Playing Catch Up

I've written a ton of blog posts in my head in the last few weeks, but somehow none of them actually made it onto the computer. So, this is going to be a catch up kind of post.

First (and most important):

My baby is 4! (Okay, she's been 4 for a couple of weeks now. Like I said, catch up! ;) )

The birthday girl and the birthday doll in their birthday dresses:
She's such a big girl now - four seems to be the age where they really just don't seem to be babies anymore. She's funny and smart and goofy as all get out. She's often a little parrot of her sister, but she certainly knows her own mind, too. If A wants to do something that M doesn't, she definitely won't do it! She's starting to read, which kind of blows my mind - I always joked that she was going to teach herself to read, but I didn't really think she actually would. (The Leappad helped with the letter sounds, I think, and A sometimes likes to play teacher, but she's doing a surprising amount of it on her own.) She's a total ham - if something makes you laugh once, depend on hearing it again! ;) She's also very sweet - she loves kisses and rubbing noses. (And squishing her dad's face, but I'm not sure I'd call that sweet.) She likes to color (fascinating shapes and color combos) and can play ponies forever. She's my lovely, wonderful girl, and she's growing up so fast.

Let's see. Oh, A has settled into first grade now, thankfully, and she seems to be enjoying it. She gets very upset when she has no homework, which cracks me up. (Especially since she really only has papers to do a couple of times a week.) But I'm glad she likes her class, and I think she's going to learn a lot.

In more crafty news, I've definitely been bitten by the quilting bug. I'm having some trouble with my wonderland quilt for the guest room - my intended layout is just not working for me. I've cut up approximately a million charm squares (give or take ;) ), but I'm not getting anywhere with it. So for the time being, I'm working on other stuff. I made a dresden plate dolly quilt. There are so many flaws in it that I can't even list them all, but luckily my children won't care, and it's pretty cute:
With the backing:

I learned that the blades on the Dresden plates are quite easy to make, but the center circles are kind of a pain. I haven't quite worked out a way that they really look nice. I also learned that satin stitching didn't work AT ALL, because the blades were way too thick for my machine to be neat. So, I still suspect that I'll do a big Dresden plate quilt at some point - I really do love them - but first I have to figure out the circles. There may be more dolly quilts!

In the meantime, I started working on an eight pointed star. Love the look of those! But not so much the look of *mine*:
The outer points actually aren't so bad, especially for a first try, but the center is completely cracked out. I don't know if you can tell in the picture, but it looks terrible. This is partly because I wasn't careful enough when sewing the diamonds together, and partly the fabric I used. (Yes, I realize strips would probably be easier, but I didn't actually have enough of the blue for that.) I was just using stash fabric, but this one is just not very good quality, and it stretched and warped a lot. Ah well, live and learn. I may still put this on a dolly quilt (since again, my children really don't care), but I may just toss it and try again. We shall see. M is going back to school on Tuesday, so I should have lots and lots of sewing time pretty soon. Maybe I'll actually complete some of the many, many projects in my head..... (Although I need to make a back to school dress before then - gotta get moving on that!)