Summer Needle Projects: Keeping children from driving me crazy

Before Martha Stewart, the crafting queen was Aunt Martha.

I must say that working from home has a special curse in the summer. The kids are home, and as much as I want to have a normal work day, I spend countless hours in car driving them to various enriching activities and reminding them to eat at tables, wear their bike helmets and brush their teeth at least by noon. After a month of this, I've all but given up getting anything productive for my work done while the sun is up. Instead I spend my evenings in the studio making up for lost time and generally feeling frustrated that everyone is doing something fun but me. And yes, I am whining.

Jenifer came over last week on her own child delivery route and dropped off a pack of vintage needlework iron-on transfers for inspiration. Of course I was in love: sweet flowers, fun-loving puppies and kittens, donkeys joyfully toting packs overloaded with fresh fruits, and many, many more snippets of an idyllic lifestyle meant to be reproduced on a fresh linen dish towel.

Where does one find these nostalgic needle crafting transfer gems? Jenifer scours the crafting or needle work bins in resale shops to find the packs of transfers. What I love the most is that she keeps them in a basket in her living room that also contains linen fabric and embroidery thread. When her kids are bored, they dig around for an image, iron it on the fabric and get started. If your kids are going to zone out in front of the tv, why not keep their hands busy at least, right? I followed her lead this morning, when my middle daughter finished rounding some corners for me and was looking for some other "work". She picked out a few designs and a piece of felt and voila, 10 minutes of self contained entertainment. Just enough for me to write a blog post....