Monday, March 20, 2006

Kids and Bowties

My little project inspired Mustafa, who decided he wanted to try his hand at quilting again. (He made a small quilt about 1 1/2 yrs. ago.) His insistance led to the other two wanting to make their own as well. I tried putting them off for awhile but that didn't last long. If you have kids, you know how insistant they can be when they want something. Mustafa and Safiya are on New Year's break so he was starting to get bored yesterday and drove everyone nuts with his extra energy. I finally relented yesterday afternoon when I thought I had a few minutes to help out. That few minutes turned into over an hour of kids playing with fabric and mommy undoing several mistakes with a sinkload of dirty dishes calling my name and a fabric hungry 11 month old trying to eat whatever scraps made their way to the floor. For anyone else out there, I would not suggest you try teaching/assisting 3 small children to quilt unless you have at least an hour with absolutely nothing else to do and a boatload of patience. :o By the end of the hour, I was rather stressed, had the dishes still calling to me and dinner not even started. But the kids had fun and they worked on their masterpieces again today.
Note: Bowties is not a good pattern for a 4 1/2 year old. I know plain old squares are better but she's quite a stubborn little girl. Safiya (6) decided for herself today that she'd much rather do just plain squares. She's done faster and she really likes the results. Mustafa miss sewed one of his blocks yesterday... twice. After the second time, he "decided" that he liked his design better. ;) Well, his second set of blocks got sew a new different way. He then sewed those two sets together and after holding onto/playing with it for about half an hour realized that if he turns it vertical rather than horizontal it makes a cool looking chain! Ya gotta love the mistakes! I forgot to take a picture of it but I'll try to remember soon. For now, we have New Year celebrations and our trip to Dubai. I have a feeling that Reza will be the only baby not to get at least a completed quilt top for his first birthday since I haven't even started cutting yet.

3 comments:

Patty said...

As a mother of 4 I can appreciate all that you wrote about !
Sounds like you had a very busy day.

Finn said...

Good for you...a real patience stretcher I know, but something they hopefully will remember as they grow up..*VBS*

Anonymous said...

Well done!!!LOL. You helped create great memories for them later and I love the creativity and results from children who don't follow the "rules" of quilting and still end up with something really great :-)