And....we're back.

I've been barely able to contain my euphoria lately, as my daughter has begun making her first quilt!!  She's always been into the fabrics (she was instrumental in helping me organize my stash), and she's been bugging me to teach her how to use "her" machine (actually, it was my mother's, a 1935 workhorse White.  Makes the straightest seam I've ever seen.  I learned to sew on it, and it will, eventually, be passed onto Ella, but it's not officially "hers" yet.)  But when she saw me sketching out a plan for a new quilt on paper with colored pencils, she clearly got the Process Pledge bug.

She was really into it, until she realized that she was wasting time drawing the mermaid in Heather Ross's Mendocino, when she could be handling the real thing.  So she got the gist with the plan, and then laid out all the 6" x 6" blocks (which I cut for her, even though she was dying to use the rotary cutter...uh...I'm all for kids learning their independence and trying to handle tools by themselves, but I draw the line at rotary cutters big enough to cut off all five fingers of her little hand with one fell swoop).

It sure will be cute!  She's already got all the blocks sewn into rows! What a clever girl.  Cute, too.

Sometimes she likes to dance on the back deck while I work in the studio. Always to Miley Cyrus. It's become my quilting soundtrack. I'm so proud of her, and thrilled to be handing down the joy.