Lily's blocks

As you know,

the girls and I are reading the Little House books,

and they are sewing along with Amy's girls (sorta)

As with Lexi,

the first block Lily made was the log cabin.

(she has a fabulous 1/4 in seam!)

It was quickly joined 

by a block of our own design,

Calico Dress.

I simply drew a dress 

and enlarged it,

then traced it onto the back of fabric that we'd 

adhered lightweight interfacing too.

(No more applique without stabilizers for us!)

After cutting out the dress,

we glue basted it onto Lily's background fabric of choice,

and she sewed it on with invisible thread.

Then she added some stitching,

to define the waistband,

and give the appearance of gathers and folds in the skirt.

That was when she learned about pulling your top thread

to the bottom

for knotting,

instead of locking stitches with the sewing machine.

Black Susan was a super fun block to make,

and in making it,

Lily learned (one way) to make half square triangles.

When cutting the fabric, 

I realized I could eliminate 2 seams,

which made it even easier to put together.

The girls wanted a black fabric that wasn't entirely solid,

and when we couldn't find anything locally that was suitable,

I ordered  'black dress' Basic Grey Grunge

 from the only shop I could find it in

because we all agreed it was perfect.

Lil' started working on her next block,

(another one that we've added)

by sewing it as leaders/enders,

and she's already pieced a good chunk of it.

Lexi's sewed her dress block also,

and most of Black Susan.

We'll share them when she's finished.

We're having a great time 

reading and sewing

together,

and I admit to considering

more than once,

catching up with them,

and making a Little House quilt

right along with them.

A sweet friend gave us a hard cover copy of 

On the Banks of Plum Creek,

and we've decided we'd like to own matching hardbacks

of all of the Little House books,

so if you happen to have some that you no longer want,
we'd be happy to take them off your hands :-)

Little House in the Big Woods, first 3 blocks