Waiting - 37 weeks

I haven't been much up for crafting this past month, although I need to get started on my own baby quilt soon....

I have been making some jewelry for myself, which I thought I would share here instead of on my terribly neglected jewelry blog. I'm calling this my "Birthing necklace" because I plan to wear it during my baby's birth (sometime around May 24th).

The necklace has a lot of personal meaning for me - and although I don't consider myself to be an over superstitious person, I figure having some "good luck" charms can never hurt. It's very likely our baby will require heart surgery to correct his aorta right after birth. Since receiving this diagnosis back in my 23rd week, I've been wearing a Malachite ring to help protect him. Malachite is a green gemstone associated with the heart chakra and as well it is supposed to help aide in childbirth. The emerald green stones in the necklace are also Malachite. The silver charms are Mexican Milagros (miracles) that I cast myself while living in Mexico and studying silver smithing back in 2001. I've been saving them all this time for the right piece of jewelry - this is finally it. The center charm represents me, the birth mother, the angel is the babies guardian and the heart charm appropriately has 2 hearts carved into it - representing my heart and my baby's.

Growth Charts

I have a fun and easy sewing project I would like to share with you today. I was looking for a quick sewn gift I could make for my friend's children and came across this project in Alicia Paulson's wonderful Book "Stitched in Time". I used her Dollhouse Growth chart project as my inspiration for this project.

Here's how I made my Growth Charts:

1. I cut 16 strips of scrap fabric, each 8 1/2" X 3 1/2" (I didn't even need to dig into my stash). That's another great thing about this project, you can literally make it from fabric scraps.

2. I stitched each strip together along the 8 1/2" lengths. I use 1/4" seam allowance for these types of projects.

3. Once all strips were stitched together I pressed the seams flat and cut out felt numbers for 2,3,4,5. The chart is designed to be hung 2 feet or 24" from the floor. I added the felt numbers to the chart every 12" (or 4 sewn strips) to represent 1 foot.

4. I decided to glue the numbers onto the chart with fabric glue because they were a bit small to sew. I'm not sure if this is cheating or not, but it was nice and quick!

5. For the top strip (same size as the other strips) I embroidered the child's name.

6. Instead of sewing a bias binding around the edges of the chart like in Alicia's project, I decided to line it with muslin to give it more stability. I just cut out a piece of muslin the entire length of the sewn strips and stitched around the top and 2 sides with right sides together.

7. I left the bottom open so I could turn the chart right side out. I pressed it nice and flat and then topstitched around the top and sides of the chart at 1/4" and closed the bottom with an edgestitch.

This was a super fast and easy project that could easily be completed in less than 2 hours, including the embroidery. Oh and one last note - yes these charts were meant to be written on! Be sure to choose fabrics that are not too dark. A felt pen works best for marking the height and date.

Monkey Quilt & the importance of pinning

I finally finished the baby quilt I started at the end of December. Now I'm very excited to get started on a quilt for my own baby who is due at the end of May. I set myself the rule that I couldn't start anything new until this one was finished...

I'm pleased with how the quilt turned out, and it didn't take me all that long to put together in actual cutting and sewing hours - it was just finding chunks of time to mess up my dining room, set up my machine and ironing board and sit down to work on it.

One tip I cannot stress enough when tackling a quilting project is the importance of pinning. Because quilts are made up of a sandwich of layers, it's so important to keep these layers from shifting while sewing. If your machine doesn't have a walking foot attachment (and mine doesn't) this is even more important. It's normal for fabrics to feed through a sewing machine at different rates. The top layer of fabric is being fed through the machine by the sewing foot, and the bottom layer is being fed through by the feed dogs. (Those little teeth that stick through the bottom of the sewing plate). If the fabrics feed though at different rates, you end up with a twisted mess. I know this inherently from more than 20 years of sewing every kind of fabric imaginable - even Goretex. Do you think I used enough pins on this quilt when I started my machine quilting - nope! I ended up with a completely twisted mess after my first line of machine quilting. I ripped it out and sat down to pin the quilt some more. I estimate I used more than 200 safety pins to tack it down completely, as well as some quilting pins. My next round of machine quilting was successful and I was able to stitch up the rest of the quilt with no further problems.

