Eight Weeks

Eight weeks to go.  It sounds like such a short time, yet it feels like forever.  Sigh.

I mentioned that I finished the summer tops for the girls not too long ago.  (Ravelry link here.)  Here are a couple of pictures, as promised:

And I finished the Baby Surprise Jacket (all except the buttons.)

That tiny foot you can just see in the background belongs to J.  She's sewing another doll for herself.  I can't seem to interest her in knitting right now.  But she loves to sew.

Felted sweater tote bag

I have a bunch of all wool sweaters that are no longer suitable for wearing like this one.

A while back I had used part of this sweater to make a hat and mittens for myself.  Hence the clipped out parts.

 

Now I decided that it was time to use up the rest of the sweater.  This is what I made:

  

And the inside:

 I was thinking I would use it to carry around my current knitting project.  But J might have other ideas.

 

Colonial crafts

On a recent trip to Historic St. Mary's City my girls each got a doll making kit as a souvenir.  The kit basically consisted of fabric that had been pre-cut into shapes for the dolls body and head, arms, legs, and dress.  Then there was some stuffing and some yarn to sew on for the hair.  It's a lot of hand sewing for a little girl.  J has been up to the task.  In fact she has been sewing nearly every spare moment she has.  She even worked on her doll Friday night in front of the television during our family movie night!

Here she is sewing the dress right after breakfast.  You can see the doll (minus the hair) next to her.

New skirts for the girls

J helped me sew up these quick and easy skirts one afternoon this week. I would have chosen different fabric... but, this is what they wanted.

More sewing projects coming soon!

Looking ahead

As our three feet of snow slowly melts, I'm thinking ahead to warmer weather. Lunch on the deck, picnics in the park, maybe even some camping. Ray's mom gave us a new set of flatware for Christmas. So I decided to retire the old set permanently to the picnic basket. To keep it all together I sewed up a "flatware roll" for lack of a better term.



I used an old dishtowel, sewed six straight lines to create pockets and added a ribbon to tie it up.



Super easy. Hopefully we will get lots of use out of this in the months to come!

I'm Baaa-aack!

Wow. The last four months went by quickly. I didn't really intend to take a break from blogging. It just turns out that this blogging thing is a little more difficult/time consuming than I thought it would be. I still would like to try to keep it up. So I'm starting again. I won't be posting everyday or anything. Not even going to try for that. But if I can post twice a week...once a week...at least a couple times a month, that would be good enough for now.

So we have had record snow falls here in Southern Maryland this winter.





Some people are starting to complain about it. But I love it! I keep hoping for more snow. I'm finally starting to get my system down for getting the kids bundled up and out to play and back inside again with a minimum of tears. All of our gear is organized and ready to go. The kids are getting used to wearing all that gear. And the older two are starting to be able to get themselves mostly dressed. The main thing that continued to cause tears from everyone (me included) was the constant readjustment of mittens. They just don't stay tucked neatly into their coat-sleeves like the kids want. As soon as they move their arms the mittens get un-tucked and the wrists get cold. Well, not any more! It occurred to me that if they just had a layer of fleece or something to cover that gap between their coats and their mittens we could stop all the fuss. So this weekend I spent an hour and sewed up several pairs of "wrist warmers" for the kids. I know they look inside out, but I decided to leave them that way on purpose. Since they are meant to go under the coat and under the mittens I left the seams on the outside for maximum comfort on the inside.



It worked like a charm! Since then we have gone sledding twice without a single complaint of cold wrists or snow in their mittens.



And I haven't had to re-adjust a single mitten. J likes hers so much that she has taken to wearing them around the house. Here she is wearing her wrist warmers and the matching neck-warmer I made.



I know it's a small thing, but it felt like a major accomplishment to solve that problem. And I did it without spending a dime!

A gift on it's way

I finished this gift mei tai 10 days ago. I waited to post about it until I could get to the post office and send it on it's way. Hopefully this carrier is now with it's new owner, so here are the completed pics.

I used up the left over fabric to make a matching bag for it. I followed the directions in Weekend Sewing by Heather Ross for the bag. I'm happy I finally got to try a project out of this beautiful book! It's been on my "to do" list for months.



Earlier this week I woke up extra early (on account of my falling asleep at 8:30 trying to get T to sleep) and decided to spend a little quality time with my sewing machine. I needed something quick and easy because I didn't know how long it would be until T realized that she wasn't snuggled next to me anymore. So I decided to whip up this pair of cloth-diaper friendly (lots of room in the rear) pants for said little girl. I used the sleeves of an old shirt of mine. I'm pretty happy with how they turned out. Especially the way I was able to keep the stripes lined up! I still have some trouble with the stitching puckering up on the knit fabric. I need to work on that. But it's passable for play clothes for a 17 month old.

And here's a picture of T modeling them later that morning.


And do you remember all that picking we did last week?



Well, just today I finally finished up preserving all that produce. We've got blanched and frozen broccoli, spaghetti sauce, and lots of applesauce and apple butter. We made some delicious apple crisp. And we have lots and lots of apples individually wrapped in paper and stored in the "root cellar." It was a lot of work, but I know we will enjoy the fruits of our labor in the months to come (pun intended).

Finding time to sew

This project has been at the top of my "to sew" list for months. It's a carrier for my beautiful, sweet new niece, Abigail Rain. My sister provided the fabric long ago. I should have had it ready for her before the baby came. Yet here it sits waiting to be assembled.


And Abby is over a month old. Why is it so hard to find time at the sewing machine? I will finish it this week!

And here is what's next on my "to sew" list:


I'm going to make three of them...matching, of course! Then I'll just need to find something matching for the boy. Hmmmm....