Triangles are the devil.

Ok. Since we moved and I have a toddler and I really, really like to sleep I have not crafted much in the last several months. But I have crafted this:

I'm only showing the full view of this baby quilt because the pattern is really cute, but for the love of God please don't look too closely.

This looks super easy, I thought. It's just sewing straight lines, I thought. I've never done triangles or binding but I can totally do this in a week, I thought. Well you know what's great about babies? They smell good and don't care about precision sewing. Here are the cute fabrics, all flannel:

Find the original pattern here!

DIY sleep sack in half a day.

August is on the verge of crawling, so I can no longer let him play on the floor of the craft room as I work on stuff that leaves the room a veritable minefield of baby danger. Boo. Well, it was nice while it lasted.

This sleep sack was made for a friend who's due in a few weeks with her first. It is, as usual, not the most *technically* accurate product if one were to look very closely, but one doesn't need to do that.

I followed the instructions on Jan Andrea's At Home on the Web (she apparently got it from Annabear Babyware, but I can't find the original page). Fantastic project that's quick even for beginning sewers who don't like to strictly follow a pattern. Plus these are truly useful items from a retail category that is bogged down by a lot of unnecessary do-dads.

For when you lose one mitten.

Aaaand when you don't care what your baby's mittens look like ...

Cut the sleeves off an old baby outfit that has cuffs and sew the top shut. Add a little fleece liner if you want to be fancy about it.

Cat-dog gets a new bed.

So about 15 years ago, my mom had this grand scheme to teach me how to sew by helping me make a tshirt quilt. We got a large piece of fleece for the backing and cut out rectangles from all the tshirts I had acquired in junior and senior high school (summer camps, school spirit events, badminton team - that kind of thing). Then we threw all these pieces into plastic bags to save for when we'd have more time to work on the project.

I *may* still have the tshirt scraps in the bag stashed under the basement stairs. Stupid depression-era rationale all running in the family and ruining any chance any of us has at ever being tidy, normal people. 

But wait! I knew I saved that stuff for a reason (other than my mom never letting me forget it if I had done something drastic and recycled it all).

 I took a cheapo pillow and used some of the fleece to make Penny a bed for the living room. My hope was that she'd take the reasonable opportunities to get in my lap (i.e. when it's empty) and STOP trying to take non-opportunities (i.e. when I'm on the laptop while feeding the baby). I mean, a nice cozy pillow bed is way better than someone constantly shoving you aside so your ears, eyes, and fur don't get scratched, gouged, or yanked.

What will I do with the rest of the fleece? I'll recycle it. There was a problem with that whole "measure twice, cut once" thing.

I MADE A QUILT! AND IT'S FANTASTIC!

Yes! I finished it! The day after Christmas on my shiny new Brother sewing machine that Hubs gave me. 

If you don't count the new sewing machine, which I don't, I literally spent $0 on this quilt. The only thing I didn't have was batting, but I decided to skip it because I doubt my machine (old or new) would be able to go through it. The myriad clothing patches on the front and sweatshirt knit on the back make a nice weight, and it's super soft.

Somehow - I really don't know how - it turned out beautifully. I ironed a total of two seems, did very little measuring, and was working mostly with stretchy fabrics that I don't know how to handle. Yet the blanket is quite square, the perfect size, and I had just the right amount of fabric lying around for the backing and contrast strips. It was meant to be.

The quilt pieces.

In my last post about the quilt I'm making, I ... was too boozed-up to include a picture. The pieces are all different sizes depending on the article of clothing they came from, so there will be lots of trimming. And then lots of sewing and measuring and possibly swearing. We shall see.

I think this is my first boozy post.

Aaaaand hopefully the last. But I recently realized that since the baby sleeps for like nine hours every night, I could've been having a drink before bed this whole time! For like the last month! Scheisse, my kid is awesome. Sailor Jerry!

I also recently realized that it's been a while since I've attempted to craft something I have no idea how to do and will probably fail at. So I'm making a quilt! I'm pretty sure I've already messed it up. I asked hubs the other day if he wanted to see what I was working on, and he was all "do I have to," and I was like "yes." I showed him how I had laid out the pieces of fabric I cut from old baby clothes that were too stained for my very fashionable infant to wear, and he was all "I think those pieces are way too small." Of course they're small; they're from baby clothes. Thanks for the excitement and encouragement dude.*

I'm going to have to buy batting, but other than that I'm going to try not to spend ANY money on this project. For one thing, Augs does not need another blanket. Also, it might end up being a disaster. Also, using whatever I have around makes me feel like some sort of handy pioneer woman. Like when I needed something really long to reach the cobwebs at the ceiling of our stairwell and I duct-taped the Swiffer to the broom handle. Make do, that's what I always say.



*Hubs is encouraging. And in all fairness, I am totally doing this wrong.

The room is totally ready to not be used for like two months.

