Happy Thanksgiving! (and jeans)

Happy Thanksgiving! It's such a great holiday -- getting together with friends and family, great food, lots of warm feelings all around. And there's a 4-day weekend! When my kids were little, DH and I tried to help them get into the spirit of the holiday by having a Thanksgiving tree (or turkey or cornupia) and for the week or so before the holiday and writing things on construction paper leaves (or feathers or fruit) that we were thankful for. We hung this on the wall and it became the centerpiece of our celebration.

When the kids were little, they dictated what they wanted to say, and then added their own decoration.
It clearly made an impression on the girls. Jocelyn wrote about it in her first grade class.

I'm not sure if her teachers knew what she was talking about -- here's what she wrote:
Hi im Jocelyn and -- I wunt to tel you. about my famli's thanksgiviig evrey year my famliy get's redey For tKanksg we make a tree or a tkey. and if we make a tree -- we Put levs. and if it's a -- trkey we Put fetrs.

We saved all the leaves and feathers and fruit and now our Thanksgiving ritual is to read them all aloud. We laugh and we cry -- they bring back so many memories! All kinds of things show up --
"I'm thankful I'm 5."
"I'm thankful for being able to cut out these feathers." (By Val, who had only just been entrusted with using scissors)
"I'm thankful for all the good things in life and clairanets which are good."
"I'm thankful the pilgrims escaped."
"I'm thankful for no more World Wars...yet anyway."
"I'm thankful I'm tired and sleepy."
Not all grand sentiments, but lessons on the road.

And now for some quilting content. I'm trying to have something to work on when I'm not actually in my sewing space. Just got Bonnie's book, Scraps and Shirttails, and she suggests a great way to cut up jeans. So I got my pile of old jeans and have started ripping as she suggests. So many ideas come when doing stuff like that. How much fun to incorporate this stitched-on stripe into the quilt:

And what if I sewed on the two ends of this waistband and ran a shoelace tie through them?
I think I'm going to embroider some of the pockets and jeans strips as handwork. It should be a fun quilt!

Several of you asked for a binding tutorial to show how to make stitched-in corners and not have to deal with joining the binding on the side. I'll work one up next week after the holiday.

To my American friends, may you have a wonderful Thanksgiving! And to my international friends, have a great week!