White Orchid Melody

Further to my New Year’s Resolutions, I have some that are about finishing what I’ve started.  I guess that could be a good umbrella goal “finish what you start.”  Seems simple enough, but life and boredom often interfere with good intentions.  I have a couple of craft projects that have been going on for over a year, several years in fact.  It is time to get them done!  Brian laughed at me when he saw that I was giving myself a whole year to complete them, but when it has been 3 years already, another year doesn’t seem so long!

I have a sweater that I started knitting out of this beautiful baby alpaca yarn.  It is so soft and cuddly.  I figured if I was going to take the time to hand knit a sweater, it should be really nice.  And it will be.  If I ever get it done!

The second project on my list is a quilt.  

Great-Grandmother Sparks Tulip Quilt

My tulip pieces

A completed tulip square 

This is a more significant project.  I have an old quilt that was made by my great grandmother, whom I never knew.  Even though I didn’t know her, the quilt is one of my most prized possessions.  It is one of the things I’d grab if my house caught on fire.  In honor of her handiwork, I decided to make a replica.  Well, not an exact replica, but a quilt out of the same pattern.  I traced off the shapes and made pattern pieces.  The original quilt is pretty small, might fit a twin size bed, good for just cozying up.  My version will fit a queen size bed.  So, that was a bunch of pieces to cut out.  The pattern is a tulip shape, where four tulips make a square.  All the squares are different colored tulips, so it is very bright and fun.  I have all of my tulips sewn, but I need to cut out some more of the surrounding pieces.  Then I’ll have to sew up the pieces into squares.  Once all the squares are complete, I need to decide how I want them arranged and then piece the squares.  Then the big fun begins, backing, batting, and the actual quilting.  The original is hand quilted and I’m planning to do the same.  We’ll see if that happens in a year!  Very few people hand quilt any more.  We received several “homemade” quilts for our baby and only one was cut and pieced, and none were hand quilted.  But part of what is so special about my great grandma’s quilt is the imperfect stitching.  So, that is one characteristic I’d like to preserve in my interpretation.

I really should have a plan and timeline for completing these projects.  But those sorts of constraints tend to work against my creative urges.  (hence why its taken years to get only partially through these projects)  But maybe I’ll have some quarterly deadlines for progress anyway, just so it isn’t thanksgiving and I’m trying to complete a quilt and a sweater in a month!

I guess mending those sheets got me in the mood to sew.  Occasionally I enjoy it.  I had to do so much in school that I got rather burned out and don’t sew very often.  Everyone always asks if I make my own clothes since I’m a fashion designer.  Uh, no.  I like to design things, not sew them up.  It is much more gratifying to draw a picture and have it come back to you all made up!  But anyway, sewing can be useful.  We are planning to cloth diaper our baby.  Not the traditional white squares with pins, mind you.  The world of cloth diapers has come a long way, baby!  These bumGenius are our favorites so far.  We’ll probably stock up on them.  I thought about making my own, but the fabrics aren’t exactly cheap, and the construction is complicated.  Frankly, I don’t think it is worth my time.  Along with the cloth diapers, it is best to use cloth wipes.  Now this is just a square or rectangle of fabric, so it makes sense to make this myself rather than pay a couple dollars per wipe.  I did a little research to determine what type of fabric to use, and saw that terry cloth works well.  We just so happened to have some old towels in the yard sale pile.  They had a couple stains, but hey, I’m making reusable toilet paper, right??  They’ll probably see another stain or two before little one is through with them!  So, I took a big bath towel and cut sixteen 8×8″ squares, and ten 4×8″ rectangles.  I figure I’ll mostly use the larger ones at home, but the smaller ones will be nice for packing in the diaper bag.  Really I have no idea what will work best.  That will be trial and error.  But the towel was very nice plush terry cloth, so they should make good wipes…thick enough for clean hands, and soft enough for happy baby.  Some people keep them in a wipes box with wipe solution (baby wash and water), or you can just keep the wipe solution in a spray bottle and wet them as you go…again, I’ll have to see what works best.  Back to making the wipes, after I cut the squares I finished the edges with a tight zig zag stitch on my sewing machine, so that they won’t ravel and fray.  I used different color thread to liven things up a bit, but you could just do all white.

