It's Not Just Me

I've gotten some great crafts from others for this baby.


My friend Charlotte made this beautiful quilt. It's back with flannel, but very lightweight, appropriate for California.


I love the graphic fabrics.


My mother-in-law made this afghan out of scraps from another afghan she made us, that I have in the living room. I think this will be nice for me, for nursing at night.


It's a nice soft pattern.


Morgan of I Wish I Had a Penguin Friend made me these softies. She also made me a bee linocut, which you can see on her site.

Look at these faces!


Thanks everyone!

DIY Boppy Cover

I found a free Boppy cover pattern courtesy of Vanilla Joy, and it was very easy. I used Joann Fabrics snuggle flannel, which is deliciously soft flannel that goes on sale frequently.

The pattern isn't perfect -- I think it might be from before Boppy changed it shape to be more "generous" in the waist area, but it is close enough, and the directions are very easy. I would recommend that if you use this fabric also, and care about how perfect your Boppy slipcover is, that you stay stitch it before you get started, because it stretches quite a bit around the curves. I didn't, and I had to fix it in a few places.


I didn't have a zipper, so I altered the pattern to use buttons. To do this, I rolled the hem of the back bottom piece, and I used front pattern pieces 1 and 2 instead of the shortened back top piece as the top, and also rolled that hem. Then I made loops out of my scraps and attached three buttons.


Look! More cute fabric, and cute buttons too!

Easy Painting

I had a baby shower on Saturday, hosted by my friend Vanessa. Vanessa is always complaining that she doesn't have enough art on her walls, so I wanted to make her something as a thank you gift.

I got this gorgeous frame from my grandmother-in-law (she was throwing it away!) and I knew it would match her furniture, so I decided to use it. I also knew I wanted to do something with leaves, since their apartment is very green and natural.

I was going to paint a leaf, or stencil a leaf, or use a leaf as a stamp, but I decided to just cheat and stick a pressed leaf directly to the canvas.

I pressed leaves from outside our apartment building under a pile of cookbooks -- who says you don't need cookbooks any more? Can epicurious.com do this??


I picked my favorite leaf from the pressings and painted it black-brown. Hard copies of newspapers are handy. Can latimes.com do this??


When the leaf dried, I mod-podged it to a canvas I had painted green with my new friend, the palette knife.


I used heaps of Mod Podge, but it still dried clear.


My little mixed media art project.

Not Too Sci Fi Mobile

I made a mobile. It is not g33ky. I considered making a mobile that re-enacted the destruction of the Death Star, with a big sphere in the middle and little TIE Fighters and X Wings spinning around it... but my husband said, and I quote, "Let's give the kid a chance."

So I made a simple mobile with stars. Which are spacey but not too much. It's made out of wooden dowels, wooden craft shapes, monofilament, hot glue, and acrylic paint. And that's a Totoro print in the background, because Totoro never hurt anybody.

Names and Recycling

We are pretty sure his name is Charlie.



Or Charles when he's a grown up. We like the name a lot except that it happens to be the name of a friend's cat. We are not naming him after the cat, we swear.

I wanted to make something with his name on it. As much as I love those fancy wooden letters at the craft store, I'm trying not to spend too much money on crafts, so I wanted to use materials I already had. I turned to recycling.



A cereal box (to make letters), a wine gift box I'd held on to since back when I could drink wine. The paper I printed my letter stencils on was also free, it's three hole punch "marigold" paper, and for some reason movie studios are always giving it away. I also used a drawer knob I've had in the tool box since forever, for what purpose I don't remember.



The font for the letters is "marker felt" -- it has a nice hand written feel. I covered them with paper mache, for depth.



The box expanded a little bit when I painted it, unfortunately, so I need to sand the edges down to get it to open and close smoothly, but once I do I think it will be a fun place to stash things.

Nesting?

"Hey, aren't you having a baby in like three weeks? Where is all the cool nursery stuff you should be feverishly making?"

Sorry guys, I've been delinquent with the picture taking. Here's some nesting.


I inherited this cool antique rocking chair from Geoff's grandmother, who rocked Geoff's dad in it when he was a baby. It was beautiful, but a bit uncomfortable (look at those skinny spindles!


I bought some foam at Joann Fabrics, and used it to make a cushion form.


I also bought some cute fabric. I love this excuse to buy cutesy fabric, guys. Upholstery fabric was on sale at Joann, so I splurged. It's expensive, but so sturdy. Look, bugs!


I used the foam as a pattern to cut the fabric, adding a seam allowance. You could also use batting to stuff your cushions, but I wanted something firmer.


You could use ribbon or string to make the ties, but I think fabric ties look much better. They are a bit of work. I cut six rectangles out of quilting fabric (the upholstery fabric was too heavy to turn easily), each one 20" x 1.25", and sewed them in half, using as tight a seam allowance as the feed dogs would allow.


You need a loop turner to turn them into straps. It's tricky with the loop turner, but impossible without it.


I turned again to my trusty buttonholer. I love that thing! I threaded the straps from the bottom cushion through buttonholes in the top cushion to attach them neatly.


And that's it. As soon as I put the cushions on it, the cat claimed it for his own.


He's too cute to move... I don't know what I'm going to do.