blanket for baby Damien

crocheted, with a sc, hdc, dc in every third stitch. it created a nice textured pattern.

again, i went with the prime numbers. i thought of doing pi after i had already started. shucks. next one.

oh and the little green thing at the bottom is supposed to be an elephant. and i sewed it on the wrong side. oops.

the hooded bath towel for baby or toddler tutorial (edited)

A friend gave me a hooded towel for my first baby. I loved it so much, since it was big enough to wrap the baby in even now that she is a full grown toddler. When I had baby #2, I wanted to make one for him, especially now that he has outgrown his newby baby bath towels. Then I saw that Sew Mama Sew was having a tutorial contest, I thought, no better time than the present and ignoring the monster quilt, I whipped one up. These are very easy and take less than 30 minutes to make--unless you are like me, and life decides to creep in. If you are really bored, you can see how in the unedited tutorial.

The Materials

1 hand towel (i used one 16 in. by 26 in.)
1 bath towel (i used one 30 in. by 54 in.)
17 in. of ribbon (or one inch longer than the length of your hand towel)
coordinating thread

The Directions

1) measure 10 inches and cut the hand towel parallel to the decorative end. hand towel measurements went from 16 x 26 inches to 16 inches x 10 inches.


2) pin ribbon on hand towel. I like it in the middle of the decorative part of the towel. I left 1/2 of an inch of ribbon at the ends of the towel to sew under the seam.

3) sew on ribbon. i did it right along the edge of the ribbon, so as not to notice the mismatched thread, but i noticed that the ribbon on the one my friend made was sewn on 1/4 of inch from the ribbon's edge, which made it kind of ruffly.

4) fold hand towel in half lengthwise, right sides together, like so:

5) sew up unfinished ends. I used a 1/4 inch seam allowance, but there is enough room for 5/8 inch.

6) I then used a fake serge (sorry, don't know the proper name for the stitch) stitch to finish off the edges. By all means, use a serger if you have access to one.

6) fold the bath towel in half widthwise like so.

7) align hood to middle of bath towel

8) pin middle of hood to middle of bath towel

9) sew hood to bath towel. since both ends are covered in bias tape, no need to worry about serging.

10) cut off excess ribbon (can burn the edges if you are worried about fraying, but the ribbon in my old one was okay without) and thread.


11) now give the kids a bath.

gardening season is upon us

doug just came downstairs and said, "I just planted 71 pea seeds!"

oh boy.

reminds me of when my dad would come in and say jubilantly, "I just planted 121 tomato plants!"

speaking of which, my tomatoes i planted from seed are not doing so hot. my french doors are not letting as much sunlight as i thought they would. shucks.

love sonnets

i have been enjoying some poetry lately. my favorite so far is the color photography one. haven't gotten through them all yet...

hooded bath towel tutorial (unedited)

Project: to make baby a hooded towel like toddler's

the edited version can be found here.

the toddler

1) put sleeping baby in crib.
2) gather materials:

1 bath towel (i used one 30 in. by 54 in.)
1 hand towel (i used one 16 in. by 26 in.)
17 in. of ribbon (or one inch longer than the length of your hand towel)
coordinating thread

3) consider ironing towels so will look nice and pretty, but decide, hey, they're towels.
4) take camera away from toddler who is taking pictures with it.
5) realize it is time to get dinner started.
6) start dinner
7) kitchen faucet will not turn off, or even slow to a trickle.
8) try several different ways to turn off faucet.
9) yell at faucet
10) apologize to toddler for yelling at faucet.
11) get bucket to collect the large amounts of hot water that is being wasted down the drain
12) try to turn off valves that are below the sink a few times
13) switch buckets
14) run downstairs to find the main water valve
15) run upstairs to find a screwdriver
16) since previous owners have painted the panel covering the main water valve shut, unscrewing the screws is a lot harder than anticipated.
17) think uncharitable thoughts toward previous owners
18) switch buckets
19) hug toddler who is worried about mother's sanity
20) run back to try to pry off panel

toddler playing with hot water in the tub

21) hubby is back early from meeting, hurray!
22) hubby finishes prying off panel and baseboard, but can't get main water valve to turn off.
23) change toddler's clothes, which are wet
24) hubby tries to turn off water valve under the sink
25) pick up waking baby
26) hubby is successful, making wife feel a little weak.

the old demon faucet

27) hubby kindly takes over dinner while wife comforts the crying baby.
28) put baby in exersaucer while the toddler entertains herself and the baby by running up and down the hall

29) cut the hand towel in half. only use one half, save the other half to make another towel or sew matching ribbon on it to make a matching washcloth if you'd like.
30) let hubby borrow camera so he can take pictures of faucet so he can put it back together


31) pin ribbon on hand towel. i like it in the middle of the decorative part of the towel.

