Virtual Book Club and Sewing Buttons

I really wanted to participate in a Virtual Book Club hosted by some of my favorite blogs. September author is Lois Ehlert. I think of her not as much as an author as a book artist – her collage illustrations are simply stunning, and we read pretty much all of her books between the ages of 3 and 5.

I chose Wag a Tail to talk to Smarty about the art of collage. She was not interested in the story that is more appropriate for 2-3 year olds, but was intrigued by the last page introducing different breeds of dogs and their qualities. She decided that an ideal dog for our family would be a Boston terrier since he is friendly, smart, and doesn’t need a lot of exercise. She also informed me (again) that she really wants a cat.

I asked Smarty if she wants to make a collage of her own, and she agreed. However, while rummaging for collage materials, she suddenly had a fundamentally different idea. She spied some foam butterflies that I had forever and wanted to make a Christmas ornament with them. Umm… Not exactly what I had in mind, but I went along. Then she announced that she wants to sew buttons on her ornament to decorate it (there are a lot of buttons in Wag a Tail collages). Last time I showed her how to sew on buttons last winter and she was struggling with them. Now she took to it very easily and surprised me with staying on this project for more than an hour and sewing quite a few buttons on all the while trying to stay symmetrical in her design. She was very proud with her Christmas decoration – never mind that it was in the 90s and I was waiting for her to get ready to go to the pool. Before we know it, Christmas will be here too.