new diapers, crappy pictures

New diaper covers!

This one is just red PUL bound with fold over elastic.  I cut out the PUL using basically the same template as for all the diapers I've made, bound it with FOE, then stitched on some velcro.  That's it, easy peasy.  Since both the PUL and the FOE are stretchy, the cover itself is stretchy, which makes for a nice trim fit. 

This one is the same idea, but with a layer of cotton fabric layered on top of the PUL.  I used a glue stick to paste the two layers together before sewing on the FOE, that way I didn't need to poke pinholes holes into the PUL.  The cotton fish fabric isn't stretchy, so this cover isn't as trim as the red one, but it provides some much needed variety.

If it weren't for the fact that I am the only person in this family who is not completely unmanned by the prospect of having to use a prefold or fitted diaper as well as a cover, I would scrap all the pocket diapers I've been making in favor of these little covers.

Handmade Home

I usually avoid buying craft books because they either

• are filled with projects I wouldn't need instructions to make,
  
• focus on projects that look like they came from a big box store, or
  
• embrace an aesthetic that has no place outside a 1990 craft fair; this is especially true of books geared towards crafting for kids.

But this book is making me very happy:

There is not a single project in there that tries to replicate something you could buy at WalMart or BabiesRUs. The aesthetic is deliberately handmade, thrifted, simple and natural.  Best of all, hardly any interfacing is called for (because seriously, why take beautiful natural materials and crap them up with nasty stiff interfacing?  I HATE INTERFACING.) 

Handmade Home is now sitting next to my bed, exploding with post it flags. I desperately need to cut up some ugly old towels in order to make a bath mat;  then I have a bunch of pouches and wall pockets and bags to make for my boy.  This book has me seriously considering making cloth maxi pads.  Yes, I just said that on the internet. 

Loads more inspiration from the book here.

toy bags & a new book

 I made these little drawstring bags to corral toys that have multiple parts.  That way the red choo choo can be found immediately and maybe we don't have to throw a tantrum.  Also, since the bags are labeled with (approximate) pictures of their contents, it's easier for everybody to find and put away toys.  Theoretically.

These were so easy to make that I feel silly for not having made them months ago.  They aren't even lined.  For each bag I just sewed together two pieces of linen, each 8.5"x11" (why that size?  Because the ruler and the cutting mat were all the way in the kitchen, whereas a stack of printer paper was right next to my bed, that's why).  I used this tutorial for the drawstring casing, and I'm pretty sure I initially got the idea for labeled toy bags here.  So far I've only made bags for the train set and the finger puppet set, but more are in the works.

The idea for the little circular patches came from Bend the Rules with Fabric.  It was so easy that I now plan to sew circular patches onto everything that sits still.  I used Heat'n'Bond lite (which does not fall under my blanket ban on interfacing) to iron them on and then I used a zig-zag stitch around the edges.

 

BTRWF also has me convinced that freezer paper stencilling is not outside my crafting comfort zone, and is making me wish I felt confident enough to dye fabric.  But I'm still concerned that troubling chemicals + my total lack of attention to detail = ER visit.  This book has also made me reconsider those pieces of fabric you can print a picture onto; I had previously though they were unforgivably cheesy with no possible application to my life, but then I saw this project adapted from the book and I am in love.  Joseph needs T-shirts with pictures of all his animal friends. That is a fact.

NaBloWriMo

My shockingly frequent posts of late are because I'm participating in NaBloWriMo :  the idea is that you post every day for the month of October.  I'm doing this because:

• I like to write but I have trouble getting motivated
• I'm bored
  
• I like showing off the crap I make and getting complimented on it (sad but true)
  
• If I don't post for a day it will serve as a de facto birth announcement
  

I've been enjoying checking out the other bloggers who are doing this--nobody signs up for this sort of thing without being a pretty decent writer.  I'm already a dedicated reader of Irregular Tammie and Bird and Little Bird, and now there are a few more I'm going to have to add to my Google Reader subscriptions.  And then I will update my links sidebar.  Now we're getting ambitious.

bed

Three weeks of bed rest down, less than three more to go.  At that point I'll be 35 weeks pregnant and the coast will be clear for the babies to arrive. 

You can tell he's sleeping because his eyes are shut, of course.  

And yes, that is a bulldozer that he has tucked in bed beside him.

It hasn't been nearly as bad as I had thought.  I get to spend all day watching DVDs and knitting.  Sometimes my parents (who are now settled in town, hooray!) take Joseph for the entire day.  A bunch of amazing women from a moms' group I belong to have been bringing us dinner.  I feel like I'm on some kind of crazy retreat.

So far, the only real problem I've had is that I miss my little boy.  There's only so much interaction you can have with an energetic two year old when you're stuck in one place.  It's frustrating not being able to hang out with him the way we ordinarily do--playdates, errands, cooking, puttering, etc.  That said, life as we knew it was going to be temporarily suspended anyway once the babies were born, so it's probably best that we all begin this transition while nobody is sleep-deprived or hormonally fraught.

in which I find out how big a queen sized quilt really is

I started this quilt last summer (i.e., August of 2008) after we painted the spare room an especially obnoxious shade of orange.  My goal was to tone down the orange walls by making a quilt that combined orange with a boatload of white and green.  In my universe, white and green = calm, soothing, peaceful.  Orange is a color for people who are better adjusted than I am.

Sadly, I had underestimated the amount of work that goes into making a queen sized quilt, utterly lost interest in ever seeing it completed, and became well and truly disgusted by every inch of fabric I had chosen.   Meanwhile, we painted over the orange walls.

But last month, in a burst of pregnancy-related nesting, I finished the quilting, and then I finished hand sewing the binding during the first week of bed rest. 



Now that it's done I kind of love it.  I think it helps that I quilted the crap out of it:  I think my quilting lines are only an inch and a half apart.  Even fabrics that probably have no business being near one another look perfect when they're smothered by miles of quilting. 


But my favorite part is the backing:  it's an old white sheet on which I appliqued some leaf shapes.  I'm pleasantly surprised that the white quilting lines don't seem too obvious on the brown leaves. 

knitting for sanity, part 2

I'm not as happy with this version of the Debbie Bliss baby shrug as I was with my last effort.  Unless I am badly misremembering the anatomy of a six month old, I fear there will be bagginess/sloppiness issues, and that the solution would have been a button. 

Furthermore, the seaming was murder and it looks like crap, and I had a really hard time picking up stitches to do the ribbed border--you really have to pick up a ton of stitches when you're working the outside of a curve, but you need to pick up much fewer on the inside of a curve.  Otherwise you wind up with a drooping, puckering mess.   It took several tries to get it reasonably right.

The yarn is (once again) Knit Picks Comfy Worsted, which I could not love more even if I tried. 

But wait!  What is that lovely piece of quilted gorgeousness under the baby sweater?  Stay tuned!