This week Miss Bailey hit a milestone! And as Nana, I claim bragging rights. lol
Bailey has always taken an interest in being involved with anything I do, but takes extreme interest when it has to do with gardening, art or sewing. I make art quilts, bed quilts and wall hangings and usually have several projects going at once depending on the stage they are in. This week, I was adding the final touch to a wall art quilt we were making as a gift hand stitching the binding on. Normally over the past 2 years Miss Bailey would sit next to me and want to pull the needle through the fabric after I had taken the stitch. So we'd sit together, I'd poke the needle in, come up carefully catching a few threads and then Bailey would want to pull the needle the rest of the way. She'd watch very closely and with such interest, but would never want to poke the needle herself out of fear of sticking her finger.
As usual, I explained every step to her, showed her how you go down right next to where you came up just outside the binding edge, rock the needle and come up a scant 1/8" up through the binding catching just barely a few threads, and pull the thread taunt and repeat. WELL! This day, she informed me she was ready to try herself. She carefully did as I had shown her… a little hesitant coming up with the needle so close to her little thumb nail as she poked through, but she did it! She smiled the biggest smile I've ever seen. Yeah, you did it Bailey! Immediately, she wanted to do another, and another… and after about 5 stitches, her's were perfect! I mean PERFECT! I was totally amazed.
She ended up finishing the other half of this quilt all by herself… that's about 30" in length and an hour of time. She just kept going! Not making a sound, looking so serious and paying close attention to her stitches and even backing out and trying again if she hit a hard spot or it wasn't close enough to her liking…. reminding me that I've always said 10 stitches per inch. lol I explained they didn't have to be that close because this was an art piece… I only do that when it's going to be used like her bed quilt. I did have to help her with the finish end as there are 5 layers of fabric where the two ends bind together, but she did all the rest by herself.
And you know what that child said when she was done?! "Can we do some more Nana? I want to make a woobie for the couch now!" lol And what's REALLY funny is when I told her mother Kallie, about it later and showed her the photos, Kal RAN to find her unfinished quilt and handed it to Bailey and said she could finish hers if she wanted! LOL Now understand, Kal has had that quilt in a bag for about 4 years unfinished because Kallie hates to do the hand quilting part. lol Bailey was SO excited! So guess what we are doing with our craft time this week? Yep, finishing her Mommies quilt! :)
What's even more awesome, is Bailey helped paint this quilt too and sat on my lap and helped guide the fabric while we machine quilted the interior areas. I SO wish I had someone here at the time who could have taken photos of that too. What an awesome story this would be to give to the person who will receive this art quilt now as a gift. :) Can't show you the whole thing yet for obvious reasons that this is a gift. But we have the photos and will post later. So we are off to the post office today to send our little presents off. Little later than I wanted, as Miss Bailey wanted to be a part of each one and it took a little longer than we had hoped while she was still in school past few weeks, but they will get there. :)
And I was so excited I just had to scrap a page about it right away!
I am one proud Nana!
