I’m so excited to share this book with you. Bernadette and Kathie are fellow Austinites who are doing inspiring things and connecting community in meaningful ways. I was thrilled to meet them IRL!

I appreciate the cool projects in the book not only for what they are, gorgeous sewing craft projects, but also for what they represent, more time spent sharing and communicating with each other, enjoying each other’s company without so many of the common distractions. Reading this book connects me with the values that inspired my own book.

Here are some of the things I like the most about this book:

1. The tone of is charmingly conversational and makes me feel like I’m sitting on in Kathie’s screened front porch drinking beers with the authors. I giggled at the intro to an upcycled hat project, “Who doesn’t like a hat?”

2. The photos and illustrations are beautiful and well-thought-out for assistance in directions that can be tricky to describe in words.

3.The list of ‘Tips for Crafting with Kids’ is realistic, not ‘and everything will go as planned and life is perfect’. I especially like, “If you have a clear and definite vision of how something should look in the end, make it yourself.”

4. Project: Art Roll Up, a roll-up holder for colored pencils, pens, markers and other small crafting tools. They encourage you to grab your roll up, bring the fam outside (or gathered together anywhere) for a family sketch-a-thon, passing around the drawings you all make in a collaborative drawing session.

5. Party project: Birthday T-shirt party is a brilliant idea that requires little to no sewing technology.

6. Project: Family flags, which I had the pleasure of making at a joint book event over the summer at our local feminist bookshop, Bookwoman. Our family is still very small, but this flag project will grow with us through the years!

I’ll add that most of the projects in the book require access to a sewing machine. This would be a perfect sewing club project book.

Bernadette & Kathie’s publisher, Wiley, rocks because there are NO shipping restrictions; that’s right, they’ll send copies anywhere in the world. I invite my international contingent to enter away!

Two winners will be selected at random on Nov 17, 2011 at midnight CST.

Enter by leaving a comment here describing any craft project you’ve attempted with kids (or friends), successful or not!