Meanwhile, in Sewing...

I'm starting to waddle now. This can't be good. By the way, this is a picture heavy post.

Anyhow, in addition to some furious knitting, I've also been doing some sewing. All baby related, of course. This past weekend was particularly productive, which was kind of a fluke. I happened upon this link via WhipUp which I like to check in with on occasion just to see what is up in the crafting world.

So here was an idea for a nice easy quilt. I like easy. Especially when it comes to quilts. I think, even though I enjoy the process just as much, I am overall a product crafter, and quilts are not the right kinds of projects for cranking out product. Unless you don't mind year or two lags between FO's. The fluke part about this is a long while ago, when I first discovered the whole pregnancy thing, I started rummaging through my fabric stash to see what potential might lie there. I had lots of flannel remnants. Lots. I love flannel. I've made flannel stuff for me, the hubby, babies in my life...can't get enough flannel. So as a brain dead project, I started cutting up these flannel remnants, all shades of blue, into different sized squares. I had no particular project in mind. I just figured that having lots of squares instead of lots of oddments of fabric was a step in the direction of fabric destash.

Then I happened upon the ragged squares link and a light bulb went off. Up to the craft room I went and after some futzing and finagling, I had this...



Insta-quilt top. Never one to follow a pattern or direction to the letter, I took the small middle square and made it a diamond. Funky. The squares are also not the exact size given in the tutorial, but whatever...I knew it was going to be a baby blanket anyway.



Here we have the binding attached. Here's the calm before the storm as well. I usually do pretty well with the piecing of quilts and then inevitably arse up the actually quilting part. I'm partial to hand quilting, but I was looking to have this done and over with last evening (re: addicted to finished objects at the moment) so I heaved a large sigh of submission and gave into the machine quilting part of the direction. I knew it wouldn't go well.



Not that it went horribly. Just that because of the diamonds, I couldn't do the quilting as directed in the tutorial, so I just did a big kinda swirly thing with the sewing machine and called it quilted. My free thinking nature has inevitable consequences.



The ragged part comes in after you wash the quilt, so that all of those raw seams get all fuzzed up. It's quite cute. And very soft and squishy.



I also have some of the crib bedding finished. I love the letters in the crib sheet...I'm hoping to inspire a lifelong love of reading through osmosis. And those are all my toys from childhood. We recently unearthed them from the mountain of stuff still as yet unpacked in the garage. I went through them all, washed them up and there are now two full big totes of stuffed animals in the baby's room. No baby yet, just a boatload of toys. I guess I'm more of a pack rat than I'm willing to admit. Anyhow, at some point I'll post a bit about them as well...there's some real blasts from the past in there.



Extra crib sheets, cuz I hear those come in handy. All flannel, but of course. These are way easy. I could make dozens.



Some receiving blankets, one with a nice finished hem, the other a lazy serged edge. I love my serger. Very nice of ma to hand that down to me.



And of course, sheep. More receiving blankets here. I don't know if you can see it on the light blue/grey one, but it says 'Sheepy Time'. I've tried very hard to resist the pull of a sheep-themed nursery, which would've been oh so easy to do, and yet they've found their way in anyway. I should've taken a picture, but on the baby's dresser, there is already a corner of sheep toys. Stuffed animals, puppets. Now blankets. When I was home last, I saw this gigantic sheep pillow/stuffed animal thing that I fell in love with and have been mooning over ever since. My mother has been itching to buy things, so I sent her on a mission to retrieve the sheep. Her first trip was a miss, but did result in a sheep, just not the one I wanted. So back she went and now there is a box on it's way here from Ontario that will hopefully contain said sheep (though for some reason, she keeps saying it looks like a monkey. I would not be the least bit surprised if when I open the box, it's actually a monkey. There is much that gets lost in translation when in conversation with my mother).

So what now? I've got nothing on the needles at this precise moment, and no projects piled up on the cutting table and I'm feeling a little woozy. Time to start something new.

Until later...