Hercules Quilt

I completed my husband’s “Twelve Labors of Hercules” quilt a few days after his birthday. The only part I had not completed by his actual birthday was hand-sewing the binding onto the quilt. The quilt is based on a free quilt pattern from Cranston Village called A Day at the Calico Zoo. I liked that there were twelve blocks – the exact number of labors of Hercules. That each block was framed was nice too. Of course, I didn’t quite get it all right. I did sew some of the frames together wrong. I’ll try to make him a nicer quilt someday on this same topic. Despite all its imperfections it was fun to make. My mom helped embroider it, my three-year-old cut the string after my mom was done with her embroidery and my six-year-old picked out some of the color combinations (look at our spiffy pink and purple boar).

Lessons Learned:
Buy Good Fabric. The fabric on the front was all purchased from a large department store. It was unforgiving and a pain to work with. I'm thinking I stopped working on the quilt because I was having such an issue with it.
Buy Good Thread. I was surprised that a different thread (read better than the cheap kind at that same department store) made a difference.
Just Do It. In the end I just went with I can do it. Worst case scenario is I have to re-do or rip something out. I actually did rip off the first binding I had sewn onto the quilt - it just didn't look right. This doesn't look quite right either. When I looked back at the original design I noticed it was supposed to be a big picture window border (like each block is framed with a window) as the border. Ooops - next time I'm sure I'll do better.

My dad helped to entertain the three-year-old when she wasn’t using the scissors by making her a butterfly. She rolled up a tube of paper and wanted pipe cleaners attached to it.

This is what the first version looked like. She then became less than happy when the wings kept sliding off of her paper. My dad, being resourceful, stated he thought he knew where an empty toilet paper roll was.

Within ten minutes my daughter had a new butterfly (shown above) and was extremely happy with it. I love the button eyes! When my older daughter arrived home from school my dad asked her if she wanted a butterfly too. She thought about it and asked if he could make her a maiasaura instead. He made her a butterfly.