When You Can't Cut, You Tape

Nollie came in the kitchen yesterday to find me cutting fabric on the island. I've been cutting little squares out of my fabric scraps to potentially make a quilt.  "Can I cut some fabric for the dress you are going to make me tomorrow"  She has been bugging me about making her a dress for quite some time.  "Sure" I say handing her my bag of scraps, hoping that this will hold her off from asking me to make her dress right now.  She takes it to the table and gets some scissors from the drawer.  "I need some cardboard too"  She says.  I bring her a old flattened cereal box from our craft supplies.  She looks at me with a bit of disgust "Not that kind of cardboard, the kind that is the colour of cardboard."  So I cut the front panel off the box and hand it to her with the inside up so she can see the "cardboard colour", she seems satisfied.  I watch her as she lays a piece of fabric down and puts the cardboard on top like I do with my quilting ruler and tries to cut along the straight edge.  My heart nearly melts, she has been watching me enough to know how it works, so cute!  I go back to the island and continue my cutting and before long I hear her cry out in frustration "Its not working!  The scissors wont' cut the fabric"  I knew that was coming, her scissors are not sharp enough to cut fabric.  "Can I use your knife?"  (my rotary cutter that I am using right now), um no and no, 4 year olds don't need a round blade on a stick, it is too sharp, I'm using it right now and it is MINE!  So I say "No Nollie, it's too sharp."  "But, my scissors aren't working and I need to cut some fabric for the dress you are going to make me tomorrow."  "I'm sorry but, no you can't use my cutter".  Meanwhile Luca is running around trying to save the day and get Nollie a knife from the utensil drawer, a butter knife, no not sharp enough, a steak knife.  Nollie didn't appreciate her thoughtfulness.  She sits for a bit and then says "I need some tape."  "Sure" I reply and she goes to get some tape from her craft cupboard.  I start firing out suggestions, thinking about how taping fabric may also not work.  "You know, you can do something completely different, you can glue some of the fabric scraps onto the cardboard to make a collage."  I get the disgusted look again from her "I need tape."  Ok, fair enough and I just let her be.  I came back later to find this:





 I sat down to watch and she asked me to help.  She gave me pieces of tape and told me exactly where to put them and when we were finished we had these:

They are pieces for her dress we are going to make tomorrow....