First stitches

My little girl Lena turns 4 in a week, and said to me this afternoon, "will you stitch me a Bloody quilt?" 

I said, "what?"  

And then I remembered she named one of her toy dinosaurs Bloody.  Because her birthday is in a week, I couldn't say no. So she and I looked through my books and found a little dinosaur cross stitch motif that looks a little like toy dinosaur Bloody and found colors to match.  And she wanted pink fabric, of course.

And then she decided she wanted to do "kid stitching" while I was working on this. So I found some wide weave aida (with sparkles, that made her happy) and a wide needle, she picked out some purple thread, and I threaded the needle and showed her how to make an x.  So she went to work.

Look at the concentration on that face.  She worked at it very diligently for a long time, and even asked for more thread a couple times.

She started out very well with tiny stitches.  I was impressed.  As she became more confident, the stitches got larger. 

I think that's the back we're looking at there--hard to say.  It was fascinating watching her nimble little fingers...not bad for an almost-4-year-old.  She's a natural.

The finished work, which is now proudly pinned up on the wall:

She says it's the cliffs of the Grand Canyon.  No joke.  

Flashback a few months ago:

 Maybe the apple doesn't fall that far from the tree.