delight in life

staying at home

A few weeks ago I went back to my office for the first time since Joey was born. I took a big box with me and packed up my desk, because I have decided to quit my job and stay home with my baby. The decision was so simple, and so hard. Of course I was going to stay home. I don't think I ever truly pictured myself as a working mother once in all the time I was preparing for motherhood. And yet, when it actually came time to decide for real, I was wracked with doubt and second-guessing. Could we get by without my salary? Was I handing over my feminist card to become a housewife? Would I be able to get a job if I wanted to go back to work in a few years?

To be clear, I don't think either working or staying at home is better or more right than the other. My incredible mother stayed at home to raise us 3 kids; Chris's incredible mother worked while raising her 7 children. I have friends that work and friends that stay at home. Every mama and each family is different and there is no one-size-fits-all solution. That might seem obvious, but I absolutely don't want to seem like I'm disparaging anyone's choice.

I finally wrestled down all the doubt and questions and decided that regardless of everything else, being at home would make me happiest. So that's what I did. And I love it. And I am so, so grateful that Chris was supportive and that we were able to make it happen. I know some people want to stay home but don't even have the choice, and I recognize that it is a luxury that Chris and I can do this. I try to remember every day that I am lucky to be here, and so blessed.

gees bend quilts

Yesterday I had a great opportunity to go hear two of the famous Gees Bend quilters speak. The Gees Bend quilters, if you're not familiar with them, are a group of women who live in an isolated community in Alabama. The community exists where a slave plantation once was, and the women are descendants of the slaves who worked that plantation. They make beautiful, free-form improvisational quilts in the same style that has been passed down for years and years. Wikipedia has a little bit more information, and this fascinating (very long) article from the LA Times has a lot more information. The article focuses on Mary Lee Bendolph, who is one of the two women I heard speak.

They had a handful of quilts on display, and I loved them. They're so different from what I do. I use quilt shop fabrics, mostly patterned fabric, neat and symmetrical and measured quilt blocks. These are mostly solids, mostly fabric salvaged from clothing, and they're wild, uneven, and asymmetrical. I was completely fascinated.

I'm really looking forward to trying to add a little Gees Bend influence into my quilts.

How great is that hot pink? Loretta Pettway Bennett spoke a little bit about the process of designing her quilts. She used to sketch them out with colored pencils to plan, but now she tends to let the fabrics she has on hand determine the colors, and she lays the pieces out on the floor to design as she goes. She explained that she had once tried to make a quilt using a pattern, but she hated it. She prefers her freeform style, where she doesn't have to measure or worry about precision; she can just express herself. "There are no mistakes in my quilting." I loved that.

Mary Lee sang for us and told us how the women sing as they quilt together, as a method of group prayer and bonding. It was beautiful.

Look Where He Brought Me

Here's a video I found online of some of the women singing:

I almost flaked out at the last minute, not wanting to head downtown with Joey, but I'm really glad I decided to go in the end. Thanks to Patton Boggs for putting together this event! 

square-in-square

I made this pretty little quilt because I ordered two yards of the green fabric for another fabric, and it turned out to be the wrong color, so I needed to put it to use somewhere else.

I decided to go with a simple square-in-square design, one I've enjoyed piecing before. I quilted it by outlining all the seams on either side. Simple and pretty!

It's a small quilt, designed to be used in a stroller or carseat. (I love this one I made for Joey!) I love all the fabrics in this one. The green one looks almost sparkly to me! It is from the Les Amis line. Is it just me or are the Les Amis fabrics nice and soft? Like, softer than usual. They almost feel like Art Gallery fabrics, which are known for their silky hand. Anyway, it makes this quilt feel nice.

This quilt is listed in my shop!

swinging for the first time

rolling

Two nights ago, Chris ran out to the store and I was sitting on the living room floor watching Joey play on his activity mat. (Best thing ever, by the way.) For about a month now he's been able to roll onto his side and back, and he'll do that over and over for an hour, slowly working his way around in a circle. That's what he was doing, when suddenly I saw an extra head movement that made me think he might be about to go all the way onto his tummy. I grabbed my phone and began recording so I'd be sure to catch it when he did. I sat there for more than five minutes, recording essentially nothing.

