Isaiah 40:31

A fun fathers day gift commission from a friend.

I haven't had a good excuse to draw type for a while, it was fun to work on!

Isaiah 40:31

Quilts are wonderful

A couple of weeks ago, my dear friend Jaclyn and her husband Matt had a beautiful baby boy, Liam Andrew.

I've never made an actual pieced quilt before, but I thought it would make a great baby gift, so I tried it out. Turns out, it was the worst/best idea ever. It was super fun, but now all I ever want to be doing is quilting. It's so satisfying! You can see your progress as you go and it's pretty every step of the way. It requires some serious perfection, and your perfection pays off in corners that meet perfectly and seams that lay flat. I'm not so much a fan of cutting out the pieces, but I think it might be easier if I had better tools than an x-acto knife, an 18" cork backed metal ruler and a 11"x17" cutting mat.

perfectly baby sized.

I have a decent stash of fabric, and was able to use only fabric I already had.  Maybe it's bigger than a decent sized stash...  I'm super happy with the color and pattern combo!  

Even though I've never quilted before, I decided to just make everything up. Following directions isn't always my favorite thing.  I went with a simple triangle pattern, and the quilting is just a straight machine stitched pattern following the lines of the triangles.  I think the whole process took me about 2 days.

So much fun. Hopefully I'll get to meet the little guy in a few months!

1000 paper cranes

(Aren't they cute?)

My wedding gift for Claire and Gary is finally done and delivered, and I thought I'd share. 

The japanese tradition says that folding 1000 paper cranes for a couple on their wedding day is wishing them 1000 years of happiness and prosperity.  My obsessive paper-folding tedium-loving self thought this sounded like a great plan, and a few months of continuous paper folding later, I achieved a very large pile of pretty white birds.

1000 paper cranes

I had them all folded in time for the wedding, but I was a little too last minute in figuring out how to display them, so that part didn't happen until later. It's a good thing I have a wonderful woodworking father who was more than happy to assist!

Museum glass, curved edges, tricky spacers, pretty wood.  It's the perfect addition! The inside dimension  is 10"x10"x1.5", and 1000 cranes fit inside. They're pretty tiny!

The cranes are now hanging in the VanBehm apartment, and I hope they serve as a daily physical reminder of all the prayers and well wishes offered on the part of their family and friends who have been (and will continue) supporting and cheering them on!