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Monthly Archives: October 2009
Plans
About 7 or 8 years ago I was given a ziploc bag with a few scraps of fabric and directions for making a paper pieced patchwork pincushion. I had been dabbling in pottery for a few years before that, but after this little pincushion I ditched the clay for fabric and that was that.
I lived and breathed quilts and would stop at any quilt shop where ever I travelled and I collected reddish fatquarters with the idea of making a beautiful bed quilt.
But I soon discovered that I could dye my own fabrics and I didn’t bother going to quilt shops anymore and never bought the light brown/neutral fabrics I wanted to use with the reds.
However, lately I’ve been browsing around some online fabric shops. When I happened across a bunch of fat quarters in ‘neutral’ at the Fat Quarter Shop, I immediately thought of the quilt I’d planned so many years ago.
So now I’ve got all the fabrics here ready to go and I’m keen to spend the best part of November immersed in this quilt. BUT before I get zooming with the rotary cutter I’ve got a few projects I want to finish:
– The second pair of pants for Jasper – modified to FIT this time.
– Sew up Chris’ Christmas stocking and work on the yellow and linen embroidery which I’ll use of Jasper’s stocking.
-Make Jasper a linen jacket… I’ve even made a muslin. I must be learning from my mistakes 🙂
You have GOT to be kidding me!!!
I haven’t been quick enough with the camera to get Jasper’s expression the moment the food enters his mouth. It’s like the above pic, but he wrinkles up his nose more and looks at me like I’m trying to poison him.
This week has been ‘not so good’. Jasper is having trouble with his sleeping and I’m having trouble dealing with it. I feel like I need a break, a full day would be ideal, but I’m breastfeeding, so the most I can hope for is 2.5hrs of break on the weekend.
This is me today, my reflection in front of one of Susan Purdy’s photograms.
Mummy
Random thoughts about motherhood:
– it’s fabulous to see Jasper develop and grow everyday.
– looking after Jasper has turned out to be a lot nicer experience than I anticipated. I had thought it would be all work and no fun.
– I’m a task oriented person, I like working on something until it is finished. I now get inturrupted alot and I get really frustrated about it.
– I like doing laundry.
– I can’t work out how other mums manage to cook dinner – I think that if I tried to produce a meal every night it would tip me over into crazyland. Chris has always cooked and I can’t see that changing any time soon.
– I need to find a way to excercise. It’s 40deg outside EVERYDAY and taking a walk is no longer an option. I’m thinking about aerobics video tapes.
– Have I thrown away my career? I had a dream last night that many of my old VicRoads workmates were here on holiday and it was so nice to see everyone again. And for some reason I’m crying as I type this.
– I don’t read to Jasper enough
– We’ve been giving Jasper food to taste over the last week like grapes, banana, watermelon and mango and he just screws up his face and looks at us like we’re crazy people. I tried to feed him some rice cereal yesterday and got the same response.
– I was going to wait to feed him solids until he’s 6mth old but he’s started waking for feeds during the night again and I think perhaps it’s because he’s ready for solids. Last night he woke at 11:30pm, 3am and 6am and I’m grumpy about it.
– I’ve got overdue library books to return.
– Ok, that’s enough randomness for today.
I’m on a mission this week to make christmas stockings for all three of us. Mine uses a piece of embroidery that I had done with no purpose in mind, Yay!!!
Shakin’
I felt an earthquake last night! The bed rocked backwards and forwards and our wardrobe doors rattled in sync. It was 7 on the richter scale, but it originated a long way away, so I suppose we got the soft tail of it.
Chris was up trying to settle Jasper and didn’t notice anything. I’ve heard that dogs get premonitions of these things… maybe babies do too? Maybe that’s why Jasper woke up and squawked the place down just before I felt the quake.
Years ago, when we lived in Gippsland, we experienced an earth tremor that we didn’tfeel. However, a bag of books fell off a shelf which we thought was a bit odd at the time. Then we worked it out the next morning when we saw the news.
I had all sorts of ideas for things I could make today. But I’m having difficultly settling on anything. I cut some shapes out of a magazine with the idea of doing a collage. But it didn’t work out. So I took some photos of the piles of cutout bits then chucked the lot in the bin.
We might go to the pool later.
Mmmm I can smell dinner cooking
Ok I’m just popping in for a quick post so I don’t completely lose the blogtoberfest spirit 🙂
This week our friends Catherine and Heath had a baby girl, Matlida Olive, born with ginger hair. Awwwww. I wish I was there to share some baby cuddles.
I’m making up a couple of muslin wraps to send in my ‘baby package’. This fabric was $2/m at Spotlight this week.
It’s nice to be working on something ‘tried and true’ after my recent sewing disasters. Yes. I’m loath to admit it, but the cute little pants are too small 🙁 They wont get up over Jasper’s lovely, lovely baby thighs.
So I’ve go to redraft this pattern to be baby shaped rather than Japanese todder shaped. I’m thinking; add an inch to each leg width and then also add a bit more bum room. AND make a muslin this time. (I’m also wondering what this means for the hooded jacket which I was all excited about)
Baby Sewing
Onwards and upwards. To get over the dissapointment of cutting too much off the hem of my skirt I moved onto a new sewing project with lightning speed.
I am happy to report that the first project from the Japanese pattern book has been a success. The diagrams are very clear and I didn’t have any problems with this simple little pair of pants.
The fabric is a grey/brown ‘ripstop’ weave cotton from Spotlight. With the natural grid on the fabric I couldn’t resist adding some cross stitched knee patches.
I’ve been studying the diagrams for a little hooded jacked from the same book. Jasper doesn’t need a jacket in Northern Territory, but we’ll be travelling to Tasmania and Victoria in January and I think a lightweight jacket might be useful and would look super cute 🙂
ETA: We’ll be in Darwin for the next few days, so I’m taking a break from Blogtoberfest until the end of the week.
Distraction
This post was going to be titled: Measure Twice, Cut Once; When Good Skirts Go Bad.
But I don’t want to talk about it. So I wont.
Instead, I’ll share some doodly drawings I did yesterday.
Ooops
It was almost inevitable. I was triming the seam which attaches the waistband to the skirt. And SNIP. I cut a hole in the waistband. Crap!
I had three options.
1) screw the whole thing up, hide it under the bed and pretend the bloody thing never existed.
2) unpick this waistband and reattach another made from left over fabric. I have enough.
3) repair the hole.
I went the low road and attempted a repair with a little patch and some buttonhole stitch. I figured that if it looked horrid I could always go for option two… the dreaded unpicking.
It isn’t as invisible as I imagined, but it’s on the back so I’ll never see it. So there. It’s staying.
Besides nobody will ever notice the patch when they’ve got my dodgy zipper sewing to stare at!
Clothes
Against my better judgement I’ve bought a book called Clothes for Kids Who Are Just Able to Walk.
Seduced by the cute pictures of children in beautiful clothes I ignored the obvious fact that this book is in Japanese; a language I do not understand.
I’ve put my faith in being able to decipher the diagrams and nut it out regardless.
Obviously, Jasper isn’t able to walk at his age (5 months)
But I figure I can get a head start on some clothes… and he’s BIG, a fact that was reitterated to me today when I hosted my mums’n’bubs group and we had 9 babies layed out on my lounge room floor.
I also purchased this fabric from Tessuti and I’ve started making a skirt from it straight away. No pattern this time as it is a simple pleated skirt with a waistband.