Chris came home, so I stopped recording and went into the kitchen to talk to him. "Hey, look at that!" Chris says. I turn around and the little stinker had chosen that moment to roll over!

I tried for the rest of the night to get it on camera, but he's smarter than me, I guess. He only did it once more, and it was (again!) when my back was turned. Something tells me this is just the start of a lifetime of him outsmarting my camera.

a quilt, and an exciting new thing!

This is definitely my favorite quilt I've made. I used Lizzy House's Constellations fabric, which is in the running for my favorite fabric line ever.

It's kind of funny how the quilt came to be: it was Chris's idea! I made two 9" wonky star blocks one day when I was just playing around.

Chris saw them and suggested I make giant versions into a reversible quilt. Which I loved, and did immediately.

It was a little tricky to figure out how to quilt this one. I couldn't do my usual outlining of seams because the seams aren't the same on the front and back and that would definitely look weird. I settled on lots of random straight lines across the quilt, and I love the way it looks.

And now for the exciting new thing: this quilt is for sale! I decided to start a shop and I'm super nervous and super excited about it. There are a few other quilts listed as well, and I'll be posting about all of them soon. So please, go take a look!

the weekend with my little sidekick

Chris went out of town last weekend and it was just me and Joey. I have to be honest: I was really nervous. I thought it would be the world's longest weekend and I would be half-crazy by the end of it, without Chris to share the parenting load with me. To my very pleasant surprise, we actually had a great time!

I think the biggest reason for this is that we had a car. We're a one-car family, so when Chris is at work, Joey and I are limited to places within walking distance, which is not too much. (Oh, how I miss living three feet from a Metro station!) It can start to make a girl go a little stir-crazy sometimes. But we went all over this weekend.

On Saturday, Joey and I went to his first baseball game! It was so fun. My hometown Braves were in town playing (stomping on) the Nationals and any time they're here, I try to go. Joey did so great and I was thrilled that I was able to enjoy the game without having to worry about him. Plus he looked adorable in his Braves onesie (a perfect gift from some thoughtful friends). A man sitting near us was there with his 18-year-old son. When he saw Joey's onesie, he pointed to his son and said, "This is what you'll have in 18 years!" I loved that.

It was a perfect baseball day, sunny and breezy. I'm so grateful for gorgeous spring weather! It was a relatively mild winter, so I expected spring to be early and warm, but actually we got off to a slow start, with lots of snowy, cloudy, and rainy days in March. I thought these 70 and sunny days would never get here, and now that they are I'm so happy. Molly and I celebrated by picnicking with our kids by the Potomac on Sunday. Joey is game for anything as long as he can sleep, and that's just what he did. We were at the park for 3 hours and he was asleep for two and a half! It was fine with me—I was able to stretch out on a quilt in the sun and relax while he napped. Perfect. Day.

We missed Chris a lot (FaceTime is awesome!), but I'm so glad Joey and I were able to have such a fun time together. My little buddy!

wherein i attempt (again) to become a gardener

If you've been around this blog a while, you might recall that around this time every year I write a post about my garden plans. They usually involve grand ambition and dreams of meals entirely from my container garden all summer long. However, if you read through my history of garden posts, you'll notice that never comes to fruition. What actually happens is that I get overwhelmed by my plans of container beans and tomatoes and lettuce, I plant a few pots with doomed seedlings, and I grow a fantastic crop of basil. Every. Year.

This year, this year will be different. (She says, just like she says every year.) No but really. To be honest, I was pretty overwhelmed by our new, huge space and with the time demands of a baby, I figured I just wouldn't mess with a garden at all this year. Pretty sad, huh?

