Grandma's Charm Square Quilt

In the quest to make my grandmother something for Christmas, another Elizabeth Hartman pattern, the Charm Squares Baby Quilt Pattern, caught my eye. My grandmother is not a baby, but she certainly does not need a large quilt when she is resting on her new couch! For her, my mother and I thought this would be the perfect quilt.

Front

Back

During my mother's visit last week, little did she know that we would be having so much fun in my new sewing room! She assisted me in selecting, cutting and organizing the fabric. A few of the fabrics are from Salt Water by Tula Pink and one of them is from Field Study by Anna Maria Horner...if I remember correctly. I'm not a fabric expert by any means, but I can definitely understand how buying fabric could be an addiction!

I sketched out the plan for the back over morning coffee!

I quilted a personal note on the bottom, but I almost wish I would have just quilted the entire thing with wavy lines. Oh well, Grandma will probably love the note more anyway!

My favorite part in making this quilt was my mother right by my side experiencing the entire quilt-making process. She did all of the pressing while I did the sewing. Together, we created not only a quilt but memories that will last a lifetime. Thank you, Mama, for all of your hard work! This quilt was a team effort!

The Gifts That Keep On Giving

Recently, I have been spending most of my time planning to move, moving out, moving in, buying new appliances, organizing my bills with my new address and all of those little things that add up to be a lot of things...but it's all worth it because...

I have a sewing room that is 10 feet by 12 feet! 

So, as I entered this new sewing room...I just wanted to learn how to make a few new things. Learning takes my mind off of everything. It's a stress relief. Luckily, there are several awesome tutorials by some talented bloggers. Little do they know, (or maybe they do) that they give a gift that keeps on giving.

As you may know, my Mothers mean the world to me. My Mother is my right hand lady, my Grandma Marge and Grandma Chin are my other two Mothers. I wanted to send them something just because I know they will appreciate it, enjoy it and be proud of me. I think that is the reason I love to sew. Just for those three ladies. 

Jeni at In Color Order has a Lined Drawstring Bag Tutorial that rocks! I peruse her blog from time to time and I love all of her work. So, naturally I went there and found inspiration to make my Mothers these bags!

Grandma Marge

 Grandma Chin

 Mama

 Annie

I was searching for a creative way to send these items, so I found this tutorial from A Beautiful Mess by Elsie and Emma. I love their site! So much inspiration!

Here are the items I wanted to send...

I took a paper bag, folded it up with sharp creases, and sewed the sides with a couple different decorative stitches.

I love tutorials and the beautiful people that put them out there for learners like me. Someone shares their talent with the world by writing a post, I read their blog, get inspired, make a gift, send it to my family, they smile, share with their friends and pass on the love. Tutorials are the gifts that keep on giving!

Distributive Duo Quilt (Part 2 of 2)

After I had such a good time making the first distributive property quilt, I just knew that my work was not complete! I had to make another quilt to show a different way to look at the same problem-29 x 39. So basically, here is a new quilt illustrating a new strategy using the same problem!

This strategy is basically single number partitioning by a decade number. For example, I did not partition or break up the factor 29. The only factor partitioned was the 39 using the decade number 10, so I ended up with 10 + 10 + 10 + 9 = 39.

This strategy is easier for me to do mentally because I only have to keep track of the partitioning of one factor in my mind.  Also, when students think of this problem in context of a real-life situation, many times they will use this strategy because it doesn't always make sense to break up the amount in the group. Let's look at an example: Bettina has 39 photo albums. There are 29 pictures in each album. How many total pictures does she have? Based on the context of the problem, a child would likely partition the photo albums (groups) and keep the number in each group together.

The quilt also helps visualize how you could use compensation to solve the problem.  For example, since 29 is so close to 30, I can actually solve the problem by using (30 x 10) + (30 x 10) + (30 x 10) + (30 x 9). The tricky part in finding the exact answer comes from making sure to deal with the extra at the end because I added a row of 39 by rounding to 30. So, now I have to subtract a row of 39. Can you follow my thinking?

Back to the pictures...

Tagged!