Tomorrow is 38 weeks! Translation: every moment becomes a waiting game. When will the real contractions start? Will I ever stop having night sweats? Am I ready for child-birth (um, no. Duh.)? Am I ready for parenthood? From a planning standpoint, perhaps. BEHOLD! The place where the child will eventually sleep but who knows when:



I admit that I might get real sick of green and yellow, but overall the room is a pleasant place to be. I can only hope the nugget feels the same. Because I'm not redecorating anything based on the whims of an infant. Unless he's going to help me make new pillows, curtains, chair cushions, and wall art. I hope he's a grateful baby. And a quiet one. And a clean one. Oh, God.

Apparently I never posted about the recovered chair cushions, or the last two pillows, or the wall hoops. So here are a few detail pics of that madness:

The chair *before* in all its pink, straw-textured glory...


The chair *after*...


Victory is mine! Seriously never thought I could pull off something like this with limited sewing knowledge and a tendency to rush through things. I did have some good advice though. The pillows...


Love making pillows. So easy and fast; and I'm going to keep making more and more because I've always wanted to have a "pillow room." Hubs knows this. It will probably be located under the basement stairs someday and I will lounge in there with snacks and a book and make people answer riddles if they must knock on my door. And finally, the embroidery hoops made with fabric scraps from the pillows and the crib bumper...


So I used two of the four crib bumper pieces between the hoops and the pillows. Now that I guess I've officially started "sewing," I'm wondering what to do with the rest. But really it'll probably be another five years before I sew anything again.

Baby room preview number, like, 65.

Much of my crafting these days revolves around the baby room, naturally, so there will probably be 98 previews in total. Then get ready for years and years of crafts made for the child. If you're lucky - real lucky - I won't spend those years also posting every damn scribble the kid makes. We'll see.

Venturing once again into the world of sewing, I made this pillow out of remnants and one of the appliques that was on the crib bumper. I'm sure there are people who use crib bumpers because Carters keeps making bedding sets with them - but no one I know used one, what with everybody clucking about suffocation hazards. I'm getting a breathable one. Still, I paid for that padded bumper and I'm going to use it somehow!


Yellow gingham. It's what my blankie was made of, so I kind of love it. It will most definitely be used on another pillow.


The back is simply two fabrics that overlap for easy removal and cleaning. White with black polka dots and a scrap piece of green from the curtains. Very pleased, but here's a sewing machine question: why will my machine not thread a bobbin? I put the bobbin on there, loosen the wheely-thing, flip the bobbin winding lever over, and it still just tries to sew when I press the peddle. Bobbin does not turn. Boo.


I've also finished this ink drawing which will be part of a little wall collage. Hawaiian for "family," ohana* will be surrounded by photos of the baby's four first cousins: Laura, Sam, Max, and Finn.

COMING SOON! Lots of drawings.


*I do think Wikipedia's info is accurate, but it's funny that the first source listed is Lilo and Stitch.

"'Ohana means family, family means nobody gets left behind. Or forgotten." -Lilo

Curtains!

You thought I was crazy to tackle a sewing project while pregnant, right? Well, I was crazy. CRAZY GENIUS. And humble.

Actually, there was a large amount of luck involved. For example, whenever I mention that I don't know how to sew I'm also speaking of the fact that I don't really know how to operate the sewing machine. There are three dials on it and I don't know what any of them do. But I'm not a total idiot. I did a little test on some scraps to see how the stitches came out, and they came out great! So I did not touch the mysterious dials and proceeded in happy ignorance.

Boom.

The room feels like it's coming together because we've been on kind of a roll. Having spent the last few months in horrible "pain" from a foot surgery that conveniently allowed him to fry his brain with television and habitually ask me for a drink of water as soon as I would sit down, hubs finally got around to painting.*


And I finally got all my craft stuff into the craft room so we can actually set up the crib and whatnot. Yay!


* Looooove you!

Craft! Craft while you still can!

This is what the voices tell me. There are just 12 weeks left.

Which reminds me - I went shopping for clothes and found A LOT of deals so I ended up in the dressing room for like an hour and somewhere in there I noticed that I'm really pregnant. Our little $15 dorm room mirror at home has not done me justice, but the store had huge mirrors unblemished with areas of distortion and cripes am I big. Not as big as I will be, but I still had to take a moment. Will I ever look like this again? Will I remember this when I'm old and have no idea what day it is? Do I fully appreciate the quiet calm of having an inside-baby?

Um, anyways. As expected, most of what I've been doing is in the drawing book because it indulges the crafty side and the lazy side. But I need to make curtains, I've started a stuffed giraffe, I'd like to start knitting a skirt for Laura's birthday, and I have made several thank-you notes to be used later on. They kind of follow the theme and colors of the baby room.


I love paper crafts. I love the smell of paper. So cards are some of my favorite things to make - especially because they are uber expensive to buy and I've already amassed a stockpile of supplies.

On the other hand, designing these things can take a lot of tries and it can still get expensive depending on embellishments. This is why I don't plan on making scrapbooks for this child or possibly for anything other than to add to books I've already started. Instead I plan on ordering custom digital books, which might not take any less time but will be less expensive. And they'll have that delicious paper and ink smell.

I'm making curtains. I *might* have gotten myself into a pickle.

