Scrappy Grands--or Grandly Scrappy

"Gramma, can we sew something?"

It had been months since we could be together, but that's one of the first things L said when they came to spend a couple of days with us during their spring break. Music to my quilt-loving ears. She even had an idea of what she wanted to sew: a landscape (lakescape?) like one I had made that hangs in their living room. Woohoo! It was a gorgeous day, and I knew we would want to spend a lot of time outside, so it had to be a quick project--maybe 20 or 30 minutes tops.

I just happened to have lots of scraps handy--especially blue for my RSC color of the month. I quickly cut some small pieces of backing and batting, and let her have at it to choose fabrics for an Accidental Landscape mini in the style of Karen Eckmeier. To be super fast and easy for a beginning sewist, raw edge quilt-as-you-go seemed to be the technique of choice.

L found a piece of cloud fabric for sky. Then she cut wavy strips of blue for the lake. Don't you love the star fabric? Like sparkles on the water. I love how kids do art! We pulled out the bin of neutrals for sand. 

She laid them out, and I put a few pins in to hold them in place. Then she got her first opportunity to use the foot pedal to sew them down herself with some wavy lines. She mastered the pedal speed immediately and quickly figured out how to move the fabric to make wavy quilting lines.

I knew binding would be too time consuming for this project, so after stitching around the edge, I trimmed it for her with pinking shears. And done! A cute little mini for her bedroom wall. Didn't she do a great job?!

While we were working, C started sorting through the blue scraps himself. He is a major crafter, and his adhesive of choice is tape. Lots of tape. In no time, he had laid out his first quilt block. 

What a fun way to spend the first part of our weekend together! We spent most of the rest of the weekend outside. There was a little trip to meet up with cousins to hike some trails and play some baseball, more baseball and all kinds of other sports in our backyard, and a short hike in the prairie behind our neighborhood. A perfect way to end our isolation of the last year. Hurray for vaccinations!!

I'll wait until the end of the month to share my RSC blues. But I just had to share these blues today!

I'm linking up this weekend with Angela at So Scrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday and with Cynthia at Quilting is more fun than Housework for Oh Scrap. Oh, and with Sandra at mmm quilts on the last Saturday of the month because this was a perfect DrEAMi (Drop Everything and Make it) project.

If you live in my hemisphere, Happy Spring, which as far as I can tell from our trees and flowers, is about a month ahead of schedule. I hope you get to do some unexpected projects, maybe with your own little kiddies.

Life is Grand again.