Diaper Bag

I don't know if this is a sign of things to come, but amazingly enough I have already collected 3 "diaper bags" and this child is not even born yet. To be fair, one was a gift, one was on sale yesterday in target and I made the other one before I had any idea about the other two. I put it in quotes because 2 out of the 3 actually just look like regular bags (and the one from target is) so at least they will be useful outside of baby world. I guess we'll see what ends up working the best and for now I choose to look at it simply as being prepared :)

Anyway, before I had my shower and got the one diaper bag (thanks sissy!) I kept looking for one that I liked that didn't look like a crazy piece of vinyl or ugly baby fabric with a bazillion puffy pockets that, if filled, would definitely cause permanent shoulder damage. I found nothing that I really liked and the few that I did think were nice were way expensive (at least in my opinion....maybe $100+ won't seem like so much some day...). So naturally I started looking at patterns to see if there was anything I could make myself. One day I found it! The perfect bag that is simple yet spacious and best of all, the pattern was free. I modified it a bit to put a few more pockets inside and attempted to elasticize the tops of said pockets but it's not really tight enough to do anything I'm pretty sure. I think it's smaller than the other bags I have so I figure it will be perfect for those shorter trips where I don't need quite as much. I love it and would definitely use it as a tote if not a diaper bag so I think that's a big win. I'm sure it will get lots of use in the upcoming years :)






I also made a matching changing pad and some wet bags which will be upcoming posts so stay tuned....

Stacked Coins Quilt

This quilt was quite a drawn out project. I started it back in October and actually got the whole thing pieced and then didn't get around to sandwiching/quilting/binding until...well until May I think. When I started it, I had hoped it would be the first quilt for our baby, not yet knowing that I was actually pregnant and I am thrilled that it worked out that way. It is nice and bright and cheery and very gender neutral. It has a lot of white in it though, so I anticipate a lot of stains. It also crosses a quilt off my list! Anyway, it was really easy to make and the pattern is from the moda bake shop by crazy mom quilts. I used a jelly roll of fabric instead of the charm packs and it worked really well and I have enough scraps to eventually make a matching patchy pillow I think. The fabric is from connectingthreads.com, but it is a collection from last summer and the name escapes me right now....Rivera maybe? This is a quilt that I had initially wanted to stipple, but that was not working out so I decided to do a grid instead....which despite my best efforts is wonky anyway. But hey, it gives it character! The sashing is actually all done with a white sheet from Ikea and I was worried about how it would wash and turn out, especially with the other nicer fabric, but it is great. I also really think the turquoise binding makes it :) So here it is:

Newborn Gown

On October 22, 2009, I found out I was pregnant. In anticipation of this event happening at some point, I wanted to have a little gift to give my hubby as....I don't know, a symbol of the start of this next journey in our lives I suppose. After giving it much thought, I found a pattern for a newborn gown made out of an old adult t-shirt. It was perfect, I could save my hubby's shirt from the trash can (where I can assure you it was headed) and create a cute little gown for our little one. I found the pattern here at This Mama Makes Stuff and settled on the mighty mouse t-shirt that has been around for at least the duration of our relationship (8.5 years for anyone keeping track). I must say that I really dislike sewing clothing, especially if it involves sleeves, but I made it through and it actually came out really well. Of course, it may never fit our wee one since it is growing bigger by the day....but that's not the point. We'll keep the gown anyway since I made it and it is a great memory, but I imagine a scenario in which the child stumbles upon it years down the road and asks if he/she was ever that little, at which point we look at each other, smile and say "Nope, you sure weren't!" haha. Anyway, that is the story of this little gown. I am awfully proud of it considering my feelings on making clothes and working with knit fabrics...and maybe someday I'll even know if it would fit a newborn, with any luck it will fit mine not too many days from now :)

Pillow

This is it! The last non-baby thing I've made recently. After I made the ragged squares quilt for my sister, I thought she might enjoy a pillow to match (she has a thing for pillows and blankets, eventually they will take up more of the bed than she does haha) but I just didn't have time to sit and make it. Finally last week I did and after toying with a few patterns, I chose strip blocks. I had considered a log cabin, but I'm really much happier with this I think and it used almost all of the scraps I had :) It is an 18" pillow with an envelope back, my favorite kind really. I really like it and I hope she does too once I finally get it to her.


So that's that. Now I just have to figure out how to organize all the baby stuff I've made. I believe I have more than a dozen things that I have made, almost all of them in the past 2 months (two of them should get done today I think). And hopefully now baby can go ahead and get here so I can stop trying to keep myself busy by making things for him/her haha.

Scrap Quilt

Just a few more posts before I get to baby things! Obviously at this point, my goals and ambitions for my crafting have changed a bit. Back in September I had a few goals that I hoped to accomplish within the year, and while I've made good progress, I have also needed to reevaluate (as I suspected I would). First, the issue of the one goal I had outside of the quilts I wanted to make: free motion quilting. I would love to call this accomplished, but in reality I tried and it did not go well. The scrap quilt I am posting today was intended to have swirlies up the seams and I tried, oh believe me I tried, but I am really bad and have no control when I am trying to move the quilt. It was ugly despite my practice and attempts and eventually I ended up doing wavy squares inside the plain squares on this quilt, hoping it would make me better....it did not and it looks pretty bad. Luckily, most of it isn't too noticeable, but if you look closely, it's not pretty, and really I'm okay with that. This is not to say I will never free motion quilt, but for right now it is just not a priority.

Anyway, on to the quilt. I made this one to replace the t-shirt quilt that had been my couch cuddle blanket since it is dying a bit. It used up almost all of my scraps, with 6.5" squares on the front, alternating between strip pieced squares and plain squares and the back is 12.5" squares with some strips thrown in because I didn't have quite enough fabric. I actually think it's a pretty ugly blanket, but that's okay, it's comfy and it cleaned out a lot of my fabric which was the point. It is also kinda cool to have something with a piece of just about every project I've made since I started sewing a couple of years ago. The pictures aren't great since the weather has been very....Binghamton (cloudy and gray), but they make the point. The binding is all yellow fabric and really in my opinion, that is what saves it. So here it is:


Next up will be a pillow to match the ragged squares blanket and then the stacked coins quilt, which is the beginning of the baby frenzy :)

Seat Belt Cover

This craft was a requested project. When a friend asked me for a seat belt cover to avoid the stupid thing digging into her neck, it seemed easy enough, and actually it turned out that it was. I combined a few different tutorials and had a heck of a time figuring out the correct measurements since one tutorial was for a luggage handle cover and the other was for a little kid seat belt, but I got it and it worked out lovely. Honestly, at this point I do not remember what those measurements were (hey, I gave it to her for her birthday in November!), but the point is it worked and it turned out really well. It is really just a rectangle with some batting and velcro, but it gets the job done. So here are a few pictures, including me modeling it in the car just to make sure it worked :)

Ragged Squares Quilt!!

Finally, after much waiting, I am posting the ragged squares quilt that I started (and completed) so many months ago! I couldn't talk much about it since it was a christmas gift for my sister, and it was such torture since it was done in October. It actually came together really quickly, but that might have just been because I was so excited to get it done that I was quite motivated. I decided on this one to not pre-wash any of the fabrics so that they would pucker and fray nicely and it worked great. It is all black and white fabrics with some lime green on the back squares and the binding. It was between lime green and hot pink honestly, and green is much more sister :) The tutorial is here and I just....expanded it. I kept the squares the same sizes because I liked the proportions, but just made it basically full sized. It is 8 squares x 9 squares but I think it did end up shrinking quite a bit during the washing. The back ended up with a bit more in the way of detailing than I had originally intended (ya know, since I apparently can't measure fabric) but I love the way it came out. The quilting was kinda difficult since it was a whole lot of squares, but it was worth it, and the result is great. It was definitely the largest blanket I've made so far, and I think for now I'll stick to smaller ones (although really my scrap blanket, an upcoming post, got a little bigger than I meant for it to haha).

So here is the front:


And the back:


And some detail shots for good measure:




I love it, and my sister tells me she does too :) and now I think I'll go work on the matching pillow that I am just now getting around to making with the leftover scraps!

It's been so long!

Due to a series of events, beginning with not having a computer of my own for 6 months, I have clearly been quite absent for many months now. And perhaps the biggest news of this absence is also what will keep me from updating regularly for a while....I'm Pregnant!!! Due very soon now in fact. On the one hand, that has given me many crafts that are smaller and get done quicker, on the other hand it will make free time much more scarce once baby arrives. At any rate, considering how many months it has been, I really don't have that much to show for it, but I do have at least 10 finished projects to post. Some of them have been done since the fall, some of them are very recent. So I'm going to go through the older ones first and then we'll get down to baby stuff :)

For today I want to post something that I have been talking about for ages...as in since 2008 when I started it and posted about how much I loved the yarn I was using. It started out as a bridesmaid gift and I had hoped to make two similar ones and give them to my girls before the wedding last summer. Obviously, that didn't even come close to happening, but I did manage to finish one and give it to my amazing friend Sara for her birthday/engagement/christmas gift this past fall. It is a shawl that I made using a pattern my Mother-in-Law found and gave to me from knitting daily tv. It was pretty easy, and came out great, it just took me forever. I actually got a really big chunk of it done and then got hit with working 4 months and then the wedding took over and then it was fall and I finally finished it. Anyway, I used the spa yarn from naturallycaron.com and it was probably a little less sturdy than if I had used the linen yarn that the pattern recommended, but it's alright, I like it better this way. So here it is, I have one picture of it being blocked, and a close up of the pattern:


And next time, hopefully this week unless a certain baby decides it is time to come out, I will be posting the ragged square quilt that I made as a gift for my sister and gave to her for christmas :)