The Distributive Duo! 29 x 39 = 1,131 (in square inches)

Two different quilt backs. The left one has beautiful elephants and the right one has feathers!

Thanks for reading about my quilts and the mathematics involved! Can you think of another way to look at this same problem? My friend Diana did! I think I might have to make a 3rd quilt. 

Could this be the beginning of the distributive trio?

Distributive Duo Quilt (Part 1 of 2)

Heads Up: This is a math concept quilt so be prepared to read about math! I will be creating a series of math projects. If you are interested in reading about these, you will find them linked on this page.

I knew I needed a lap quilt for the office, but I went back and forth about the type of pattern I was going to create. Should I do another log cabin, something three-dimensional looking, just improvise something?....I really couldn't decide. Then it hit me like a ton of bricks! I proudly present to you the Distributive Duo Quilt (Part 1 of 2)!

A little background story...

Have you ever felt like you KNOW you learned something in school several times but you never UNDERSTOOD what you learned until one day you suddenly UNDERSTAND what you thought you KNEW? Yep. Something like that.

That question sort of describes my journey with elementary mathematics and is a big part of who I am today. I used to have math anxiety and now my full time job has privileged me the opportunity to relearn elementary mathematics. It's one of the most interesting jobs I've had to date. Approximately one-third of my work day is spent studying patterns, making conjectures and learning the best way for children to have this same opportunity.

For the 'Distributive Duo Quilts', I wanted a lap quilt for the office paired with the area model using square inches to show the distributive property of multiplication or commonly called, the distributive property of multiplication over addition. This quilt is basically the multiplication problem, 29 x 39--in square inches. If you are a 3rd, 4th or 5th grade teacher this might look familiar because it is an important mathematical model! : )

A big understanding in elementary math is that numbers can be composed and decomposed. So, I purposefully sewed the rows of squares into groups of 5-an important benchmark number.

Here are all of the pieces before they came together.

'Mac the Ripper' was in the mix as I sewed the rows and columns of squares together.

I love how the back looked with all of the sewing. I wore it around like a cape for a few days. : )

Then, I draped it in the window for birthday week! The way the light illuminated the sewing patterns in the quilt was gorgeous. I didn't really want to quilt it at first! 

Quilt Sandwich!

Annie and the halfway done yellow binding! She is the real owner of all my quilts.

Skyping with Grandma!

It feels so satisfying to put a label on my projects! The backing fabric was full of those pretty feathers. I love feathery things!

Here is a close up so you can see the square inches. Now, I know that you could get your calculator out and figure out exactly how many square inches are in this quilt, but how could you estimate the product using the distributive property? (HINT: there are several ways to do it.)

This quilt shows a certain type of strategy called double number partitioning by decade numbers. Many people refer to this as partial products. In this case, I partitioned both factors by decade numbers, for example, 30 is partitioned into 30 and 9 and 29 is partitioned into 20 and 9. In the picture below, the factors are labeled in black. The products are labeled in white. There are basically 4 number sentences when partitioned in this manner:

20 x 30 = 600 (teal)

20 x 9 = 180 (mint)

9 x 39 = 270 (light blue)

9 x 9 = 81 (tangerine)

This strategy is the one that resembles the standard U.S. algorithm for multiplication. However, when children don't understand the meaning of the algorithm, mental computation is often difficult. One common error would be that students would only multiply 20 x 30 and 9 x 9,  forgetting the other two number sentences. Worse yet, some students never actually build an area model to help understand the meaning of multiplication.

The distributive property is really fascinating, so here is another way that you can look at this quilt. When I quilted the vertical and horizontal lines, I thought it would be useful to do the sewing in groups of 25 or every 5 rows and 5 columns. Twenty-five is a benchmark number that students enjoy using when counting. So, even if you didn't understand the multiplication in the quilt, you could have another way to count up all the squares.

Whoa! Haha! Now, this might not be the most efficient way to tackle the problem, but I did it to illustrate that there are many ways to manipulate numbers when learning and understanding concepts.

