2012 Halloween - Day 31

Mmm. Jelly Belly.

2012 Halloween - Day 30

Worst prom ever!

2012 Halloween - Day 29

Have you seen the Crazy 88s?

2012 Halloween - Day 28

Yay Mars!

The Fit of Baby Clothes

If this is your first baby you may be surprised to find that different brands of clothes are totally different sizes. Here’s what I learned with my first one. Add in how clothes fit your kid!

Gerber runs very small and narrow. Don’t even bother with newborn unless you will have a very small baby. My 6lbs 7ounces baby only fit in the Gerber newborn for a week and was out of the 0-3 months in a month. She was a pretty narrow baby, so the size bigger clothes fit her well. 
Carter’s runs a little smaller than others, and they fit long and lean. That’s what my daughter was and those fit her really well and fairly on size. I think the Walmart Carter’s line (it’s Carter’s ______ but I don’t remember what) runs a bit smaller than the Carter’s from the outlet or Target. 
Gymboree runs wide. If you have a bigger baby those will be a good fit and they last a while since they’re so roomy to begin with. For girls the dresses fit a long time since they are a bit wide but still cute, and then fit snugger and shorter as they grow. 
Circo (Target brand) runs short and wide. Since my girl had a longer torso she’d grow out of things a month or so early, even though the width still had room to grow. I had a white cardigan in 0-3 that she wore until a year. The sleeves were to her elbows by then but she looked super stylish. 
Jumping Bean (Kohls) I didn’t get any of these until she was a bit older, but they seem to fit a little more like Circo, wide. 
Children’s Place - These seem to be like slightly larger Carter’s fit. These also fit my little girl well but it would take her a bit longer to grow in and out of them. 
Baby Gap - This seems to be averageish to me, maybe slightly on the smaller end. These fit my daughter well but were a little big at first. 
Old Navy - The smaller sizes (smaller than 6 months) seem a bit short and wide. The sizing seems to change with each item. I’ve got a 12-18 month dress that fits and a different style in the same size that is too small. I’ve got a 12m dress that still fits. My friend had two pairs of pants, khaki and jean, and the khaki one was a size larger than the jean pair even though the tags were the same size. Try these on or compare them to other clothes before taking off the tags. I like this brand, I don’t mean to bad mouth them, but the sizing seems a bit erratic.

My kid: 
My daughter was pretty small and thin (though she did have nice chunky thighs for a while) and Carter’s has always fit her best. If you end up with a fairly narrow baby I’d recommend Carter’s for you. Baby Gap also fit her shape well but since she was small she’d wear a smaller size than her age.

Tips: 
When you are going through new clothes, lay them out next to each other and compare them. Wash clothes before lining them up because they may shrink more than others. If you just order them by size on the tag you’ll probably end up not using some clothes as they’ll be too small when your kid is “supposed” to fit them. If it says 3 months it means 0-3 months, and 6 months is 3-6 months.

2012 Halloween - Day 27

Ninja please!

2012 Halloween - Day 26

Let's get physical.

2012 Halloween - Day 25

A tiger-killing panda.

2012 Halloween - Day 24

Whip it! Whip it good!

2012 Halloween - Day 23

Little boy blue come blow your horn, the sheep's
in the meadow the cow's in the corn.

2012 Halloween - Day 22

2012 Halloween - Day 21

2012 Halloween - Day 20

2012 Halloween - Day 19

Want some moonshine?

2012 Halloween - Day 18

Two by two, hands of blue

2012 Halloween - Day 17

I used to be an adventurer like you...

2012 Halloween - Day 16

2012 Halloween - Day 15

You guys made me ink

2012 Halloween - Day 14

Rainbow Kids 2012

2012 Halloween - Day 13

Open your mind to Kuato

2012 Halloween - Day 12

Little Jedi

2012 Halloween - Day 11

Jugglin' Joe from Gunther's Ice Cream

2012 Halloween - Day 10

I live by the creed!

2012 Halloween - Day 9

Tamago and Sake

2012 Halloween - Day 8

A clue! A clue!

2012 Halloween - Day 7

Gangnam Style

2012 Halloween - Day 6

The tortoise and the hare

2012 Halloween - Day 5

127 Hours

2012 Halloween - Day 4

E.T. phone home!

2012 Halloween - Day 3

Egg roll and lumpia

2012 Halloween - Day 2

Jiji and I are making deliveries 

2012 Halloween - Day 1

Special Delivery!

Hello World!

Oh hai!

So I did not make it to my sister's wedding. I told my cervix to stay closed until today but it did not listen. My sister looks beautiful and happy in all the pictures and everyone said they had a good time.

The birth didn't go exactly as I wanted (do they ever?) but it went a lot better than last time so I am thankful. The night after the baby was born I felt better than I felt a few days (a week?) after Minnie was born. And one of my midwives was working and delivered the baby!

Tiramisu Blanket and Cable Baby Hat.

We stopped by at the yarn store on the way home from the hospital.

Getting Ready for the Baby!

So I am now 37 weeks pregnant! A few weeks after we moved I was on my way to my midwife appointment, and I was having regular, painful contractions. I was only 29 weeks so this was not good. They had stopped by the time the appointment started, but I was told to take it easy.

Now, when you've just moved and you're pregnant and you stay at home with a toddler who likes to go through everything (don't they all?) and you have to look it the stuff all day, it's really hard not to do things. But having a baby at 7 months was not something I wanted. Even without worries on the health of the baby, the moving boxes would never get unpacked! So I took it easy, until two weeks ago. I hadn't been having any problems, and the nesting was hitting in, so I started unpacking and organizing. 

We got a new dresser and nightstand for Minnie. Her dresser was the one that matched the crib, so we've moved it into the baby/sewing room and I washed and organized the newborn and 0-3 month clothes. I definitely felt better about things after getting the baby clothes ready. Minnie's dresser is newly painted white, but it was not sanded before and it definitely needed it. I have plans to paint it at some point, possibly like CINO did, but we'll see when that actually happens. We don't have toddler locks on it so Minnie's been pulling out all her clothes and drawer separaters before naps and bedtime. Hopefully we can sand and paint it soon so we can keep the drawers closed. 

I've also finally been hemming curtains. Well, the sheers at least. It's hard to decide on window coverings, and the house didn't have any except one set of blinds in the upstairs guest bath. I've done six in the past week and I had done three in the two months before so that's pretty good. It's been 100 for a week (and will be for another week) and the sewing room gets super hot. I can only sew in the mornings, so I can only sew when hubs is home and can keep an eye on Minnie. The baby quilts were all sewn during her nap or after she went to bed, but even with the air conditioning it's just too hot in that room.

I've also started piecing a quilt for Minnie. Finally! It's three charm packs of Good Fortune bu Kate Spain. I'm in love with this fabric. I'm tempted to buy some yardage for the backing, but it's almost twice as much as some Kona Cotton Solid, so it's a tough decision. I was hoping to get it finished before the baby comes, but again it's just been too hot to sew. And now that I'm full term, I'm spending my time free time unpacking and organizing.

Oh, I also chopped off my hair. I guess I will try to get some pictures posted!

Update!

So with pregnancy and moving I have not been keeping up with the blog. Sorry! I just dug through my pictures and updated with a bunch of projects, so scroll back and check them out!

Goals:
1. Show some pictures of the new house!
2. Show some pictures of the sewing room! It's the baby's room, so I'll only have it for a few more months (baby won't be sleeping in there for a while, right?) but I totally love it.
3. Make some doll clothes. Minnie loves undressing her dolls, but can't get the clothes back on so I have to do it for her. I want to make some easy on/off clothes so she can do it herself.
4. Make some quilts for my own kids.
5. Finish Darcy's twin size quilt.
6. Finish my quilt! Remember this?

2012 Thing a Week - Week 25 - Red and Aqua Baby Quilt

A friend had her baby two weeks before the baby shower (she's doing great!). They were waiting to find out the gender and I was glad they ended up having a girl so I could use my favorite color combination for a little girl, red and aqua!

The pieces were slightly smaller than fat quarters, 15"x22" instead of 18"x22", so I cut six 6.5"x6.5" squares from each of 9 fabrics. The finished quilt was 37"x55". 

I'm really loving the square patchwork quilts and the straight line quilting. The solid grey backing is from Connecting Thereads. It's super soft, but it seems to already be a bit pilly so I hope it holds up well.

It's straight, it's just the quilt that's curved!

2012 Thing a Week - Week 24 - Fox Trails Baby Quilt

All right, a real project!

So I know about 10 babies being born this year (oh, is it eleven now?) so I've been slowly making things for them. Mostly hats because I can sit and do that while Minnie plays, but I've finally gotten back in to sewing.

I popped out this baby quilt in about a week for my friend's shower and I'm in love. Baby quilts are amazing. They go together so quickly and the quilting is so much fun. I even finished the hand sewing part of the binding in about a day so it was super quick.

The fabric is a Fox Trails blue fat quarter set from Crafter's Vision. They started selling custom fat quarters and those are super dangerous for me. I can so easily see the quilt it will become and it's hard to stop myself from purchasing it. That Flea Market Fancy set is calling my name...

I used 7 fat quarters and cut four 6.5" x 9.5" bricks from each one. It turned out super cute, but since my quilting skills are limited I think I'll stick to squares for a while more. I felt it needed some vertical quilting, and after quilting it sort of looks like I put two blocks of the same pattern next to each other. Still super cute though!

2012 Thing a Week - Week 19 - North Roe Shawl

I knit up a shawl for my Grandmother for Mother's day. It's Colourmart cashmere, the same yarn I used for my Percy.

It turned out great!

2012 Thing a Week - Week 18 - Minnie's Birthday Outfit

So I got up the morning of Minnie's birthday party and decided to make her an outfit to wear. It's pretty similar to last year's outfit, but I used an embroidery hoop for the letter and just did a running stitch, which made it lots easier. I just did a double letter skirt and it turned out super cute.

Sadly, I didn't get a picture of her in it at her party. Leng was cooking, and I was running around, and she was only wearing it for an hour before she switched to her swim suit.

But here's her outfit on the counter!

Oh wait! She wore it again on her actual birthday, and we went to IKEA!

Yikes

Sorry for the radio silence. I have some back posts to do, of the few things I've made in the past few months, and then hopefully I will be back to a thing a week!

2012 Thing a Week - Week12 - Another Swirl Hat

I whipped up this baby hat. I love this pattern and have knit it a bunch of times. The baby weighed 10 lbs at birth so I made the 4-12 month size!

2012 Thing a Week - Week 7 - Heart Crayons

We had a Valentine exchange with my mom's group, and I wanted to bring a fun gift that pretty much all the kids (0-6) could use. I decided to make crayons.
I've had this silicon heart ice cube tray for a while but I never make ice cubes from it. It's just been sitting in the garage. I decided to sacrifice future heart ice for heart crayons.
I first used the free crayons we have from various restaurants. They don't have the best composition, so they ended up really waxy at the top and I wasn't impressed. I wanted the crayons to be semi-solid, so I didn't want to stir them up. I ended up buying some higher quality crayons and the second batch was a lot better.

Sorting the colors.

After baking in the toaster oven.

Notes:
1. Peeling crayons took forever! I should have steamed them to make the paper easier to pull off.
2. Breaking them was actually sort of hard on my fingers. Try to get some help if you are breaking a lot of crayons, or use ones your kids already broke!

2012 Thing a Week - Week 4 - I made someone happy

Sot this week was not a crafty week. Some weeks aren't. I'm sitting here on Saturday night, with 2.5 hours to make something this week and not feeling interested in any of the ideas Hubs is tossing at me, when I realized that I did do something this week. I made someone happy.

Last week a friend of ours had a tough day at work and posted about it on Facebook. I thought I would try to cheer him up, so I had Minnie give him a call. Now, we love this friend and his partner. Love them to bits. But like with a lot of our friends we don't see them that much. We have a lot of super busy weekends, and sometimes when we have no plans it's nice to keep it that way. But sometimes months go by without seeing some of the people we love, and that's a shame. So after Minnie chatted a bit with Ryan, I talked with him too. And we made plans to hang out Saturday. And today we spent some time at their house, then shared a meal together. We had a wonderful afternoon and evening, and they did too.

Last year, at this time, I posted a "pay it forward" idea (that I got from someone else), where you agree to make something for the first 5 people that comment. I excitedly kept checking back, thinking of some possible ideas I could make for people. And you know what, people didn't respond. I ended up with only three people that responded. I was shocked. Making things isn't hard, as long as you open yourself up to different expectations of what "making something" really is. Sure it can be something permanent, like a knitted or sewn item, which is what most of my Things are. It can also be a non-permanent item, like some food. But it can also be as simple as sharing an afternoon with good friends and making memories.

2012 Thing a Week - Week 3 - Pillowcase

A few weeks after we got Minnie her toddler bed, my mom gave us a small pillow for her to use. It's been sitting up in the sewing room/office/guest room for two months now, so I finally made a pillowcase for it.

It was super simple to sew up. I just measured the pillow, making sure to account for the roundness of it, and added an inch for the seams. I added 3-4 inches for the side, so it would overlap the edge of the pillow. I think it ended up just being the selvedges for the opening edge. I sewed and then serged the inside seam, and sewed a 1" hem for the opening edge. I did a double seam on it, and it turned out nice. I want to pick up a double needle next time I'm out.

And Minnie? I think she likes it.

2012 Thing a Week - Week 2 - Cloth Wipes

When you cloth diaper your kids, you also want to get some cloth wipes. When you're changing the diaper you stick the wipe inside when you roll it up. For our wipes, I bought some cotton jersey sheets at a discount store and cut them up. I wanted to use jersey because the fabric won't unravel like woven fabrics. If I'd used something like flannel, I'd need to secure the edges some way, such as by serging them. The jersey fabric seemed too thin to use on its own, so I sewed two pieces together. It'd probably be fine with just one layer, and be a ridonkulously quick project.

Disposable wipes are 8" square so that's what I did with my wipes. They will fit in a wipes case, but since they're dry cloth we just toss them in the diaper bag with the diapers. I cut the fabric 8"x16" and folded the fabric to make an 8" square.

What is that cute pink and yellow fabric on the side going to be?

8" square

Then I just did a wide zig zag stitch around the three open areas. I remembered to switch to my knit fabric machine needle this time.

I probably should have sewn across all sides just so it'd look nicer, but oh well! You can see that I have different colored thread in the top than the bottom. I like to use up old spools of thread from my grandmother and mostly empty bobbins when I make wipes. If the thread runs out halfway through I just pop in some more and keep going, after backstitching of course. They're wipes; I am totally not seam ripping mistakes.