Needlepoint and Family

My daughter came to me yesterday asking to play dolls. While I appreciate a good game of barbies, I admit I have never been a girly girl. I know.. shocker, eh?

Anywhoozles, I got this crazy idea that she and I sit down and try doing some plastic canvas. I had wanted to pick it up again as a time filler (mostly because I need new placements and I dread buying cheap-o ones from walmart when I can whip something up myself) so I had some on hand. She said it would be fun and off we went.



I think we spent a total of 4 or 5 hours together, just sitting on the craft room floor, pulling thread back and forth through the canvas mesh. Our first project was the puppy and kitty clips shown above. She was pretty good and took to it really quickly. I had got her a kit a couple years ago and it was left half done.... poorly. I think she was just too young for it. Her attention span wasn't ready.

But this time, she did really good. Outside of a few mistakes she quickly learned how to sew up and down to make her cute black kitty. I made the puppy.

For me, it was relearning something I did 20 years ago. My grandmother was big into plastic canvas and would let me play with it too. I don't think I ever really did do anything considered a "major plastic canvas project" - but I did learn the very very basics.

Since it is Sunday, I was scheduled to make a nice big family meal. About 2 hours before I was to start making dinner, she and I decided to start some coasters after such a good success with the paper clips. We had two done rather quickly but she announced she would like to have all four done before dinner - so we could use them at dinner.

Oh boy - we kicked it into high gear. I finished mine pretty quickly and she was left with hers about 3/4 of the way done when I had to get up to start cooking. I'd say 5 minutes before dinner was to hit the table, she finished.

This is a photo of our dinner table while she was setting it up.

I thought it was adorable because she took extra care with the "napkins" (paper towels folder in half, we are so fancy!) and made sure everything looked just right. She wanted it to be nice for a nice meal with our nice new coasters.

I think its great - she really felt a sense of accomplishment - rightfully so!

On top of all that, I did get to spend some quality one-on-one time with my kiddo. She's such a sweet girl and we don't get to spend as much mommy-daughter time as we'd like.

Something that should definitely change (considering she is wanting to make place mats for the table next weekend).