white apples . a blog

a rainbow river

Now that triple-digit temperatures are behind us, Juniper, Owen, and I have been spending many more hours outdoors (though all those mosquitoes are still hanging around - it seems we three are delicious). These photos are from our adventures with liquid sidewalk chalk one morning while Owen napped. Our recipe is from this post by Domestic Charm. It's simply one cup of water and one cup of cornstarch, divided and dyed with food coloring. Juni loved adding and mixing all the colors in the muffin tin - "we're cooking up colors!" The colors seem a little watery at first, but they dry with a nice, bright, opaque finish.

Juni started off with the paintbrush, but eventually got fingers and hands and feet involved. When she was finished, she emptied the whole tin and we watched all the colors trickle down the driveway. Next time we'll let Owen get his hands in there as well.

 

goodbye summer

 

End-of-summer sewing and crafting activities have slowed now that I have an extraordinarily active, mobile, and mischievous baby and a toddler who is always in need of a mama for her various pretend games. But now that Fall (ah, blissful, beautiful Fall) is knocking on my door, I hope to get more sewing and knitting done for the chilly months ahead. This is the time for cozy quilts and knit hats and cute baby pants and various long-sleevedy things.

I've had this perfect stack of sandy, beachy-hued fabric from Art Gallery sitting on my shelves for months - ever since I saw this post from Pat Bravo. When we decided to make a trip to South Florida for Labor Day weekend, I knew that it would make a perfect quilt for Juni's and Owen's Nana (great-grandmother), whose house is a veritable shrine to the color aqua. However, I didn't start cutting and piecing this until about a week and a half before we were set to leave, so finishing it was a bit of a scramble, squeezed into naptimes and nighttimes and any little bit of free time available. In fact, I finished hand-sewing the binding about half and hour before we left for the airport, which explains these terrible photos taken right before it was squished into my over-stuffed suitcase. 

The top is pieced from a variety of aqua-hued Art Gallery fabrics in two alternating block designs (I think they are about 12" square). The binding is Robin's Egg Blue Belmont from the Summer House line by Lily Ashbury and the backing (which I don't have a decent photo of) is this print from Joel Dewberry's Heirloom collection. Since I definitely didn't have time for free-motion stippling, I quilted it with vertical wavy lines to suggest beachy waves. Now this little quilt is right at home in the perpetual summer of southern Florida, and we are back in North Carolina, eagerly awaiting the first golden hued leaves and chilly, hot chocolate evenings.