The group sibling gift

I shared awhile back about the sweet sibling gifts that have started around here for each birthday. I'm loving this new tradition and want to encourage the thoughtfulness and caring that they each put into their gift. That said, with #5 celebrating his 1st birthday I was a little aprehensive about the time I would have to devot to the gifts. Usually there is only 1 or 2 kids who are "into" gift making. I can handle an extra craft or two. But I knew all 4 would be wanting to create something for their little brother and I didn't think I was up for 4 different craft projects with 4 different "bosses" wanting help and supplies.

So I brought up to the group an idea of doing a gift together. Each getting to decorate a fabric panel and I would put them together in a love-y style quilt. Not big enough to be an actual quilt but just right to be carried, snuggled with, cherished as a gift from his siblings.

During morning nap at then end of circle time we got out the supplies and set to work. The lovely thing about creating for a baby is the abiltity to do it right in front of them so when #5 woke up there was no stress about ruining the surprise.

#2 was having a challenging day so his chair looked like this for a lot of our creating time.

We've been dealing with a lot of copying of artist work around here. As we started our project #1 asked how many letters were in the alphabet and with that figured out had decided on a design that involved letter blocks stacked up in a pile. Wouldn't you know it that #2 started on the same design as soon as he got supplies. To avoid WWIII I turned his square into a truck and told him to figure out another design. While avoiding a huge blow-up between kids I created hurt feelings with #2. So he spent a lot of time being upset.

In the end he was able to pull together a design all his own that he was very excited about. And everyone else was proud of the work they did.

Of course we traced the alligator, then he added the alligator hunter with mohawk and ax and the big net.

Again #4's drawing came with explict directions that it said "a brown boat".

Baby was thrilled with his gift from the siblings!

I didn't take any photos of the complete gift all laid out, but it is loved. I grabbed a bunch of 2 inch pieces from my scrap bags, sewed them together and sewed the long strip that made between panels, trying for a scrappy not uniform look. I just made a quilt sandwich out of stash pieces my mom had given me. There was enough of the Clifford fabric for the back and the binding. I even put it back through the machine to quilt around each panel, sewed the binding on the front and finished on the back by hand the next couple of nights. Getting the top together and quilted took about an hour one evening then the binding was two nights in front of American Idol.