But then I went to Lowe's to buy a closet shelf and it was the first day of spring and it's been so cold and the garden center beckoned. And I couldn't resist buying 5 small plants. And 2 houseplants. (That's how you know it's spring, right? Go to the hardware store for a shelf, leave with a pile of plants and a shovel.)

I decided that to keep from being overwhelmed, I would keep the focus small. There is a tiny garden plot in the corner of our front yard by the driveway, and this year, that is all I will care about. There used to be a massive ugly mound of liriope there, but as of last week, it is gone. (PS, that stuff is really hard to dig up.) And as of this morning, my five little plants are there. (Lavender, 2 phlox plants, saxifraga, and dianthus, for the curious.) It's almost embarrassing right now, how sparse and meager it is.

I also have some seeds to sow there (zinnias! daisies! marigolds!), and I did buy a handful of herb seeds for a small herb garden. (I haven't decided whether it'll be in the ground or in containers. Also, I bought lettuce seeds as a test for our shady backyard, and I randomly got carrot seeds at Target yesterday. I don't know where they'll go yet. You see why I usually get overwhelmed quickly: even when I say I'm keeping my focus small, I end up with plants for 4 different spaces in our yard. But really: herb gardens are kind of low stress anyway (I'm such a pro at basil by now), and the lettuce and carrots will be really fun if they work out, but the little spot by the driveway is my main deal for the year.

I was going to say that the herbs and lettuce and carrots are just little side experiments, but for me right now, it's all an experiment. I've never had a yard. I've never planted things in the ground. I've never had full sun. I've never grown anything successfully except for basil and a few mint plants. Like a proper experimenter, I'll be taking copious notes and carefully tracking progress along the way. Hopefully I have good things to share!

project life 2012

Believe it or not, I did actually keep up with Project Life last year, though I completely gave up on posting the spreads on the blog. I stopped for a few months during the late spring/early summer when I was in my first trimester pregnant and couldn't keep my eyes open for more than five minutes, and I thought that would be the end of the whole project, but in August I managed to get all caught up with the whole summer.

I didn't try to make a spread for each of the weeks I missed. That would have been pointless since mostly I was just lying around on the couch, not taking any photos. Instead I printed out photos I had and did the whole summer in 5 or 6 spreads, hitting just the highlights. I also did the whole month of August in one spread. I'm so glad I gave myself permission to be flexible and let go of the "rules" of Project Life. If I hadn't, I never would have gone back to working on it, and I'm so happy I have 2012 documented in that way.

2012 is broken up into 2 albums. Most of the first album was actually posted on the blog (you can see them here), so here are a few highlights of the second.

The title page:

(The pink block is actually fabric, and the white one is a woodgrain textured paper. The bottom left is all hand-stamped by me.)

The month of August:

A spread from December:

The last week of the year:

I had waaaay too many pictures to choose from and definitely not enough time, so I went super simple. Nothing else was worth talking about this week anyway. :)

And finally, the end page:

On the right is a Big Envelope Page filled with all the cards we got in the mail in 2012 (excluding Christmas cards).

Seriously, seriously love this project.

new craft: cross stitch

In November I stumbled across The Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery, a cross-stitch pattern company. They were doing a "mystery winter sampler", where you get a new part of the pattern each week and theoretically you've stitched the whole thing by December. I'd never cross-stitched before, but it looked like fun and for some reason I thought I needed another project, in between frantically finishing Christmas quilts and sewing things for the baby's room. I signed up and got to stitching. I really enjoyed it! It took until January to finish, but at least it'll be ready for next Christmas. I think I'll frame it and set it out on a shelf for the holidays.

I went ahead and signed up for an "of-the-month" sampler for 2013. This one has a new pattern piece for each month, not for each day. Much more manageable for me right now! The patterns tend to be a little cutesy for my taste, but I solved that in the winter sampler by removing the faces from anything that doesn't have a face in real life. And honestly, I'm doing it mostly because I enjoy the process (and the beautiful thread), not because I plan to display the finished product.