Sewing, Sewing, Sewing!

Everyone in the world is participating in some kind of weird November promise to post every day, or write 50,000 word novels, or knit a sweater, and I've dropped off the face of the Earth. I'm so mysterious.

Perhaps you've wondered if I've dropped dead. Perhaps you simply don't care what I've been up to. I mean, I have about two subscribers, and both of those people I talk to on a regular basis. Hell, I live with one of them. I'm going to soldier on with this blog, regardless. If you wonder what I've been up to, I've been minding this little handful.



Love him though I do, some days it is hard to blog or craft or relax too much. (Did you notice my gratuitous use of cute baby photos to entice you all to read my blog?)

Last week, I went nuts, however, and sewed up a storm. Okay, a small storm. A tiny storm. Look at these cute bibs and the burp cloth though!




That is some cute cupcake flannel, isn't it? Here's the story behind it all. Two weeks ago, I was bemoaning the fact that I haven't sewn anything with my new machine and that I appear to be terrified of it still when I came across a nice little bib pattern. After a lot of reviewing the pattern, I decided it appeared relatively simple and that I was going to try it. Then, the same night, I found a free pattern for a burp cloth that looked pretty simple. I read those simple patterns about fifteen times each, before making a list of things I needed.

The next day, courage and Nathan in hand, I went to Jo-Ann. A nice employee there asked me if I needed help, and my voice nearly cracking, I told her I had no idea what to do. I showed her my list of things I needed to get based on the size of the finished items, and she took me to the flannel area. I asked her if I was just supposed to bring her the bolts of cloth, and she told me yes. I brought up several of the bolts and told her to cut me a third of a yard each, and I also bought a fat quarter of the cute pink cotton on the one bib. (I had the green cotton from a previous trip, and I had done nothing with it.)

The people at the counter were all very encouraging when I told them this was my first time sewing a pattern. When I got home, and Nathan went to sleep, I started to cut out and piece together the patterns. I messed this up several times before coming up with my patterns. After I finished this, I start the long arduous process of cutting these bibs. I expect that an intermediate sewer could have whipped these bibs out in seconds, but I was so inexperienced with it all, that I would keep wondering if I was screwing up.

I then started to sew. (BTW, in case you think I'm a complete moron, I did pre-wash the fabrics and press them with our suck-ass iron.) Well, my first bib and burp cloth were presentable, but only barely. I took the curves of the bib too fast and they were more pointed then gently curved. The burp cloth I didn't turn fully inside out and it is oddly flappy at the edges due to that. This had taken me roughly eight billion hours, so I put everything away, and decided to continue the next few nights.

The next night, I made Nathan a bib and burp cloth set that are not pictured in this post. The burp cloth was such a monumental failure, though Paul liked the tiny cupcake I had stitched onto it. I ended up with a burp cloth with one wrong side facing out, even though I would have sworn that I had sewn that together with the wrong side facing out prior to turning. Sigh. I was too disheartened to rip the whole thing out. I just finished it up.

On the last night, I finished the green bib above, and that's probably my best bib. It has relatively nice stitching due to my figuring out a good way to round tight corners. I tried to blind stitch the opening together with a bit of success. All in all, I'm happy with my efforts, and I think it's time I moved onto other sewing patterns, though, I'll probably whip out a few more bibs in the future for other babies (and possibly more for Nathan if I have some flannel scraps or if Christmas or other holiday flannels come out).

I'll have pictures of the other set next post (which will be five years from now, roughly).

As for knitting... Well, I guess I got past the top of the leg of Helen's second sock. I just need to buckle down on those socks, but I got so distracted by sewing last week, that I only worked on them one night. Bad me! I'll try to post later this week with some updates on podcasts. I found a new one I love and a new one I didn't like so much. Look for my reviews later.