325 eyelets, a few yards of garment lining and chiffon, one bruised thumb and a tired back later, I have finally finished my Quilt National 11 submission. I love, love, love it and am so glad that I pushed the pause button on my work, even though I’ll have to work a lot of nights to catch up. I learned a ton and it really rejuvenated me creatively. Accepted or rejected, I’m A-OK.

I’m delighted to report that donations from Craft Nectar readers for the Deep Breath quilt pattern to the Respiratory Health Association of Metropolitan Chicago have reached $555! It’s so great on so many levels and I’m just humbled by your generosity to a cause so important to me.

Thank goodness I’m finally able to start showing you images from Quilts Made Modern, now that the publication is just two months away! Although I understand why I can’t show you my Quilt National submission or any of the quilts we’re working on now for the book after Quilts Made Modern, it is REALLY frustrating. I want to share it with you while I’m doing it, not a year later. Such is the life of publishing. So a year after we finished them, I can finally start showing you some of the 10 quilts that you’ll see in QMM. In a few days I’ll start posting about each quilt a week at a time up to the release at Market.

In the mean time, I have a Nibble Tray of interesting things I’ve come across that should inspire you.

For a trip down memory lane, watch The Wilderness Downtown. You’ll need Google Chrome or Safari (Mac only) to watch it. Fascinating concept.

The paper sculptures of Patty and Allen Eckman are incredible.

If you live outside of Chicago, you can feast your eyes on Nick Cave’s soundsuits (above) online. We Chicagoans are lucky enough to have a one-week popup store opening this Friday in the South Loop. It’s a can’t miss.

Ditto for our Eye sculpture by fellow Oak Parker Tony Tasset that leaves Chicago in Oct. It’s less than a mile from the Nick Cave popup. We’re lucky to have a lot of amazing public art in this town, which is part of why it’s My Kind of Town.

Have a great week.

turn your handwriting into a font

crafting a bento

making bowls for doll houses

transforming the lowly plastic bag to an art form

an origami bouquet for your sweet?

the antidote to the Sponge Bob Square Pants Valentine

the exquisite mosaic of Emma Biggs

step into Jane Sassaman’s colorful world

When I became a parent I read a book by Dr. William Sears suggesting that parents of toddlers should set out a platter of small portions of nutritious foods for toddlers so they could graze throughout the day. Dr. Sears said that this would stabilize the blood sugar of small stomachs and prevent meltdowns.

We’ve taken the nibble tray in a different direction in our house. Either my husband or I prepare a nibble tray and a board game for our 7-year-old daughter before she gets off the bus at 3:10. I refer to this as a child’s equivalent of Happy Hour. She’s always excited to unpack her backpack and the stresses of the day, see what’s on the nibble tray and determine whether she’d like to be the elephant or the water buffalo in Parcheesi. While eating she gives us the bite-by-bite account of how things taste when eaten in combination.

Our daughter is a sensory seeking child so the visual combination of several colors and shapes of food delight her. Going back and forth between several tastes and textures encourages her to eat more fruits and vegetables than she would if, for example, I just gave her an apple. Being sensory seeking, she always wants something crunchy like crackers or nuts and gravitates toward them, but if I can sneak in a few carrot sticks or pear wedges in there, it rounds out the nutritional content of the snack. I can also offer a cookie with a pile of grapes and a few almonds and know that she’ll get the sweets the wants and the vitamins and protein that she needs. And, frankly, a nibble tray is way more fun than a plate of carrots.

I’m also a big fan of a Chinese theory of nutrition that I learned about when I lived in Japan. The theory goes that the ideal diet is includes 30 different foods each day. That doesn’t mean 30 servings, it just means that each food has different nutrients and that the more broadly you eat, the more likely it is that you’ll get all of the vitamins you need in a given day. For example, our family’s favorite salad of spinach, strawberries, pecans and goat cheese is more nutritious than just eating the spinach alone. So the nibble tray gets three to four more sources of nutrients into her diet each day.

So as I thought about starting this blog, I thought about wanting to provide readers with a well-rounded, but quick snack. The blog needed to have different textures and different tastes. I wanted you to discover new things and not feel that you hadn’t had a good snack if you didn’t like one of the things on the plate. I’m also hoping that in the same way our daughter finds extra deliciousness in going back and forth between foods that you too will find that the juxtaposition between tatted lace throat corsets and quilled typography is delicious indeed. So eat up…

these elf shoes must have magical powers

knitting caps for chemo patients

I want to go there! map quilts

nature’s color work

got [homemade] play-doh?

fall in love with Little Chicken Growing Up

mesmerizing quilled typography

goth, Victorian librarian or sex kitten? You decide

donate mini quilts for Alzheimer’s