After 5 years of being a stay-at-home mom, I found the wonder of mothering slowly starting to get crowded out by the mundane feeling. I realized our world seems to surround people with the negative, and complaining about blessings seems totally acceptable. So I decided to fight against that "normalcy" and focus only on the positive. I look back to my first year as a mom when everything was new and keeping house was fun and I aim to have that attitude again. This blog is my outlet to showcase the daily miracles that surround me in my blessed life as a stay-at-home mom so that I will never forget the wonder of it all.



Wednesday, February 2, 2011

i Spy Swap

I started blogging last Summer and very soon found some favorite blogs that I still follow today.  One of those blogs is Obsessively Stitching.  For months I watched as Care made i Spy quilts and hosted i Spy fabric swaps.  Basically, the quilt is made of 200 or more squares, each of a different novelty print.  They are made for kids to cozy up with and play i Spy.  Same premise as the books.  So anyways, I stalked her blog long enough and finally jumped in on her last i Spy fabric swap.  Basically, a bunch of women sign up. Each buys 10 prints, cuts 20 squares from each, and sends them to her.  You get back 200 squares...all different!  This is such a great idea because if you sew, you can imagine what a pain it would be to come up with enough fabric to make one of these quilts using just your scraps.  Here's the prints I contributed to Care's swap.
The picture sucks because it was taken at midnight, but there's strawberries, spools of thread, blue ribbons, hand prints, racing flags, cupids, clovers, Norman Rockwell silhouettes, guitars, and robots.

I was planning on making the i Spy quilt for Logan's 6th birthday in April.  He's obsessed with our i Spy type books.  So I was very excited about this project.  Then I had the idea to double up and also make one for my nephew's 8th birthday just days after Logan's.  I wanted to do both quilts at once so that I'd have a total of 400 squares in front of me at once and have more to play around with.  So I joined in LAST minute with a swap my friend Elisa was participating in.  In one night I cut another 200 blocks (thanks to my sis who did a fabric run for me.....thank goodness for cell phone cameras) and mailed them off the next morning.  Here's the blocks for Katie's swap at FabriKate.

More robots, horse, dino letters, chickens, floral with bees and ladybugs, school letters, more guitars, Noah animals, space, and candy hearts.

Elisa and I should have our squares by February 20th and then we're having a crafting day to get going on them together.  We can't wait!  Stay tuned for the progress.  And if you're interested in seeing what an i Spy quilt looks like, follow the link to Care's blog.  She has a Flikr group full of pics.

3 comments:

  1. What a cool idea! I make baby quilts fairly regularly, and it can be a pain to come up with 10 or 12 cool different scraps...much less 200!
    I love that rocket fabric in the bottom shot. Wonder what designs you will get back!

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  2. Taryn, the suspense of what I'll get is killing me. Its like Christmas. Can you imagine....400 different blocks?! I mean, I'm sure there will be a few duplicates. But for someone like me living in a place with limited fabric shops, I can't wait!!!

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