32) sew on ribbon. i did it right along the edge of the ribbon, so as not to notice the mismatched thread, but i noticed that the toddler's bath towel's ribbon was sewn on 1/4 of inch from the ribbon's edge, which made it kind of ruffly.
33) stop toddler from hitting baby
34) let toddler take pictures with camera
35) fold hand towel in half lengthwise, right sides together, like so:


36) sew up unfinished ends
37) grab camera from toddler, suggest she play peek a boo with baby.
38) realize i have wrong measurements for hood. hood is much too long for a baby or even toddler
39) measure toddler's towel, which she finds offensive.


40) recut hand towel to 10 inches long
41) sew up hand towel again
42) eat dinner
43) go to home depot for new faucet. old faucet's handle was broken before this incident, so it wasn't just throwing away a pair of shoes for want of a shoelace. more like throwing away a pair of shoes for want of two shoelaces. :)
44) baby and toddler have fun driving the cart (one of those cool carts that look like a car) until the baby finds his sister's clothes highly entertaining.
45) go home
46) change the baby's diaper
47) change the batteries to the camera


48) fold the bath towel in half widthwise like so. well, fix the bottom edges, but it really doesn't matter, since all you are sewing on is the top.
49) align hood to middle of bathtowel

shiny.

50) admire new faucet and congratulate hubby on a project well done.

51) pin middle of hood to middle of bath towel

52) feed baby

53) sew hood to bath towel. since both ends are covered in bias tape, no need to worry about serging.
54) show to toddler, along with her bath towel so she doesn't get too jealous.

55) when inspecting toddler's towel, and thinking about serging, I realized I needed to fake-serge (sorry, don't know the proper name for the stitch) the cut end.

56) then moan about loss of natural light.
57) give toddler and baby a bath in order to use said bath towel.

hooter hiders

my sister in law developed a great pattern for hooter hiders (i believe i was the first recipient of one she made?), and offered to make some for people if they didn't want to go through the trouble. since she had a new baby and moved all in the same month, she kindly passed on some requests to me.

I made this one for my sister as a practice run. Mallory has already taken it over. She likes to feed her dollies under it. I might have to make my sister another one.

The one hanging on the right is to cover a first grandchild, so I had to keep it out of the reach of the prying two year old.

the fierce bunny and the sarcastical bear

made mallory a bunny and isaac a bear. the bunny was from a pattern, but the bear was from my head. as i was stuffing the bear (or as mallory likes to say, "you're 'tuffing my bunny, mommy?") i told doug, "well it isn't the most beautifulest bear." and doug said, "nor the most sarcastical." which is another word that i made up and like to say. he gets after me for my pronunciation of drowning and mischievous. i agree with him on drowning, but mischievous...

mallory and her fierce bunny


trying to get a good pose of isaac with his sarcastical bear, but...

his sister wanted to pose with the bear also.

luckily isaac is pretty easy going.

this picture made me laugh.

oliphant

an elephant i made for isaac. with some inspiration from the pointy kitty and from homemade by jill, i drew my own pattern. which turned out much better than the sarcastical bear.

except that i really need to buy some proper stuffing instead of old sweatshirts so that the elephant will stay standing

the elephant without ears. i kind of liked him without.

oh and notice the poor neglected quilt in the background? so much for done by february.

baby shoes

my latest addiction. top pair is for baby jael and the bottom is for baby amaylia who has the curliest hair on a little baby i have ever seen.

i love making these. unlike quilts that take over a year or so to complete. these take an hour or so. well sometimes two hours if you have to stop and feed the baby. here's where i got the pattern.

a smocked dress

mallory trying out a dress i made for her. oh the smocking was soo hard. ok not. it was the easiest thing to make. it came already smocked, so all i had to do was hem it, and sew up the back, and attach bias tape. the hardest part for me was sewing straight on the bias tape. should have used ribbon.

she liked prancing around in it. though it is a little big, the shoulders kept falling down, so she rarely wears it anymore. when she gets older, as she likes to say.

oh and don't you love her expression in the last photo?