Happy very belated Birthday Angie!

With practice I'm getting better at this sewing thing. Sorry about the lousy late night photos, but I was burning the midnight oil on this project. One funny note: as I started sewing Robb was confused. He thought the gift was already finished and that I was going to send Angie a pile of little fabric squares. :) It's hard to believe that Angie's visit was a year ago!

Fledgling quilter strikes again

My cousin Becky and her husband Chris are expecting a little boy in about 8 weeks. A conversation at Thanksgiving revealed that Becky has very specific ideas about which colors she considers masculine enough for baby boys. But at the fabric store I couldn't bring myself to choose the navy blue fabric with the dark, drab looking dinosaurs on it. And the more cheerful looking dinos were mostly brown and orange and weird. Who designs some of these creepy "nursery prints"? Ultimately I came back to the fish fabric. It's really colorful...I just hope it's boyish enough for them.



So the blanket is kind of huge. I wanted Becky to have a workhorse. Something homemade but not so fussy that she's afraid to use it. Because babies spill stuff and spit up and leak, and inevitably your dog thinks that every blanket on the floor is a new dog bed for her. So it's 100% cotton for easy laundering. I put aqua colored flannel on the back and chose a watery looking batik for the binding. And because this is a whole-cloth-quilt, I decided to hand quilt it along the wavy pattern lines in the fish fabric, alternating every 3 stripes then every 5 stripes. My first time hand quilting--it went pretty well.

Test fit take two

Baby still rowdy for photos. Test fit reveals that straps can be shortened. (Typing with one hand right now, clingy babe in other.) Oh, the rickrack was a detail from the original pillowcase and not my doing.





I finished Maureen's pillowcase dress top. And if you were worried about me cutting the embroidery off when I cut the dress in half, I replaced it with much cuter stitching around the arm openings. This will be great for warm weather.



Finished! I'm planning a second one, as soon as crabbypants lets me put her down.

Test fit gone wild

Maureen tried on the Simple Dress today. I wish I could tell you that these were the outtakes from the photo shoot. We don't usually interrupt play time with a fashion show, so the novelty factor was high. She pounced on the pile of discarded clothing. This was my favorite picture because of the little piggies peeking out --



But the test fit revealed that the dress is too long, and the neckline is kind of snug in the front.



So it's back to the drawing board cutting mat.

Simple dress

Maureen decided that 4:30am was a good wakeup time today. Only after I waved the white flag and had a cup of coffee did she finally drift back off to sleep at 6:45. Better make another cup. (My apologies for the dark, yellowish photography, but it's early.)



I had been to the thrift store last week (or the week before?) and found some cute pillowcases for 50 cents each. And they got me thinking about pillowcase dresses like these, these, and these. Robb left for Virginia beach midday on Sunday, so I had the delicious luxury of not even turning on the tv all evening. Yes, on Superbowl Sunday. Everyone is really shocked and confused when I tell them that. But the baby was sleeping good--went to bed early and never made a peep--so I decided to try my hand at making the Simple Dress in Lotta Jansdotter's book Simple Sewing for Baby using one of the thrifted pillowcases. Just finished the embroidery this morning.



I must register two complaints about this sewing book. Number one: the patterns don't have sizes, not in the book itself or on the pattern sheets. If you are sewing gifts for a baby shower then it's no problem, but making these clothes for a little one who is already out in the world is bound to involve guesswork and disappointment. Mama's time is at a premium, so that's not cool. Number two: bias tape on every opening of every garment. Ug. I repeat, ug. It's the right way to do things, but what a drag making and sewing tape onto everything. And a waste of good fabric making those 45 degree angle strips.



Back closure in progress...



Please note: decent embroidering trumps bad sewing any day of the week!

So I consider the finished dress a "rough draft" of a future, better sewn dress for baby. I learn a little teeny bit more with each sewing project, but I have way more confidence than skill at this point. Heh.

