Celebrate Color {with Children}

There's something about changing leaves that inspire lots of creative collaboration between parents and children.  We like to bring them inside, trapping colorful leaves in contact paper or preserving them in beeswax.  Last year we made polka dot leaves by putting circle stickers on green leaves and removing them after the colors had changed. The dots stay green!  Leaves also make great materials for crayon rubbings.  Mmm.. the list really does go on.

But, today, the very talented Maureen Cracknell brings us a family project to celebrate the beautiful leaves of autumn with our children and our sewing machines.  Hurray!  Any young child lucky enough to have a stitchy mother (or father) would surely jump at the chance to help make something sewn.  

And, as an added bonus, you could choose to use this project to practice your free motion quilting on a very small, very low-pressure canvas.  Now, I may be saying that because I woke up this morning quite literally thinking about how I so badly need to practice free motion quilting, but I think I'm not alone in that nagging feeling.

 And if you don't have little hands eager to help you collect leaves and trace them onto felt... well that just means you can complete this project in about half as much time as the rest of us!  Be sure to visit Maureen for lovely, step-by-step directions.

Emma, Mollie, Shannon and I are busy looking through the Celebrate Color entries to select several finalists in each category.  Tomorrow I'll have all the finalists posted here so that you can vote to choose the winners!  Good luck, everyone!