Me-made maternity at 40 weeks + last-minute glove, sock + doll-making

Didn't sew any new maternity clothes this pregnancy but the maternity tops I adapted from the Jalie 2005 T-shirt pattern last time are still going strong

Last time as I approached 40 weeks of pregnancy I was a total mess: impatient, fidgety, worried, nervous, and more, obsessing over whether baby would arrive "on time" or not, and how much maternity leave time with actual baby I would lose as the days ticked by.

This time I swore it would be different, because "babies come on their birthdays, not on their due dates", as my Hypnobabies birthing class instructor told us. Once I started maternity leave (which was yesterday) I would be relaxed, I would be zen, I would catch up on sleep, finish up craft projects, tidy up the apartment, bank some extra meals in the freezer...

This sounds hilarious to me now as I sit here at my computer compulsively refreshing statistics on the likelihood of giving birth on any given day (today's probability is about 8%, in case you were curious). I have had three false alarms in the past week that I could have SWORN were the real thing, my parents are staying with us so they can babysit our daughter when the time arrives, my maternity leave is ticking away, and we are all just WAITING waiting waiting. I have never been a patient person, so why start now?

Which is why I am currently slowly knitting myself a pair of gloves with size 000 needles (i.e. needles so thin they are basically pieces of straw that feel like they are about to snap at any moment)...

These are the Knotty gloves by Julia Mueller (free pattern!) in Studio Avenue Six Bellwether Sock I had started knitting a year ago, but they were coming out way too big for my tiny hands on size 0 needles and I didn't want to try and rewrite the complicated chart pattern...

Sub-zero double pointed needles are hard to find (none of my local yarn stores carry them) but I finally located the Blackthorn needles pictured in that top photo at WEBS (aka yarn.com) in sizes as small as 0000, frogged the original gloves, and started over. We'll see!

And I made more baby socks, because, well, why not? These are the free Jellybean Baby Socks pattern from Spud and Chloe in Malabrigo Rios Glazed Carrot, and they took mere hours to make in a nice thick worsted weight. I misjudged foot length so these are too big for a small baby, but huge feet run in both my and husband's family, so I'm sure they will fit before long:

Little Ms. Z and I are also finishing up a few doll projects — a big snuggly mermaid she designed for her one-year-old cousin:

And a superhero doll with flaming red rocket boots for Z herself. The doll's name is Super Ruby (Z's secret hero identity) and she has a theme song and everything. She's going to have curly brown bouclé yarn hair (not pictured):

I'm also getting a last few wears out of my me-made maternity clothes from my last pregnancy, since two kids is a just right for us. (And trying not to be bothered by the people asking me if I've had baby yet, because, well—wouldn't that be rather noticeable?)

OK, back to refreshing those statistics...

Done: Cute Coffee Mug Doll Set (from Aranzi Aronzo's Fun Dolls)

Somehow Ms. Z got it in her head last month that the absolute BEST Christmas present she could possibly make for her one-year-old cousin Ms. R was... a smiling stuffed coffee mug doll. With a matching one for her, so they could sit around and have coffee parties and pretend to drink coffee together.

Well, who was I to stop her? They are really ridiculously cute, I have to admit, especially with their matching saucers:

The basics

Pattern: Coffee Mug Dolls, from the English-language edition of the Japanese book Aranzi Aronzo Fun Dolls (Let's Make Cute Stuff). (Which I highly recommend—it's full of really fun and cute dolls of all kinds, from bunnies and pigs and cats to, well, coffee mugs. Previously Z and an older cousin both made matching Eyelash Bunny dolls.)

Fabric: The body fabric is just a soft, fuzzy, and well-worn old cotton polka-dot cotton flannel receiving blanket, of which I have more than I could ever possibly use. Z requested we use the white side for her mug, and the polka-dot side for Ms. R's mug. I had JUST enough to make the two dolls, but had to piece the bottom of Z's saucer to make it work. The appliqués are cut from an old black T-shirt.

Notions: Fusible webbing (Lite Steam-a-Seam 2, no longer hard to find, hurrah!) and Polyfill stuffing.

Size: One size fits all.

My only real modification to the pattern — requested by Z — was to appliqué the kids' initials on the back:

The instructions are wonderful and very clear—Z was even able to follow along quite a bit, since they are illustrated in comic-book style:

But the coolest thing about this project (which was actually finished quite a while ago, just not photographed properly until now), was that Z sewed a large portion of it at the machine, by herself... with my close cautious supervision. (As detailed in my recent post "How old were you when you first used a sewing machine? (with poll)".

Little Ms. R is coming to visit soon, so we'll soon see how she likes it in person!