Burning the midni... 9pm oil

Dear Circo brand,
The head holes in the girls infant/toddler t-shirts are too dang small. Perhaps they are manufactured in a country full of pinheads. I don't know. But I wanted to thank you for providing me with shirts AND homework.
Grateful to have something to do,
Barb







Two shirts fixed, one still on the drawing board. While I had the sewing machine fired up, I decided to make some wool pants for Momo out of the sleeves of some felted sweaters I've had laying around forever. I used a pair of Garanimals sweatpants that fit her well as a model. This little project was so easy, I can't believe I hadn't thought of doing it before. Anyone got old stained, holey, out of style wool sweaters at the back of their closet they would like to donate to me???







The blue ones were done first, and the test-fit revealed that I had not created enough rise in the back. So the green pants were made with more booty space and turned out great. I just need to go back and fix the blue ones now.

Embroidered ornaments

Now that Christmas has passed, it's finally safe to show you my top secret needlepoint project. I made counted cross stitch ornaments for Great Aunt Sissy, Theresa, Rick, and Mom.



The alphabet I used comes from Alicia Paulson's Embroidery Companion. It's part of the Meadowflower Tote project on page 80. I also like to look at her blog Posy Gets Cosy. She writes from the heart and has an adorable corgi.



As so often happens a project journal on The Purl Bee caught my eye: Cross-Stitch Ornaments. That was my starting point. So mine are the same...only different. For the front fabric I used a cotton dishcloth, and for the reverse fabric I used a beautiful cotton men's handkerchief with subtle striping. Oh, and inside I lined each tiny pillow with muslin.



I played around with the color combinations while I was working. Sissy's is blue and red (M is for Marjorie), Theresa's is purple and yellow, Mom's is green and orange (L is for Liz but I guess I could have done an E), and Rick's is red and pink. Rick's ornament looks the most Christmasy to me, and it was my favorite. Theresa asked how I found the time to get them done. Hey, it's Christmas magic! (And a really awesome husband who takes on baby duty for a full day while I count stitches.)

Ahead of schedule

I can't remember the last time I wasn't frantically finishing craft projects this close to Christmas. I must have set more reasonable goals this year. I did not handmake gifts for as many people as I would have liked. But yesterday we wrapped the last two gifts and started getting the house in order. The decorating is done. The rubbermaid tubs are back in their storage nook. The only thing unfinished is Maureen's heartwarmer sweater, and that's okay. She has plenty of gifts to open on Christmas day. So I'm just knitting along at a comfortable pace. Nice for a change.

Little Mo bought me a small poinsettia centerpiece when she and her dad were shopping yesterday. She thought I could use a little cheer. That baby is very thoughtful. I wasn't overtly feeling sad, though. At least I don't think so. Not to make the blog a chronicle of misery, but this year has served up some bitter soup: a hurricane and a fall down the stairs, Aunt Julie became ill and died, a former coworker died, two close friends of Mom's died suddenly, a loved one lost a pregnancy, and as we begin the holidays we have two family members in Hospice care--Lisa and Great Aunt Sissy. Mom and I and Mo will travel to Ocean City for Aunt Julie's burial next week. She donated her body to Johns Hopkins for research purposes, and her remains were returned several weeks ago. Maybe her illness will help someone in the future.





Back to the matter at hand. With all this free time, I dug the fleece out of my stash and whipped up a couple of quick projects for Momo. First the Christmas Critter, a finger puppet (maybe a bunny) wearing a kilt. An immediate hit!




And second (complete with bedhead) a plaid fleece jumper. I used another piece of clothing as a template, and thankfully fleece doesn't need hemming. It probably won't hold up to heavy use, but for this winter it will keep her warm like a sweater vest. And it's short enough to allow for crawling. Although walking is just around the corner.

If I had a million dollars

I'd buy you a green dress, but not a real green dress--that's cruel.

Nah, if I had a million dollars I'd go on a shopping spree at Anthropologie. Instead I daydream about reverse engineering these sundresses. But I wonder why are sundresses featured so prominently in the middle of December? Hmm...could it be that they want us to wear leggings with them? If I have leggings in my wardrobe then you can rest assured, Anthropologie execs, that they are no longer happening. Nor is the word "happening."