For example, let's look at this part of the quilt. If you remember, it represents 9 x 9. If you didn't know this multiplication fact (yes, I know the 9s trick, but let me ask you...why does that work?) how could you solve the problem using smaller facts that you do know? When I made this section of the quilt I noticed that 9x9, which is a square number, has two other square numbers inside of it! (5x5=25 and 4x4=16) And that got me thinking, is that true for all square numbers? It's these types of questions that elementary students should ask and answer every day in their math class! 

If you are confused about the distributive property, here is a video from KHAN Academy that might help. If you are a teacher considering what you could do with students, I would take a problem-solving approach vs. watching a KHAN Academy video where he explains it. Let the students discover and explain instead! Simply ask, "What is the area of a 29 inch by 39 inch rectangle?" Give them base-ten blocks and/or inch grid paper and have some fun! :)

Thank you for reading (part 1 of 2)--especially if you have math anxiety! : ) 

I made another quilt showing a different way to consider the distributive property. It's my favorite! Stay tuned for Part 2! : )

Lavender Thank You Hearts

Recently, I celebrated my birthday! I have officially been around the sun 29 times!

Each year, I am truly blessed to have family and friends who always reach out to me. In fact, my Mama, Aunt Pam in Colorado, and both of my Grandmothers have never missed one! My boyfriend and his father have been celebrating all month long with me (I love 'BirthDayMonth'!) and my work friends made my day special as well. So, for all of these amazing people in my life, I created some thank you gifts as an expression of my gratitude!

 Heart-shaped lavender sachets!

Look what came in the mail! My labels!!! This project was a perfect way to get familiar with sewing them in the seam.

The same day I decided to make the hearts, I remembered that the farmer's market has TEXAS lavender! I purchased this quart sized bundle. My house smells goooooood.

Each heart has my label on the side.

I enjoy picking out fabric for my loved ones. When I Skyped with my Grandmother last week she loved the yellow fabric and my Mom was drawn to the purple. I love video chat!

The numbered ones were for my math expert friends.

Once I made one, I couldn't STOP!

Birthday rose blessings before the packages went into the mail. There will be some fragrant mail boxes this week!

THANK YOU to everyone for remembering me on my birthday!

The Last Week of Summer Break

This week has been full of inspiration! So of course, I have lots of 'irons in the fire' and quite a few things that I want to finish up before summer break is over. Oh wait, that's only one day! I better get on it!

A few months back, my friend shared an apron pattern she found on Pinterest and I would like to share the link with you! This site is called sew4home and it has several projects to browse. I’ve made some pillows, bags, and other odds and ends using tutorials on this site. Clear directions, clear pictures…very helpful.

So, here is an apron that I finally shipped out this week. Last year, I made a few aprons of this style for Christmas gifts and my Aunt requested one with specific colors that coordinated with her kitchen. I didn't have an extra person around to actually model the apron and someone just wasn't feeling like taking pictures!

Thanks for the help Annie Kitty! ;)

 Anyway, you get the idea!

Wooden buttons

 There is even a place for a dish towel!

Convenient Pockets

Trying out my decorative stitches...they add such sweet details sometimes! These were little flowers.

You could definitely wear this reversible, however, I didn't put pockets on the back. It looks cute either way though!

In other quilt-y type news, I’ve recently learned about AND joined the Austin Modern Quilt Guild! WOW! This is an amazing group of quilters and I am thrilled and inspired to be a member of this group. If you are interested, they meet every second Thursday of the month at this fabulous shop called Remnants:fiber[culture]. You have to 'Like' this local business on FB! The energetic and super friendly shop owner Jessica rocks! She’s got all kinds of modern quilting fabrics in her store and so much going on that I don’t even know about yet, but I know I will be back. She helped me pick out some fabrics for a baby quilt that I am finishing up.  

Seriously, I learned so much from her in the 20 minutes I was there and as a new quilter I appreciate all the help I can get. Check out her blog and definitely visit her store! I'm sure I'll be talking more about this place in future posts. Thank you for everything, Jessica!

In puppet news...here's a tiny sneak peek at a new friend...

Let's just say that positivity and smiles are the center of this one's heart. Blog post coming soon!

Lastly...My Love is For You! Thank YOU for reading my thoughts and thank YOU H+TI for creating these beautiful songs!