How old were you when you first used a sewing machine? (with poll)

After months of pleading from the four-year-old, last week I finally let her operate the sewing machine by herself —with extremely close and cautious supervision from me — to make a Christmas present for her baby cousin R. And it went great, actually! She was incredibly careful, sewed slowly and cautiously along a chalked seamline with a fairly even seam allowance, and didn't get her hands or fingers anywhere near the needle.

I think her favorite part was pressing the foot pedal, which I put up on a stool for her. (Or maybe it was using the different buttons on my computerized machine to select the stitch length and pattern—after sewing the plain seams, she went a little crazy with the built-in flowers and leaves and diamond embroidery stitches on my Viking).

The present she was making is a pattern for smiling stuffed coffee mug dolls and saucers. She picked it out of the adorable Japanese doll-making book Fun Dolls by Aranzi Aranzo (last used when Z and her older cousin T made "Eyelash Bunny" dolls together). Here's a shot right before she sewed the pieces together—we just cut the pieces out of an extra soft cotton flannel baby blanket, and I appliquéd on eyes cut from an old black T-shirt:

She has been hand-sewing, embroidering and helping cut out patterns since she was three (which I wrote about last year in the post "I want my kid to be able to make or fix anything!") and slowly working her way up to using the machine over the past year. I started by letting her press the buttons to select stitches for me, and then eventually let her use the foot pedal while I steered the fabric, or sit in my lap and help me seal the fabric.

She knows how to attach a button (by hand) or a snap (with a hammer), the basic parts of the sewing machine, the difference between knit and woven fabric (she likes to play a game of guessing which clothes she has are woven, and which are knit), and what stabilizers and appliqués are.

I think teaching her to sew and watching her have so much fun with it might be even more fun than sewing myself. It's hard to believe I'm about to have a new little baby who will have no sense of danger and responsibility and whom I will have to keep far, far away from all sewing supplies! It also brought back fun memories of when my mom taught ME to sew on her machine when I was a kid. Here's the first skirt I made (with Mom's help), at age five:

Of course all that sewing is hard work... she passed out on the couch halfway through stuffing the first doll:

Finished object pictures soon. They really turned out cute, and she's been running around pretending to drink tea or coffee out of them.

So: how old were you when you used a sewing machine for the first time? Did you learn as a kid or come to it as a teen or adult?

Meanwhile... we somehow managed to corral her and get a semi-serious Chanukah/Christmas/New Year's holiday photo out of her! (After about 40 tries with the self-timer):

Most of the pictures were more like this:

Boy is that baby belly huge! 35 weeks and counting... Happy holidays everyone!

The Story of Luna, the Black Mermaid Fairy Superhero Doll with Purple Dreadlocks! (Pt. 1)

Meet Luna, the Mermaid Fairy Superhero. Like any proper superhero, she has an origin story:

Once upon a time there was a four-year-old girl named Z who loved all things fantastical and science fictional: mermaids, fairies, superheroes, robots, witches, unicorns, vampires and rocketships. Z would sit for hours and draw pictures of everything from time machines and flying ponies to Harry Potter:

One fine summer day, Ms. Z and her mommy and daddy visited the Brooklyn Aquarium. Z was excited to see the many soft little snuggly mermaid cloth dolls for sale at the gift shop ... but sad that not ONE of them had brown skin or curly hair like her. She settled for a pale mermaid dolly with straight brown hair but asked her mommy -- where can I find one that looks more like me?

And so little Z and her mommy set out on a quest. They searched far and wide across the land and internet, but nothing was quite right. There was a brown-skinned mermaid Barbie, but she had straight hair and was made of plastic. There were soft snuggly brown-skinned cloth dolls, but they had no magic powers or mermaid tails. One day they journeyed to all four toy stores in their neighborhood: the first three had no black dolls at all; the fourth had beautiful handmade Waldorf cloth dolls with many skin colors and hair styles, but they were $100-$200 each and had no magical qualities.

By now little Z and her mommy were feeling quite cranky, but luckily they had a magic power of their own: sewing.

So they sketched their ideas:

Made a simple pattern...

Gathered up some fabric scraps and curly bouclé yarn, and got to work... Cutting:

Pinning...

Sewing, embroidering and stuffing...

At first the mommy sewed most of the doll by hand because her machine was in the shop, but then a friend lent her a vintage Featherweight and things sped up:

Finally, Luna was done!

She was just what the little girl wanted: a mermaid fairy superhero with brown skin, curly (purple) dreadlocked hair, sparkly fairy wings, plus a crown and magic wand.

And the little girl and her mommy were very, very happy. THE END.

... or is it?

P.S. I am going to also (if I can find time) do a little post this week with the (free) PDF for the pattern plus some basic construction details and a list of all the supplies required and doll-making resources, etc. Just in case you want one of your own...