Diaper Dilema

By the time my daughter was born, I had made a grand total of 7 cloth diapers.  Luckily I decided to use disposables untill the cord stump fell off.  But I still only had 7 cloth diapers by that point.  I've made 6 more diapers since then, but every time I'd make a new diaper, her diapers-per-day count would increase as well.  So now I have 13 diapers I made, plus 3 someone gave me, and she of course used 15 in the past 24 hour period.  So it sort of works, or at least it would if my washing machine hadn't broken this morning.  Oh well, back to disposables for now.  But I'm hoping to be back in the cloth diapers soon. 

Baby clothes

I probably won't make too many baby clothes before the baby is born because I've heard babies have dramatically different growth rates.  But, the one type of item I think I will make are blanket sleepers.  They are these sacs with sleeves that zip up and supposedly give the benefits of having a blanket without all the suffocation dangers.  I found the pattern for them in a big box of patterns that one of my friends gave me, and they turned out to be surprisingly easy to make.  I already have one mostly finished.  I just need to secure the other half of the zipper, and finish the bottom, sleeves and collar.  It looks really cute, and I'm hoping the baby will be big enough to wear it before it turns summer and gets too warm for things like fleece sleeper blankets.

I actually finished a project!

So yes, it's true, I actually finished a craft project.  And, not just sorta finished, but still need to do clean up, but completely finished.  Remember that quilt I was working on back in November and December?  Well, it's now completely done.  All the pieces are sewn together, the edges are finished, and the random strings have been snipped off.  I even washed and dried it just to make sure no colors would bleed or holes open up.  The quilt is really cute and going to be a present for some friends of mine who have a baby due soon.  I'll post a picture after I give the quilt away (so I won't ruin the surprise in the highly unlikely chance they read my blog)

So, now that the one project for their baby is done, back to the thousand projects for my baby.

I finished another row on my denim rag rug.  It's gotten to the point where one pair of my husband's blue jeans makes one round on the rug.  On the upside, that means my rug is getting bigger, on the downside, it means I may run out of blue jeans before I get the rug as big as I originally wanted it to be.  The rug is currently the size of a doormat (1.5'x2.5') I'm hoping to get it to be the size of a small area rug (4' x 5').  We'll see what happens, it's a great 'never-ending project' in that I can just tuck the end under the rug and no one will know it's still being worked on.

I need to work on making cloth diapers, but I'm waiting on hearing back from a friend as to sizing, so at least I have a good reason for procrastinating on that one!

Recently I got the idea of making sleepers for the baby with patterns I got from a friend.  I even bought a zipper at Walmart for the job (by the way, zippers are kinda expensive).  Maybe that will be my project for this week in my miniscule amounts of free time.

Getting ready for Christmas

Christmas is coming and with it lots of craft projects. So far, we've made paper chains for the Christmas tree and a few paper snowflakes are running around the house.  We still need to make some more paper chains and ornaments.  I have some cinnamon scented pine cones in baskets that I want to decorate with ribbon, and still have all the Christmas cookie baking to do.  I'll be busy.  It would probably be easier if I wasn't so tired from lugging around this 6 month pregnant belly.

Baby quilt

And it's been a month since my last post... no big surprise there.

I've started a new project, a baby quilt for some friends of mine who are expecting a baby 10 days after us.   It's a simple quilt filled with patches of scrap fabric someone gave to me months ago.  I was planning on doing something else with the fabric, but the squares were all pre-cut and too small to be anything but quilt squares.  So now I have a 3'x4' grid of squares awaiting backing and edging... one more project I need to finish before the end of February.

Pieces are starting to fall into place for my baby as well.  One nice lady at church as offered a stroller/infant seat combination.  I will need a regular car seat eventually, but this should hold me over till the summer at least.  My aunt has offered us a crib she can't sell.  The crib is older than me, but pending a few possible modifications, it ought to hold a baby until we hit the climbing stage next year this time.  I still need diapers and baby clothes, but I should have at least 3 months till baby gets here, so hopefully that will be plenty of time.  Wading through this new world of baby supplies is complicated, but I've come to the conclusion that the only things a baby really needs are: crib, car seat, and diapers.  Everything else is just supposed to make life easier... and half the time doesn't.

Halfway there

I'm halfway done with my biggest craft project yet. My husband and I due to have a baby on February 29.

So, this means it's time to pull out the sewing machine, gather all the random fabric around the house, and start sewing baby supplies. I plan to make blankets, cloth diapers, bibs and booties. But I think I'm going to let Walmart supply me with the rest of the baby clothes. Snaps and zippers are not my friend, if it can't close with velcro or a drawstring: I don't want to make it.

Yes, this probably means yet another delay in my story writing... but it wasn't like I was doing much writing now anyway, was I?

Time Lapse

Wow, it's been a long time since I've posted anything here. This blog is starting to go the way of my oft-neglected paper journal... not a big surprise there. Well, I'm going to try to make a point of updating this more regularly from now on.

Now I'll just have to come up with things to post...