Live, Love Life

This pillow was made for our precious granddaughter, Laurel.

enjoying our visit to a New Jersey tea room

She just turned 14 and I couldn’t resist offering some grandmotherly advice to mark the occasion.  Putting that advice where she could read it every day seemed like a better idea than delivering a “Things to Remember” lecture.

I loved this pattern on first sight. When our son and family were here for Easter, Laurel smiled when she saw it and gave me a thumbs up to proceed. She had brought her new bedroom curtains to be shortened. The pillow was made with those scraps, so it coordinates nicely.

The pattern is Live and Love  from Kreative Kiwi. Their designs are all so appealing and stitch out flawlessly.

The text advice offered in the pattern is sound, but I had a few of my own directives. Laurel already smiles, imagines and enjoys life all the time, so I substituted PRAY, work, and family for those words. This is not to say that our near perfect granddaughter (just like yours, I’m sure!) does not already practice and know the value of these words, but emphasis on those ideals seemed more important at her stage of life.

“Family” went against the grain of this old English major because all the other words of guidance are verbs. Parallel construction dictates uniformity in grammar situations such as this, but I was unable to find a verb substitute. So I thought,”Phooey, I’ll walk on the dark side and break the rule this time!” So I did.  Then I noticed “ALWAYS,” so I feel no responsibility for ruining the grammatical propriety of the text.

In traditional crazy patch style, trims, buttons and other motifs were added.

My thread color choices have caused some regrets. The pillow is made up of 5 sections, embroidered individually in the hoop and joined on the sewing machine. I should have printed out a template of each section and taped them together to see the overall effect. Laurel, however, had no complaints.  She is too polite and ladylike to have ever made a negative comment about a gift. I love that girl!

I’m just now learning. If I had had Brother’s BES4 program when redesigning the pillow with the substituted words, the pillow would have been so much nicer. This program and is amazing! I could have easily made “PRAY” fit into that wedge shape and added other features. I must add that I am a “paid sewing consultant for Brother,” but that does not require me to endorse a product. I genuinely love BES4.

We recently spent some time visiting our son and his family in their new home in New Jersey, which is part of the reason for my long absence from this blog. The tea room that Laurel, her mother and I visited had these pretty napkin wraps in each teacup.

Our special tea time reminded me that we were, indeed, living, loving, and family.

COMING UP–We are so excited about the upcoming and long awaited arrival of a baby. Our immediate family is fresh out of babies since our last grandchild, Vivian Rose, is now 5. This new baby will soon be joining her adoptive parents, active members of our church. I am squeezing baby sewing into every rare but free moment. I have two projects done and more are planned. I hope you will stop by to see them.