, remnant bin scraps from hobby lobby, bits from my mom's sewing basket, 2 receiving blankets and a piece of fabric that i rescued from the trash in a house i used to clean.

as you can see, i did some ironing to flatten seams, but i couldn't be bothered to get out a real iron, so i just used my curling iron. this is the perfect tool for ironing other little things like collars and the front line along the buttons on a button down shirt too.

i'm very happy with the end result. i did every stitch by hand, most of them sewn while sitting on my floor in front of the tv or while curled in a corner of the couch.

i kind of wish brooke liked stuff like this so that i could give it to her in order to see it more often, but she really just doesn't give a crap. she looks at dolls the way most little girls look at giant rubber spiders. she admired the quilt but reminded me not to get any funny ideas about giving to her because she didn't want it.

hopefully it will be well received by another little girl who loves all things girlie and pretty. now i just need to get it wrapped before one of my cats claims it and decides to curl up for a long winter's nap.