crafting by amy

Monday, March 22, 2010

3/22/2010


Well, it's been 20 days since my last post and I am exhausted. This will probably be my second to last post, as I will be heading into the hospital on April 8th (17 days!) to have this baby. But have no fear, I will be crafting up until then, there are still things on my to do list to get done.
So let's get down to it...

My mom scored this sweet glider/recliner with an ottoman for me for the nursery. Only problem, it's black, all over black not matching my white/pink/green in the nursery. So I decided I needed to make a cover for it, just something to slip over that would come off easily for washing. It's not my best work as I mostly just draped, pinned, sewed, pinned, sewed, etc... and I ran out of the pink corduroy for the footstool so I had to get creative with it. But I think it turned out cute, it's nice and matchy in the nursery now and it will serve it's purpose.

Here's a before after shot of the chair, uglying up my cute nursery...

And now, after... so cute!


I decided I needed a few more sets of reusable nursing pads, so I serged up a few more (3 more birdseye/lightweight sets and 4 x6prefold/heavyweight ones), I should be all set now!


Then I started having trouble with my feet swelling if I spent too much time sitting with my feet down (like at the sewing machine) so I had to find something I could do sitting on the couch with my feet up. So I decided to get my circle Knifty Knitter looms out and "knit" up a baby cocoon in this cotton candy pink yarn I had in my stash. (Modeled by Q's bear "Mommy")


I also decided to make a few more onesie/burp sets in some of the leftover fabric from making BabyZ's dresses.


And then while I was at it, I whipped up 2 burps for myself, gotta have some cute stuff in my diaper bag too!


I also decided it was time to finally make a Triforce onesie for BabyZ (it's actually a pink onesie, just hard to tell) and a Big Brother/Little Sister for her and Q.


And I also made a few other onesies (for gifting/swapping)... it's hard to tell but the white image on the aqua onesie is an owl, it's cute, just hard to photograph.


And if all that weren't enough, I decided to make a batch of pillowcase dresses (using the Owly Baby "Betsy" Dress pattern, she is such a nice lady and makes some seriously cute stuff, check out her etsy shop if you get a chance!) to sell in my etsy shop. I am hoping to make some $$ off them so I can buy the cloth diapers I want (they are NOT cheap up front, but in the long run will save us a TON, think thousands of dollars). I didn't CD with Q but I am really looking forward to giving it a go this time around, cloth diapers now are just as easy as disposables, just snap/velcro and go, no folding/pins/etc... Ok... enough diaper rambling, back to the dresses! So I made a dozen dresses for my etsy shop, 3 different sizes, using fabrics in my stash, as well as binding from my stash (which was fun and often tricky to match up) and I did end up having to buy some ribbon, but most of it was from my stash (that also got a little tricky with matching things up). I love how they turned out. I think the cupcake ones and the Spongebob (YES, Spongebob!) one are my favorites.

6 month sized dresses...


12 month dresses


2T dresses...


And now I am off to list all those dresses in my etsy shop (going to be a long afternoon)... and hopefully I can get a few other things that I need to sew this week cut out as well. *fingers crossed I can actually check everything off my to do list before Baby comes* See you in 2 weeks!

Tuesday, March 02, 2010

3/2/2010


A new month is upon us! Only 37 more days until Baby joins us (I don't remember if I mentioned it or not, but we actually have a date now, repeat c-section scheduled for April 8th)... so I REALLY need to stay on the ball this month if I want to get everything done before she gets here!

So let's get started...

First up is a reconstructed project. I took an old waterproof pad we had used with Q (about the size of a changing pad), that was starting to pill and peel off it's backing (and was yellow gingham and I don't like yellow) and I cut it in half and then stitch some pink and green striped flannel to the top and then serged the edges... now I have some cute new waterproof pads that match the nursery (I love using them on the changing table to keep from having to change the changing pad cover so often).
Before

and After!


I wanted to add a little something to the other gifts I had made the week before (the changing pads) so I made a few little appliqued onesies...
I made 3 Tie onesies, so cute for little boys!

And so Baby didn't feel left out, I made her an initial onesie (yes, that is a "Z")!


While I was decorating onesies I figured I would go ahead and finish cutting out a few stencils I had started for some shirts, so I also managed to get 3 shirts stenciled...
A motorcycle one (for my cousin's son, he's not quite a year older than Q)

An octopus one for Q (he picked out the image, the shirt color and the paint color)

And the last one I made because I had the shirt in my stash and I thought the image was perfect for stenciling... it has since been claimed by Husband.


And to finish up this week's post... the last of the baby dresses... at least for now! I have more fabrics that I would like to use for dresses, but I think at this point she's got enough dresses to get her started.
I used McCall's pattern #2213 for both dresses. Super easy pattern to follow and the dresses were really quick to both cut out and sew.

The first one is View A (size Small, 13-15lbs), in a super cute bird fabric (thanks, Aimee!) that's reversible to a solid red (with a bird applique).






And the second is View D (in size Large, 19-21lbs), in another cute bird fabric with a coordinating aqua gingham. It could also be reversible but it would just be plain gingham on the other side, not very exciting. As you may be able to see from the photos, the dress when untied and unsnapped is actually 2 pieces...