QR Barcode Quilt

I had the best time creating these two quilts!  I made these quilts as part of Katie's 100 Quilts for Kids Campaign and I gave them to two brothers at the children's home that my Sunday School class is sponsoring this year.  There are 8 boys in the cottage at the children's home and we are giving each of them a birthday party of their choosing this year.  These two quilts are for two brothers, Andrew & Adam, who turned 15 and 14 this year.  The boys requested a parkour type party.  A what?  I had no idea what parkour was until the boys told me that is what they wanted to do and I googled it to death.  I searched and searched for something suitable in the Atlanta area where we live and I just couldn't get anything I was 100% happy with and thought I was going to have to settle for setting something up at a gymnastics center and let that be it.  

Well, God had a bigger and better plan for this party.  One Sunday during Sunday School I was telling the class what we were looking to do for the party and asking anyone if they had any parkour connections.  A couple that my husband and I are extremely close friends with was there that morning and told us about a guy that kind of chased them down the day before while they were taking a joy ride in their Jeep through our little city of Senoia.  The guy said he saw their little boy and thought he might enjoy parkour so he wanted them to have his card.  They had NO IDEA what parkour was or that I had been searching for just this type person.  They took his card and never thought another thing about it until they were in class and heard me asking about it.  Isn't that funny?  Well, they passed the card on to me and I looked the guy up online and I was amazed.  This guy, Ryan Saegart, was chosen as one of the 100 people in the nation to be on the show American Ninja Warriors this season.  He didn't make it as one of the finalists but he is an incredible athlete. I called him the next day and was able to set up a party at the gym where he trains.  We had the party this weekend and the birthday boys had a fantastic time!  Not only did the boys get the kind of party they wanted but they were able to learn from an awesome parkour trainer.  That party was a God thing from start to finish!  

So, about the quilts....I knew I had to make something cool enough for two teenage boys that love to play soccer, basketball, and love parkour.  I'm not very interested in making sports quilts though and I wanted to enjoy what I was making.  Ever have that feeling?  I started thinking about a friend of my husband's that had a UPC barcode tattooed on his arm.  So then I started thinking about the type of barcodes called QR barcodes and how information can be imbedded in those codes so I decided to make a quilt that when scanned with a smart phone would display the name of each boy.

I found a barcode generator online and was able to get the code for each boy's name.  This quilt is for Andrew.  And guess what?  It works!  If you scan it with a smart phone it actually reads out the boy's name.

The little barcode section is 21" x 21".  I used mostly 1" squares but used larger strips when I could.  The quilt measures 60" x 78".  I did some simple straight line quilting on it so it would still be soft and comfy to lay under.

This is the one for Adam.  I wanted to make them similar but not exactly alike.

This is both of the quilts together.  I used Kona black, white and charcoal grey for the fronts.

Both boys loved their quilts!  They were amazed when my daughter showed them how to scan it with a smart device and actually saw their names. Yay!

A girl and her iron

My youngest daughter is 6 1/2 and she LOVES to iron.  I'm always so hesitant to let her use my iron because, well, it's an iron and it's hot and she's 6.  My ironing board is kind of tall and her nose is about level with it so when the iron is in use the steam is level with her head and therefore I'm a nervous wreck standing right over her ready to jerk that heavy iron out of the way if I need to.   Now that she has her own sewing machine and is constantly coming up with a new creation she is constantly asking me to come stand beside her while she irons.  I'm glad that she knows she needs supervision but sometimes I just want to sit and sew for a minute without being asked to get up and go to the iron, manly because once I sit back down to sew it takes me a minute to remember what I was about to do before being called away.  I think I have memory issues! ha!

I was walking around Target the other night and saw a little TV tray and something in my mind triggered this tutorial by Oh, Fransson! and a solution to my dilemma was born.

I went straight home and made the perfect ironing board just for her and the fabric on it matches my ironing board.  I even bought her the lightest weight iron that Target had and now I've created a monster. She has tried to iron everything in my house.  She even takes my fabric scraps and wads them up to wrinkle them just so she can iron them.

We spent the whole weekend ironing everything in sight...over and over again.  I'm thinking this could work to my advantage though, I can sew my blocks and she can iron them for me.  I'll let you know how that works out!