I get a week off!

I made two of these for my two intervention groups at school.

photo by Nicole Gerulat

The tutorial is found here, at One Charming Party.
After reading a Thanksgiving story to the kids, I brought in the turkey on a platter, and I cut it open, to reveal this:

photo by Nicole Gerulat

The kids were so cute, so enthusiastic about the popcorn-filled turkey! I chose two students in each of my two groups to get the drumsticks. They looked so cute eating popcorn out of the drumsticks! Of course, I was too involved to remember to take pictures until it was all over. Besides, I can't put pictures of the kids online, and I didn't want to just take pictures of their hands and the backs of their heads. Here is my picture of what it looked like when we were all done!

One of the kids brought me flowers today!
And another brought me a present!

Yesterday one of the kinder teachers and I had an impromptu talk with the school principal about the intervention class. We told her the kids are doing really well, and she was very supportive of the whole concept. This morning she took me aside and said she'd looked over the assessments, and the kids in my class have not only made great progress, they've progressed at a greater rate than the kids in the regular class, and they are all approaching, at, or above their target scores.
The affirmation of my work felt so great to hear! I know the teachers have been really supportive and enthusiastic about the class, but the objective data sealed it. And today the kids were all hugging me, and telling me they'll miss me (even though I'll still see them every day at lunch!), because after the Thanksgiving break I'll be starting with a new group of kids! This next group of kids will be more of a challenge. The first group was mostly bright, ready to learn kids who were intimidated or uninitiated. This next group just doesn't get it. Bring it on! But I'm really going to enjoy a week off work, first!

Modify Tradition Quilt Blocks

I'm having fun trying new quilt blocks with the Modify Traditions quilt-along, and with this collection of fabrics! Some months ago, a co-worker told about her small closets in her small house, and how she'd tried to convince her husband to give up his accumulation of Hawaiian shirts from the days when he wore them to work at Trader Joe's. I suggested that if he decided to let them go, I'd be happy to have them to use as quilt material. A couple weeks after our conversation, she came home from work and found hubby stuffing three grocery bags full of shirts to take to the Goodwill! Hooray for Kara and her new access to closet space, and thank you! Hooray for me, since I cut them up and started immediately playing with them!

First I made this quilt top, which is hideously, frenetically busy!

I was going for a "Bento Box" design, but there's not enough contrast between the fabrics. It's my first UFO (unfinished object).

I also made some cute pillow covers for Kara and her husband to thank them for the bounty, but I forgot to take pictures. Oh well.

Then, I was looking for fabric at the thrift store, and found five yards (that's five yards!) of high quality, even-weave, natural color linen! For $3.95!! For all of it!!

When I brought it home I washed it, and it's in perfect condition. I burned some to see if, surely, it had some synthetic something in it, and got soft, black ash and the smell of burning paper. According to this, it's mercerized linen. I think it's beautiful!

Now I'm putting the Hawaiian prints and the linen together in traditional style blocks, and I love what I'm getting. I'm playing around with different ideas to put them together; linen or contrasting sashing between blocks, or without sashing altogether. Any suggestions?

Doesn't it look like sand and sea and beach glass?

Yesterday it was time to get out these:

Some friends came over, and we made some of these:

John made these:

I made these:

We all ate most of these: