How babies and Hunger Games are related.

As I mentioned the other day, it seems like half my church is pregnant or post-natal, so I've been making lots of baby gifts lately.

My friend Esther did her nursery in yellow and gray, and mentioned to me that she still didn't have a comforter for her daughter's crib. Well, that is just unacceptable. I had to do something about that.

I decided to make a smaller template from the New Wave pattern, and use skinnier strips between the wedges. I also only put the four rows at the top and the rest of the quilt is plain Kona Ash for a minimalist effect. I really liked the way it looked when it was done, but owing to the impaired judgment of being sick this is the only picture I got before it was packaged and gone. Oh well.

I also made a zigzag swaddler for my friend Abby's little boy. I LOVE this print from Ann Kelle's "Remix" collection. It's boyish without being too cutesy or covered in dinosaurs. I kind of want a giant one for myself. Is that weird? Nevermind, don't answer that.

Last on my list of baby gifts were some cute stuffed animals for my friend Brooke's little boy. She seems to like forest animals so I figured I'd make a raccoon and an owl. The raccoon looks a bit too much like a cat but oh well. The owl I LOVE. I've decided that even though they are technically predators in competition for food, they have formed an unlikely alliance and are now besties. They've also made a pact not to eat the baby while nobody's looking.

Hmmm. I just finished reading book one of the Hunger Games, can you tell? I know, I know, it seems so trendy, but honestly I knew nothing about it until a few months ago when my friend told me it was a good book that I might like. I put it on hold at the library and then forgot all about it until I got the notice that it was in. Then suddenly Hunger Games stuff is popping up everywhere (keep in mind I don't have TV so I never know what movies are coming out) and suddenly I feel like one of those people who only read the Lord of the Rings AFTER they saw the movie. It's slightly shameful. But still. I liked the book a lot. I'm glad I finished it because my husband has been nagging me for days to read it, hahaha.

Anyway. Babies and Hunger Games aren't really related. I just said that to get your attention. Hopefully you don't feel too let down now.

never a "duh" moment

So I was trolling along through blog posts today when I realized that, in all the excitement of my mom being here, followed by the excitement of being sick and sewing wedding dresses and baby gifts and immersing myself in a cloud of hot cat pee, I totally forgot to post about the quilt I received in the FLiQ swap!

Bad Jenn. Bad, BAD Jenn!!

Here she is in all her glory:

This was made for me by a woman named Lynda from England. Honestly that's one of my favorite things about swaps--I love that you can get something made by a person in another country. I've had a mug rug from Scotland and a quilt from England--it's all part of the fun for me. Especially when they include native yummies in the package! Not that I got to eat them. My kids swarmed all over the gummies Lynda sent like ants at a picnic.

Anyway, this little quilt is so cute and colorful I love it. Thanks again Lynda!

Urine luck! {or} Misadventures in Sewing.

So yesterday was a bad day for sewing and whatnot. I am getting a cold (or allergies? who knows) and I should have known better than to try and sew with a head stuffed full of snot but I'm kind of on a deadline with some of my projects so I did it anyway.

Half my church is pregnant or post-natal, so I've been in baby-gift mode ever since my mom left. With one shower I missed plus three more in the next three or four weeks, I'm kind of scrambling to get things done. But the really crazy thing I'm doing right now is a wedding dress.

Yup. That's right. Pure crazy right there.

It's something I've always wanted to do, so when my friend told me that she had a shell of a vintage dress that she wanted to make into something awesome I was all over that. The other day she brought it over and started explaining what she wanted. Her mom had already taken some seams out, reduced a giant full skirt down to a fitted, straight skirt, and put some ribbon loops in the back for a corset-like lace up closure. She wanted to add a transparent, voluminous overskirt with an embellished sash over the top, and to make the back look better. My brain was immediately on fire with ideas and I got to work.

First on my agenda was some repair work on the bodice.

A section of the lace had a big hole in it that someone had half-heartedly attempted to fix with some darning. I cut out a matching section of lace from a jacket that came with the dress and hand-sewed it over the hole. That worked pretty good.

Can you spot the patch? I'm just curious.

There were some darts put into the skirt to make it more fitted around the hips, but the placement of them made funny little points jutting out so I removed them and made smoother ones. I also removed the standard zipper so that I could attach the overskirt to the underskirt, and put an invisible one in later.

Yesterday I woke up, having gotten next to no sleep and feeling stuffed up and raw-throated, and thought about sewing. I shouldn't have, but the wedding is only four weeks away. So I went to Joanns and got fabric, then came home and started working. Well, three failed attempts at sewing the overskirt with a tiny, mostly hidden seam later, I finally figured out how to do it right.

Feeling good, I went to iron it. Somehow the setting had gotten bumped up to high and I burned a hole right through the fabric. Seriously!!?? Fortunately I'd gotten extra fabric, so no harm done, but I figured that this was a pretty good sign that it was time for me to step away from the sewing room.

But I had to do one last thing. I wanted to press all the wrinkles out of the fitted satin skirt so I could hang it up to get it ready for the overskirt. I laid it on the ironing board and started ironing, and the smell that came off of it was truly horrific. It went beyond "vintage musty" and into a realm of yuck. Then I got down to the hem, which was oddly stiff, and the iron hit it and WHAM. It was like someone had punched me in the face with reek.

Because I'm really, really stupid, I decided to lift the hem to my face and see what was up, and what was up was a double whammie of hot cat pee right up my nose.

Hot. Cat. Pee.

In the post-traumatic fog that ensued, my delirious brain yelled at me in incoherent snippets of CAT PEOPLE ARE CRAZY and HELP IT'S UP MY NOSE with a little dash of WHY, GOD? WHY!? thrown in for good measure. When I awoke later in the fetal position on my sewing room floor, my resolve had crystallized. I knew that vintage or not, that skirt was going in the washing machine. If it disintegrated, so be it. No bride is walking down the aisle smelling like cat urine. I'll make a new skirt if I have to. The end. Period.

Fortunately the skirt survived not one but two cycles through my washer and is currently hanging up in my sewing room ready for the next step. Today is a new day and hopefully will not end in tears and feeling the need to be decontaminated. Wish me luck!

pretty toes and cups of jo

Hi.
How are you all?
I'm pretty good, thanks.

I've had a super busy couple of weeks with the return of my husband immediately followed by my mom and stepdad and stepbrother coming out from California to visit. We've been having a great time and thus I've been too pleasantly distracted to do much in the way of creative pursuits. Which is fine by me. Sometimes I feel like I do so many crafty things because there's not much else to do, so it's nice to have much else to do.

Presently I'm enjoying a nice midday cup of coffee and staring at my pretty, bright fuchsia toes. Today I had to go up to my church for music practice, and when I arrived sans children (thanks to my mom taking them out for the day) my friends were astonished. Sometimes I forget what it's like to be without my kids, and I realized while talking to these ladies that I haven't been without at least one of them for years. I mean unless you count an anniversary overnighter but then I was still with my husband. I'm never really alone alone, y'know?

"Oh man, you should take advantage of that!" my friend said. "Go get your nails done or something, take your sweet time getting back!"

I laughed at that, but she was pretty serious. She handed me some cash, told me to go to a certain place and ask for a pedicure and a massage. "My treat!" she said. I didn't argue. I went to said hole-in-the-wall, and when I walked in a small, older Asian lady trotted over to me expectantly.

"What you want?" she asked.

"My friend sent me here for a pedicure and massage," I responded, feeling slightly moronic and out of my element. She looked up at me and eyed my face critically.

"And I do eyebrow too?" she asked, as though it weren't really a question at all but a fact. "Only eight dollar more. I do pedicure less. Thirty dollar all together."

I mused. I pondered. I've never had my eyebrows done before. Why not? I thought. It's only eight dollar more. I agreed and was led into a back room and summarily pushed onto a table.

"I've never done this before," I stated lamely, and she gave me that flat look that said, "Of course you haven't. Just look at those things." A little hot wax and ripping later, and she held up a mirror for me to see.

"Look now! You look like movie star now, no?"

Maybe a movie star who's seen better days and smaller pants sizes, I thought. But I just smiled and nodded.

Then came the pedicure/massage thingy, which was awesome and relaxing and I could kiss my friend for making me go because really, I think there are definite times when a person (especially a mom) just needs a little time alone. Even if it's only for an hour or so. And then, when you come home to a quiet, empty house, you can spend a minute or two reveling in the silence before you start to feel a little lonely. You start to miss the noise, start to look around for the little signs of life that mean your kids are nearby--spilled cups of water, the random sock in the middle of the floor, the bathroom light left on for the umpteenth time. And then when they finally come home you can hug them and tell them you missed them and really mean it. Even if they were only away for an hour or so.

But in the meantime, you can drink your coffee in quiet and smile at your pretty toes.

the art of being precise. ish.

My husband is the kind of guy for whom precision is a must. If something needs to be sanded, he will very likely sand it into oblivion trying to achieve the perfect level of sandedness. If something has two edges that need to match up, you can pretty much bet that you could put a laser micrometer on that bad boy and it would be nearly perfect. Which means the things he makes look amazing, and take ten years to be finished.

Not so with me.

I mean, I love the way precise things look, but I just can't seem to be able to achieve perfection in my projects. Ever.

Partially I think it's because I lack the patience to go as slowly as I should, and partially it's because I'm too lazy to redo a thing over and over and OVER until it's perfectly precise. I just want to be done, y'know? I want to stand back after a good coupla hours and go, "Tada! Look what I made!!"

Which is why a lot of my projects look like this.

It's fine. I like it. But it's certainly not precise. Forget a micrometer--this sucker doesn't even have matching edges when you look at it from ten feet away. But I don't mind.

I bet you anything when my husband comes home he's gonna say, "Jenn, you know those edges don't match up, right?" He'll probably have that pained expression that I, as a mom, get when my kids do a really bad job at something and then stand back all proud of themselves. You don't want to burst their bubble. But you do have to resist the urge to go behind their back and do it right. That's what I would do...if I were a precise instead of precise-ish.