Domestic Bliss

It's a rare Sunday I have all of my mundane domestic chores complete, so that I can putter around and spend time doing things that really interest me. I managed to get all the laundry, groceries and cleaning done yesterday so that today I can just spend time baking and sewing. My version of domestic bliss! I should be outside enjoying this beautiful sunny day, but I'm perfectly content inside with the oven on!

I saw this recipe for scones on the Design Sponge blog a while back and thought I should try it. It's one of Denise Schmidt's recipes who is a quilter extraordinaire, for those of you who might not have heard of her. I actually have an article about her that I tore out of a Martha Stuart magazine back in 1997 when she was just getting started with her quilting business. I placed that article in the "inspiration" binder I've been keeping since my mid 20's. Even back then, I thought that making a career as a quilter sounded like an awesome job. And that was waaaaayyy back before quilting became "cool" for us Gen X'ers. I guess I've always known in my heart that designing clothing is not my passion, even though I have a degree in Apparel design.

Next up for this afternoon, I will tackle the laborious job of machine quilting my friend's baby quilt. This project has dragged on long enough and her poor son deserves a nice quilt before he is walking.

Work in Progress

What is it about cats and quilting projects? Whenever my cat hears the sewing machine motor start up, she is in my face! Much as I love my cat to death, she is hard to sew with. I finally got my butt in gear and started on my friends baby quilt. I've got the top part pieced, now I just need to machine quilt it. I always find that part more work than the piecing.

I've been tagged by my friend Sami to mention 6 random things about me. I've never been tagged before, so I'm sure there is a lot most people don't know about me.

Let's see....

1. I'm left handed but I can only use right handed scissors.

2. I'm 21 weeks pregnant! This isn't really a random fact, but I haven't announced it on my blog until now.

3. I hate driving - it's my biggest anxiety. I would rather go out of my way to walk, ride my bike or take transit anywhere instead of getting into a car and driving.

4. I've hated jello for my entire life. I don't plan to start liking it any time soon!

5. I have this bad habit of opening the new bottle of dish soap before the old one is empty. I then end up with 2 bottles of dish soap on my kitchen counter at one time. I've no idea why I keep doing this. If it was my husband's annoying habit, for sure I'd be nagging at him about it!

6. My left foot is bigger than my right foot.

Now it's my turn to tag Amanda of Owl and Pussycat. I don't know too many other bloggers in person, so I'm only tagging you. Sorry if you've played this game before!

Here are the rules:

Here are the rules:
Link to the person who tagged you.
Mention the rules.
Tell six quirky yet boring, unspectacular details about yourself.
Tag six other bloggers by linking to them.
Go to each person's blog and leave a comment that let's them know they've been tagged.

Table runner

While snowed in for weeks over the holidays I pulled out my sewing machine and fabric stash and set myself a challenge to quilt something! I decided to make a table runner for my dining room table because I thought as far as quilting projects go - it wouldn't take too long.

I always gravitate to warm earthy colours when designing for myself, and this project was strictly to design something that I would love. Most of my design projects (jewelry and sewing) are always for other people. I didn't let myself over think the design and cut strips of fabric and played around with the composition very loosely before starting to sew. I'm so pleased with the result, and now feel ready to FINALLY tackle my friend's baby quilt that I've been promising her since October!

Finding time to craft

I always start off with the best intentions for my craft blog, but never seem to follow through... I guess my biggest struggle is just finding the time to craft. As well as this, I need to balance my craft projects with my jewelry design projects. It would be so much easier if I could just choose one hobby and stick with it, but that really wouldn't work with my A.D.D. personality.

My big craft project for this fall is a baby quilt for my friend at work who will be giving birth to a baby boy any day now. The quilt has missed 2 baby shower deadlines and I'm hoping to have it complete by Christmas! So far I've managed to cut out the quilt squares and plan how I will arrange them. That's it! I'm missing white sheeting for the background still. I've realized the quilts I like the most have lots of white space in them. Without it, they can get really busy. I love texture and pattern, but not when it's competing with everything around it. I chose a sock monkey theme (fabric by Erin Michael for Moda) for my friend's quilt because she is definitely not the "cutesy" baby type. The nursery is painted chocolate brown, and I think these prints will work out well.