Step by Step:

1. Find old towel destined for yard sale or trash.
2. Cut out 8×8″ squares, or 4×8″ rectangles, or a combination of both.  You can cut around any bad spots, or holes in your towel. 
3. Set up zig zag stitch on sewing machine (I used the widest zig zag stitch, with a stitch length of 2, so the stitches are close together).
4. Zig zag around all unfinished edges. 

Easy as can be!

Small Wipes

Large Wipes

We spent the weekend in Dubuque, Iowa, visiting friends.  It was a really nice trip.  Well, being there was really nice anyway.  The car ride is another story.  I just could not get comfortable.  But once we were there, I had a good time.  Brian got to go mountain biking and I got to relax.  We all went over to Galena, IL on Saturday.  It is a cute little town with a great historic shopping/dining district.  In my quest to find edible and practical christmas gifts, I got some good stocking stuffers at a shop there, spices and jam and such.  I also got some good ideas for things to make myself. 

The ride home was better than the ride there.  I was able to sleep some since I didn’t have to navigate.  Our neighbors watched the animals while we were gone.  When we got home, we found that they’d also left us two boxes of baby stuff, blankets, bibs, and toys, most of it never used.  That was a nice surprise.  We have the best neighbors! 

Brian was off yesterday, so we slept in, had breakfast, and then took a nice long walk.  It was beautiful day–pretty warm in the morning.  I’m glad we took advantage of it because it’s COLD today!   The wind is just frigid!  I had my class yesterday afternoon and then we headed over to the Delmar Loop for some pizza.  There’s a great new york style pizza place there.  I over-indulged and then had heartburn all night.  Oh, the joys of pregnancy! 

Today I’ve just been working around the house, cleaning, making soup for the week.  I guess I slept well last night because I’ve been quite energetic today!  We have an appointment this evening with a prospective pediatrician.  I made a long list of questions to ask him.  I hope we like him because I don’t have anyone else lined up!  But we still have some time to find someone if this doesn’t work out. 

I can’t believe we’re a week into Novemeber already.  Time flies when you are having fun!  I know the next couple months are going to go so fast with the holidays.  I need to get cracking on those homemade gifts!

Well, I tried my hand at some digital scrapbooking for the baby book.  It is looking really cute so far.  I ended up using some of the freebie downloads available on these sites:

http://www.shabbyprincess.com/downloads.asp
http://www.simplycleandigiscraps.com/freebies.html

There are lots of papers and designs you can buy.  But I went with freebies.  There was plenty of cute stuff to choose from.  So, this project was really simple (no mess) and cheap (only cost was paper/ink to print).  Take a look:

I think this is a great way to create a homemade baby book or other album.  I just bought an 8×8 sized album at Target for about $10, though you could probably bind your own book as well.  It has been a really fun project so far.  I only have about 6 pages done, but I’ll do more as time goes on.  It will document just the pregnancy and the birth.  I figure I’ll make another for the first year if I have time (ha!). 

With the baby on the way, I’d like to start documenting the process with a scrapbook or album.  But I’m not much for cutting and pasting, and I don’t like having a bunch of junk lying about.  So, I’m thinking of doing a digital scrapbook.  I look back at my husband’s and my baby books and our moms filled in the first few pages and the rest are left blank…a waste of paper and an abbreviated read to boot.  Seems like it would be better just to make an album that includes the pregnancy and birth.  Then if I’m feeling up to it, I can make another “first year” album. 

I’m proficient at Photoshop and Illustrator, so I think I can come up with some cute page designs.  There are also some free digital scrapbook downloads available from several websites.  But I don’t really want alot of digital “junk” either.  Keep it simple, right?  I guess I’ll see how long it takes to make my own versus the time I’d spend scouring websites looking for good samples.

Not that I really need anything else on my to do list.  It would probably be easier to just buy the standard baby book.  But I’d like to create something really special for the little one.  And a couple months from now, when I’m no longer working and the nursery is all done, I’ll probably need something to do.  So if and when I get around to this little project, I’ll post some of my efforts.  In the meantime if you have any pointers for getting started, I’d love to hear them!