Not much on the needles

This December I'm barely knitting at all compared to past years when I've been frantically weaving in ends on Christmas morning. I am making a heartwarmer for Maureen for Christmas (raveled here) using City Tweed merino/alpaca blend. I'm working in the color snowshoe right now but considering a color change for the lace. Maybe to toad or jacquard...we'll see. For now the project lives in my purse, and whenever the baby falls asleep in the car I drag it out for a little parking lot knitting. It's coming along slowly. Also I have a late night top secret embroidery project I'm chipping away at that may or may not be ready in time for Christmas. And this cowl neck project is on my post-holiday-crafting-to-do list. I need to figure out what item of clothing will go under the knife to become the frankencowl.

I've been missing the best part

More quick one-handed blogging. I hate tags on stuffed animals and cut them off of a lot of the baby's toys. Then I noticed that the tags are her favorite part of most toys. Who knew? To make up for my tag-ignorance, I whipped up this taggy blanket for Momo (over a month ago) in a single evening. It's cotton on one side, flannel on the other, little scrap of cotton batting in the middle, and an assortment of ribbon tags from my stash around the edge. All different textures, colors, sizes. After a dozen times though the laundry, I ripped off all of the pink tags. They turned out to be poor quality ribbon, and I didn't want her to swallow them.





She loves it! (Pictures from mid-September.) Especially the owl ribbon. There are so many things that I want to make for Maureen, and having a baby in the house is the biggest obstacle to making things for the baby....

Amish diamond mini quilt

One of the blogs I follow is the Purl Bee. It's a store in NYC and online, but they publish fantastic free tutorials for knitting, crocheting, embroidering, sewing, quilting--almost any fiber craft you can think of. Each month this year they have come up with a new mini quilt project. Some of them feel a little above my skill level, others don't really speak to me. But along came October: the Amish diamond. It was challenging enough to be interesting (rather than daunting). And luckily I was almost two months late with Theresa's birthday present.





Now I know it's not perfect. It's not even square. But this little quilt is full of firsts for me: my first time making my own binding, my first time piecing so that corners line up, and my first time "stitching in the ditch." And for all the new ground I covered, I am satisfied with the results. Proud even.



And my corners came out good. Nice and cornery. Mitered. I was deliberating over the binding color, so I asked Robb, "Contrast? Or matchy-matchy?" Holding up some reddish and some greenish fabrics. "Contrast." He was right.



The different patterns and colors came together well, too. I was thinking of it as a flower garden. With birds fluttering around but not in a Hitchcock sort of way.



It was completed over the course of several evenings after Mo's bedtime. Hope Theresa likes it! Although I also sent her and Rick 2.5G of baby pictures and videos on a thumb drive--the MO DRIVE--so the mini quilt is kind of a footnote.

Welcome to autumn

We found three small crickets in the house in as many days. Robb says it means the weather has taken a real turn toward cold. After the hottest summer on record in the DC Metro area, cool days are welcome.



Robb's class reunion was a lot of fun. I finally met Dawn, my nemesis for the past ten years, pictured above second from the left. She was Robb's girlfriend in high school. (That trollop.) But meeting Dawn ruined everything. I mean, how can I keep holding a fake grudge against someone who looks and acts like she might be the nicest kindergarten teacher in the world? I'm just wasting energy there.



I completed and mailed a very VERY belated something that's been on the sewing table. More on this toward the end of the week when I'm quite sure the eagle has landed.







Of course we are still keeping Maureen around. We took her to Bowles Farm today to pick out a pumpkin, visit the petting zoo, and take a spin on the hayride. Most of all she enjoyed the people watching. Now 9 months old, Maureen is crawling. FAST. Her favorite color is shiny. She says "dada" and is starting to make the signs for "milk" and "dog." Mo cut her third tooth this week on the top front right; the first two were the front bottom ones. Her hair has started to curl into ringlets on the back of her neck. She can almost kind of clap but not really--I just want her to. And she loves loves loves music.

But in the past several weeks Momo decided she should start her days at 6am and then only take one 45 minute nap around lunchtime, which is why poor Mommy never updates the blog anymore. I keep telling myself, It's only a phase... Everything is only a phase.