Kindergarten Rug

My little guy is growing up! He had his first day of school last week.

I had brought my dSLR with me, but... I left the SD card in the computer at home. Camera phone pictures are not my favorite, oh well.

They all had to get in the photo as well. :)

Hunter started Begindergarten, which is preschool in the morning, and kindergarten in the afternoon. His birthday is in May, and I had heard that boys do better when they are older in the class, so I figured this would be a good option. He would then do Kindergarten next year. So far he has only started the kindergarten part. Preschool starts at the beginning of September. But he LOVES it!!! He is so happy to go to school, and is actually really impatient waiting for me when it's time to go. :) Last year he had a really hard time making friends, and getting to know the other kids. This year he walks in the door and is already talking to other kids. I'm really impressed with him and how much he has grown over the summer!

With his level of excitement and his confidence, I had the thought yesterday that maybe I should have put him in full time kindergarten. Maybe he is ready, emotionally/socially. Yesterday afternoon the preschool teachers came over for a home visit, and I mentioned my passing thought to one of them. She kind of seemed excited about it, and let me know who I would need to talk to. I still didn't really think we would make the change. While I was putting the kids down for naps I googled, "boys being older vs younger in school". I found an article in the New York Times that disputed the benefits of holding your children back a year/starting them later. It said that the issue of being younger tends to level out at the end of first grade, and the learning curve of older vs younger children equals out by the end of elementary school. It also stated that younger students tend to go farther in school and have good careers (I don't know that it said better, but led to the idea that they are better off). The biggest motivator I got from the article was about keeping your children engaged and not holding off on that year. That was my biggest red flag when the preschool teachers came over, was "what is he going to learn this year?" I know some children do need to wait a year, and I'm not comparing or saying one is bad or good. But for him, I became so aware and worried that it would be a wasted year for him. I really feel like he needs to learn and be pushed and have this experience.

He's a smart boy, and he's starting to get easily bored. He could either, go to school three days a week, and roam around the house the other two days (sometimes playing with, sometimes fighting with his siblings), basically only getting a recap of what he learned in preschool last year with some extra play time. OR he could go to kindergarten 5 days a week, learning new things, being challenged, and having fun. I think the later sounds better. He is also ecstatic with the idea! Of course, I wouldn't switch him if I really didn't think he was ready, but I really do! The principal was so great to talk to, and helped me make sure that he is ready for this. Um, yep! He starts full time kindergarten tomorrow!! :) I'm excited and nervous! I know he'll do great!

It's all happening so fast!!

And all of this has made life a little busy and crazy!


As part of the school prep I made Hunter this rug for kindergarten. I guess they take naps/rest two days a week in the afternoon. Rather than buy one, I made one. Of course. :)

Hunter picked out most of the fabrics, and I threw a few more in. His favorite color is blue.

I quilted his name on one end.

I cut the strips 2.5" x 22" and sewed them all together.

For the back I made his name in Illustrator and made a bunch of PDFs with each section of the name. I printed it out on freezer paper and cut out the letters and negative spaces. Sewing it together was a little tricky, but it turned out pretty well, considering I've never done this before. :)

I used three different blue sketch prints for the letters, and a darker blue for the negative space.

I appliqued a star for the hole in the R.

Jacskson was kind of willing to model it for me, for a size comparison. :)

him sleeping

"Mom! Stop taking my picture."

I figure a bajillion photos doesn't hurt, since I never seem to blog much anymore. ;)

Hunter was so sweet when he came home from school today and saw it. He ran up to me, gave me a big hug, and said, 'Thanks!" Melts my heart. ;) 

Made It: Almost finished!!!

 You can find the pattern for this quilt over at Quiltstory.

I am SO close to being done with this quilt!! I am so excited! It was so much fun to make, especially with the trees and the flowers (though they were the hardest to quilt - having to turn the whole quilt in circles as I sewed, and trying to fit it through my machine a million times. I'm glad it's small!)

Here are some close ups of the stitching I did around the trees and flowers. 

I quilted the rest of it with some random wonky straight lines, but kept the stitching on the patterned fabric only. It will be interesting to see how it washes up. I'm actually really nervous about that.

I kept the thread white on the back so it would for sure show up. I think it's really fun! (I purposefully didn't applique it until it was all sandwiched together. I think it adds a bit more interest on the back of the quilt. Plus since making my picnic blanket, I think one of my favorite new things is seeing the stitched design on the side where you can't see the picture.)

Since taking these pictures (10 min ago) I've trimmed it down and it is now ready to bind! I am thinking about going with a solid orange binding. What do you think???



oh, AND I can't forget to mention my ugly gloves. :)

I picked these up at smiths for a couple bucks a while ago. I originally bought them to help me with the FMQ because I've heard quite a few people say they really like to use gloves, but I have found that I really love them for everything that is remotely big and takes effort to feed through the machine. It made appliquéing this quilt, as well as quilting it, SO much easier! I love the rubber fingers. And my boys love to feel them too. :) High fives all around when I wear these things!