A Larryboy helmet! A real Larryboy helmet!

 If any superhero ever needed something available on the commercial market it's this guy.  You can absolutely not find a helmet ready to buy!  That being said I embarked on a six week crusade to make a helmet that would stay on, whose plunger ears would come on and off, and that wouldn't pose imminent danger to the child wearing it.
I played around with a lot of different prototypes.  I even had a retracting mechanism for the ears, but that proved bulky and dangerous if I child rolled over onto their head.  I also wanted real plunger ears, but that would have hurt a lot when rolling around.
In the end I settled on fleece.  A nice stretchy fabric that would fit snugly around the head and hold the helmet together.
I sculpted the comb out of furniture foam and then covered it in fabric and hand sewed it to the hat.  I hand sculpted two plungers out of furniture foam and then carefully covered them in red fleece, with velcro on the ends.  (I made it sound so easy here, but I think there is still furniture foam bits lingering in the house from carving them out). 
The ears come on and off really easily and when Larryboy goes to the rescue, he can roll and tumble all he likes and his helmet will bend and flex with him. 
Only about 42 hours worth of work!

Dahlia had a lot of fun modeling the helmet and running through the house with it on.

The Water Quilt

 This is the third quilt in a series that I have made with these firetrucks.  Each quilt has been about two years apart.  The first one focused on the firetrucks, the second on the fire, so I thought this one should be about water.  I swirled water in to the quilting and used a lot of blue fabrics. 
When I went to photograph it Dahlia had to be in all the pictures.  It was a struggle to get her to stand to the side, but the one above was my favorite photo so I had to put it in.