A Surprise Wax Print Quilt by Big Sis for Baby

So I was talking to my daughter on video chat (she'd been staying with my parents for a few days while I recovered from yet another bad cold) when suddenly she surprised me with a gift she'd been making for her baby sibling — a quilt sewn from scraps of African wax print fabrics left over from outfits my mom and I made for her (like this one).

I have to say I was a little stunned. I knew she was getting interested in sewing, but I haven't even finished making a quilt myself in years (though I keep meaning to before baby comes—we'll see).

Ms. Z of course had a lot of help from my mom (who is an expert quilter), but she cut out all the pieces herself...

... and arranged them into various formations for my mom to appliqué to the blocks. She also sewed some of the straight stitching lines herself.

She is so proud of herself, and I really can't blame her!

A Sewing Room of My Own! (Sort of)

Or dimly lit corner of the nursery of my own, anyway. Viking machine + Horn cabinet + IKEA chair found in basement trash room.

Are you one of those lucky sewists with a whole room dedicated to your crafty pursuits? With a sewing cabinet and a serger station and a cutting table and an inspiration wall and a fabric storage closet and a pattern storage cabinet and a dress form corner and a gravity-fed steam iron and ...

OK, I hate you. Or envy you, anyway. But not as much as I used to, because I FINALLY have a permanent spot for the sewing machine. No more hiding my beloved Viking Platinum 730 in a corner cabinet under a pile of breast-pump paraphernalia! No more lifting stacks of this and piles of that and clearing off the dining table before I can sew a single seam. OK, so my serger is still on a closet shelf and I still cut fabric on a cardboard mat on the bed, but... baby steps!

This was part of some serious apartment rearranging and decluttering. We put the crib in our bedroom next to the bed for easy baby access, replacing the cosleeper she outgrew way too fast. We even threw out our coffee table. It was just collecting magazines anyway, and now there's a nice big spot on the living room rug to put down quilts for playtime:

Patchwork baby quilt by my amazing mom, knitted purple diaper soaker by yours truly, and drool by Miss Baby Z.

So far my mother's been doing the lion share of the sewing (baby diapers, baby hats, a cloth book) but I actually made Z a few things for the holidays and maybe I'll even make myself some clothes soon. I also have finally learned to backwrap, so maybe Z can take a snooze back there while I sew and not be able to reach for any pins or sharp stuff. Here we are at a babywearing holiday party:

So yeah, more posts and actual finished sewn objects for you soon!

How about you? Do you have a drool-worthy permanent sewing setup... or do you have to tug your machine out of the bottom of a closet out from under a pile of old shoes and heave it onto a coffee table every time you get stitchy?

P.S. Apologies for dim lighting, but there's so few hours of daylight for blog photos in the dead of winter!

P.P.S. OK, I replaced the dimly lit photo with a better shot and added a few more details.

There's Nothing Like Handmade

As I'm sure you'll agree, there's nothing like a handmade gift. I've mostly been featuring handmade items made for Baby Z by me or my amazing mom, but our friends and family have been generous with their knitting needles and sewing machines as well!

The above sweater and hat set is a gift to Baby Z from her Great Aunt Becky. There's a story behind the little bears labeled "Maine Doggies"--when I was a toddler, I used to visit my grandparents on their farm in Maine. One day I was walking with my grandmother Melba and saw a bear--I thought it was a big dog and wanted to go over and pet it.

My Aunt Becky also made her this stranded hat and mitten set:

And here's Z a few weeks ago in a diaper soaker knit by our friend Sonia, lying on a gorgeous patchwork baby quilt made by my department head Debbie (note the ballet shoes in the quilting pattern):

Speaking of diaper soakers, Z's already grown out of the smallest one I knit for her, the Green Goblin soaker. Here she is in the soaker her first week home, when she was just over 8 pounds...

And here she is in that same soaker a month ago, at 5 weeks old:

Now at 2 1/2 months old and 13 pounds, she's outgrown many of her 3 month clothes and is mostly in 6 month sizes. And her feet barely fit in the booties I knit for her that I thought were so huge:

Knitting and sewing aren't the only crafts in town, of course. My mother-in-law Gail makes beautiful handmade soaps and jewelry that she sells at conventions and fairs, and she put together these gift bags for Z's baby shower in March. She made the soaps and magnets, and Masheka's cousin Laurie made the lollipops (I've whited Z's name out in PhotoShop for her privacy.) You'll note the soap features a mold of a pregnant woman.

Fabric Execution, Part 2: The Slaughter Continues!

They die so other fabrics might live!

As you recall, in part one of my cruel and ruthless fabric purge I attacked my jerseys. In the end I managed to send seven knit fabrics of various yardages off to swim with the fabric fishes, making just enough room to squish all the knits into one drawer (save one that is going to be used this week for the mini-wardrobe contest--so it doesn't count as stash anyway, right?)

The wovens, as I suspected, were harder--even the tiniest and least garment-appropriate woven scraps could become part of a lovely quilt someday, right? Not that I do much in the way of quilting, but I did take an improvisational patchwork class with the awe-inspiring Denyse Schmidt not so long ago, and I have been known to make a pillow/potholder/stuffed animal or two:

But every scrap of fabric I destash makes room for more amazing fabrics to come into my life. Plus I need space to store the 67 cloth diapers my amazing mom has sewn up for Cartoonist Baby's fashionable little butt.

And as I told myself when carting bag after bag (seven? eight) of clothing to the Goodwill for donation this past year, if it doesn't make me feel AMAZING and DELIRIOUSLY HAPPY, why wear it? So if a fabric, however fine and serviceable, doesn't inspire me to fits of delight and imagination, WHY SEW WITH IT?

After the jump--a few candidates for woven fabric execution, of the seven I have so far convinced myself to part with: