Meet Maddie – Craft Gossip

Maddie is my lovely niece who is making her first quilt. Not missing a beat (stitch), I invited her to come up for a visit to my house. I promised to take her on a field trip to The Rabbit’s Lair shop and let her pick out 16 fat quarters in honor of her having just turned 16.

Be sure to read Craft Gossip Needlework Editor Denise Felton’s review of The Rabbit’s Lair when she was also the Quilting Editor. See the review. Also be sure to check out the Rabbit’s Lair online store.

Maddie decided to come, and she, along with her mom Robin and her Aunt Charlotte, spent the entire Labor Day weekend with me. On Saturday we (including my daughter Brittany and grandchild Rowan) all piled into the ‘burb and drove to Rogers, Arkansas where The Rabbit’s Lair is located. Maddie had no trouble finding 16 fat quarters to add to her stash. She got some beauties, favoring their wonderful selection of batiks.

Saturday evening we washed, dried and ironed all of her fabrics (she’s been gathering them for months). On Sunday, Maddie began cutting the strips that would become part of her queen size quilt.

She decided to do a string quilt using the Kaleidoscope quilt tutorial from Film in the Fridge blog. But instead of using white in the middle of her blocks like Ashley did, she would use brown.

Here is one of her blocks as she stitches the strips into place.

The cousins stayed up late and by Monday Maddie had completed six blocks. Doesn’t she look happy! Bravo Maddie, your Aunt Scarlett cannot wait to see the rest.

Technorati Tags: Maddie’s first quilt, string piece, paper foundation, Aunts, cousins, fabric shopping, The Rabbit’s Lair, Rogers, Arkansas

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I recently shared a bunch of dog-themed learning activities in honor of National Pet Month. Now it’s time for the cats (which are actually my favorite, shoutout to Baron and Haru!).

Homemade Heather has a great set of cat activity printable sheets including the life cycle of a cat, parts of a cat, a page kids can fill out about their cat and a little reading comprehension with a cat theme.

World of Printables has a super cute cat coloring page that asks you to color cats of different shapes in different colors and then count them. Like an I Spy, but with cats!

Speaking of shapes, give kids practice tracing basic shapes and writing the words for them (square, circle, oval, triangle, diamond, etc. there are 12 shapes in all) with these cat-themed printables from Tot Schooling. These would be good to laminate so you can use over and over while kids are learning about shapes.

Royal Baloo has a great printable cat pack that includes activities for toddlers up to third grade, so this is perfect if you’re homeschooling kids of different ages. There’s literacy and math activities in this pack, including shape tracing and matching for the little ones, beginning sounds and skip counting for pre-k kiddos and addition, multiplication, writing pages and more for older kids.

Fluffy Tots has a cute printable emergent reader on a cat theme, and Sunny Day Family has a super cute cat matching memory game you can print. Build a cat with the printable from PJs and Paint, or cut and fold a stretching cat with this activity from Krokotak.

1 Plus 1 Plus 1 Equals 1 has a cat unit study and printables for kids who are learning cursive writing. There are also three part cards about cats, a printable on scientific classification of cats and more.

Your Therapy Source shared this cute motor skill idea of using pipe cleaners as cat whiskers, which makes a fun quiet time activity or something kids can use in the car.

Take your love of cats on the go with this printable cat activity placemat from The Art Kit Blog. It includes a word search, maze, word scramble and some cats to color, tic tac toe boards and more.

Older kids can learn how to build Lego cats with these instructions from Frugal Fun for Boys and Girls.

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