Sewing this and that

My day has been all about things to do with sewing ~ so if you're not into sewing ya might want to skip this one ~ just kidding. It's about the family and me AND sewing. First off I went to one of the local quilt shops to see about them donating some fabric for the back of the 3rd grade auction quilt and got a job offer. Now, they've been asking me for a while if I'd come work for them and while there is a part of me that would like to be back in that environment ~ helping customers with questions and picking out fabric etc, it just doesn't seem conducive to having two kids in elementary school ~ until today. They proposed that I work until it's time to meet the kids at the bus stop and then come back with the kids to finish the last couple of hours and the kids can sit in the class room, have a snack and work on their homework. Sounds good right? Again, there's a part of me that would like that until I realized two things. I'd still need time to work in the classrooms at the kids school cause I made a commitment that I plan to honor and then there is summer coming up. I know I'd never make enough to cover the cost of summer camp for the two kids. Although we had talked about putting them in camp a couple of weeks just for them to have something to do over the summer. I guess I'll talk with the shop more when I get back from Alabama and see if we can work something out. If nothing else, maybe I can get back into teaching a couple of classes here and there.
Speaking of classes ~ one of the things I was telling the gals at the shop about was about a great way to use (sell) charm packs. Charm packs are 5" squares of fabric that incorporate an entire line of fabrics. So you start off with a basic 9 patch (9 pieces of 5" squares sewn together like this)
and then you recut it and turn it around and sew them back together like this.
And you end up with something completely different yet still very basic and easy. Now I opted to make every middle of my 9 patches the same solid pink but you really don't have to but I like the way it comes out and gives the top unity. Won't this make the cutest "girlie" quilt top? It would be a great quick technique class.

Speaking of sewing (see I told you this post would be about all things sewing!) I taught Julianne to make fabric yo yo's. It's great hand sewing and I figure she can take it in the car with us for the long trip to Alabama. She's gonna pick out some scraps from my stash and I'll put together a kit for her to take along. It's a great project and super easy using the clover yo yo maker. Here she is working on the first one
And here it is all finished. There's a ton of things you can make with these but we'll get to that another time.
Took the kids out to dinner tonight to a Bar-b-que place(Big Mistake!) They (well Julianne) never eats her dinner although she did tonight but Nathaniel decided to be the difficult one. He decided he didn't like what he ordered (a giant turkey leg) and got all pissy but he ended up eating a good bit of it and then Richard and I shared our dinners with him so he was well fed. Julianne managed to spill her giant root beer in her lap and all over the table and bench and Richard and even though we really didn't yell at her she just cried and cried. She's so melodramatic sometimes. Here's her brother by the limo he "wishes" we had taken out to dinner and if you look very closely at Julianne you can see the root beer stain on her white (of course) pants.
Oh and the place was called "Slow and Low" Bar-b-que and they had this cute little motorcycle that Nathaniel just had to try out!
Well I'm off to bed. So, how was your day?