I need help. Not the pill kind; I already have that covered. My visionary skills, while lacking severely on the spacial front, are usually pretty good with colors n' stuff. But most of my projects don't involve the amount of math and thinking and general importance of this project.


I'm going to have to look at these curtains every day, so my main concern at this point is not messing them up. Later my concern that my two old and decrepit sewing machines might fail me will come into play. For now I'm pretty comfortable with my measurements and basic design - covering an area just larger than the window, the main portion will be vertical grey stripe with a smaller portion of solid green, separated by black grosgrain ribbon. But here's the question: does the green go on top or on bottom?

Please, please sparse friends, what do you think?

This was a 12-hour work day and I'm worried that I shouldn't eat chocolate before bed but I'm going to do it anyways; and some last-minute thoughts.

First of all, I've just received communication from a company where I recently applied for a job, got all excited because it would be awesome, and had an interview. But I'm not hired. Boo. Of the 170-some applications, only six people were interviewed, and I really appreciate them sharing that information because it does make me feel a little less crappy. Oh well. ONWARD!

Tomorrow is the Spring Market and I think I'm ready. I spent the entire day making final arrangements. Here's how it broke down:
5% of day = bringing wallet downtown to forgetful husband; having lunch with said husband
5% of day = regular life-sustaining tasks like eating dinner, taking bathroom breaks, playing Mafia Wars on Facebook, and blogging
25% of day = updating inventory, packing everything up, other misc. show-related tasks
65% of day = making my table banner

Aaaaand here it is....


Don't let the simple looks fool you; this was a monstrous undertaking by my standards. Not being a sewer, and having not one but two "vintage" sewing machines, I was delighted to get away with only having to sew two long, straight lines - one at the top of each banner - and it went incredibly smoothly (except for when the bobbin ran out and then the other time when the thread broke).


The more tedious part was using the paper cut-out letters from Becky's Cricut to trace backwards letters on the black felt and then cut each one out.


Ironing them onto the flags was made pretty tolerable with episodes of General Hospital.


But even catching up on my stories would not have eased the torture of the MOST tedious part: cutting the flannel flags with a very old and very dull pinking shears. Thanks, grandma.

No, really. Thanks to my grandma, I don't have to buy things like pinking shears and sewing machines.

Now I'm going to eat my chocolate and hope that tomorrow brings lots of customers to offset my perpetual joblessness and that the people I sit next to are entertaining (and if they're not, that they leave me alone) and that Betty White does some sweet sketches on SNL.

Why do I agree to these things?

I recently had a very generous offer from one of my grandmother-in-laws to have an old sewing machine. I figured it had to be better than the one already in my possession. What I didn't know was that it is attached to a sewing table. I already had a sewing machine AND a sewing table. But I come from a long line of keepers (hoarders, in other words). Goodness knows my mom probably three Tupperware containers made solely for mixing salad dressing because she inherited one from my grandma and one from my great-grandma and no, she can't just throw them out or give them away and besides, me or sis might want them someday.


So now I have two old sewing machines (the original in sitting on top of new one, which is folded inside the table), and two sewing tables (the old is folded up and propped against some shelves because I have nowhere else to put it). The new table, thankfully, is much more attractive and even has storage in the doors. I have not tested the "new" machine, but the "old" one badly needs a tuneup so it probably works at least as well. The kicker is that I'm not a frickin sewer. So despite the midwestern depression-style reasons floating around in my head of why it would be sensible to keep all of this, I will resist and rid myself of the ugly old table and machine.

In other news...because I have to share this...



I went to see Jason Mraz in concert last night AND IT WAS AWESOME! Opening were K'Naan (a fun Somali singer/rapper) and G Love and Special Sauce (doing some sweet things on the harmonica).

Photo by Jeff Wheeler, Star Tribune

Bib for baby unknown

My former coworker is going to be a grandma soon! This is the same woman who made me the perfect wedding dress. She and her daughter (and son) are very sweet women (and man), and we know how I like to gift things.

There is a very popular book out there called The Five Love Languages by Dr. Gary Chapman. I've never really figured out my language but my best guess is that it's gifts (rather than affirmation, quality time, acts of service, or touch) because I really, really, ridiculously like thinking of, making, and giving gifts - especially useful ones. And there's something very loving to me about getting something that time and effort was put into, or that just really represents you. That being said, I also have an appreciation for NOT giving or receiving too much STUFF, and the hubby and I are notoriously lax about celebrating birthdays and anniversaries.

ANYWAYS, this knit bib pattern is courtesy of Itchy McStitchy. For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to line it. I figured it would protect all that cute baby clothing from messes a little better (even though I know very well that you could put a baby in a plastic haz-mat suit and it would still find ways to get messy).

My sewing machine hates me. It has nothing to do with my not knowing how to use it, or with it being forty years old, or with it needing oil and a good cleaning. I could not get the stitches to stick! It would either bunch or skip huge spaces. I tried all the settings and it finally worked when I changed the needle (??). Whatever. My corners looked like a horrific accident so I knitted little "accent" flaps to cover them. Sure, it's a little embarrassing that my professionally sewing coworker will see it. But she knows I'm a novice.