granny camp 3

I picked Jade up on the Sunday before the Fourth, dropping off the boys and bringing her back. Jade is the eldest of the twins by about 15 minutes and she turned 15 last month.

Usually Jade arrives with a list of projects, a list of needed supplies, and a menu for the entire week. This year there was none of that. Monday, basically all we did was grocery shop while she worked on getting her sleep pattern adjusted.

While all the grandkids have liked to help me in the kitchen, and they still will make cookies or cupcakes or a pie if I direct one that way, Jade is the only one who has been interested in actually learning how to cook. So Tuesday night she made smothered chicken with just my supervision. She also made her usual key lime and blueberry pie on Wednesday. And she made a bacon wrapped water chestnut hors d'oeuvre for our Fourth of July dinner.

We went out Wednesday and bought some aerial fireworks and then found out Wednesday night that the county had instituted a burn ban and a ban of aerial fireworks. Thursday, however, two others in the neighborhood were shooting off their aerial fireworks so we joined in and for a short while the three of us had a little show going.

She did have one project that we had talked about doing during her week. She wanted to make a quilt she had designed on my tablet so Wednesday, we went to see Despicable Me 2 (very cute) and bought the material for her quilt.

After that, that was pretty much all we worked on. There were 80 8” squares of four pieces each. We both cut out the pieces. I did all the sewing, she did all the pressing of the seams and pinning the pieces together. She had a chart she made out that we followed and she caught all the mistakes.

Sunday was her day to return and she was up when I got up and we started on it right away. We had the top pieced, now we had to put it all together. Having never made a quilt before, it took me a while to figure out how to make the top and the bottom and the batting fit all together. We finished it about 4 PM, jumped in the truck and got her back home.

Our finished size was supposed to be 68” x 86” (the size the All Knowing Oracle told me a twin quilt was). It finished at 66” x 84” so I figure we did pretty good. We didn't get it quilted or tied because we just didn't have enough time but we used a 'fusible' batting that you set with the iron. It's temporary, intended to hold it in place while it was quilted, and washes out but I figured it would be OK til she came back for a weekend and we tied it or as I'm thinking now, maybe get someone to do some very basic machine stitching for us.

She did one other little embossed glass project. After I deconstructed the images, she cut the fiber paper and arranged it on the kiln shelf.

One more visit starting next Friday and then it looks like we will be getting back to work.