Just me, some fabric and Leslie Knope

This weekend was a time of rest for my family and I.  Much needed, I may add.  I have been feeling overwhelmed and not like myself lately.  So it was time to take a step back, indulge in a few daytime naps and reprioritize.  Luckily, we were able to do that this weekend.  And I got to sew!  There is something about the whir of the sewing machine as I gently guide pretty fabric under the needle, that makes me feel like me.  I am sure that other mothers of young children know what I am saying, when I tell you that there is a part of me that gets swept away by being a parent.  It could be because I am an introspective person by nature, and reading Go Dog Go, building towers, cleaning butts and putting toddlers in time out doesn't necessarily lend itself well to personal growth and reflection.  Or stimulating adult conversation, for that matter.  So this weekend while the kids slept, and my husband put in a crazy amount of overtime work, I sewed and created and watched "Parks and Recreation" episodes for the 10th time each.  And it was exactly what my toddler-battered soul needed.  Just me, some fabric and Leslie Knope. 


Friday night I finished my fourth Geranium dress.  Actually, I made a tunic this time.  Hands down, this is the very best pattern I have ever worked with.  I join all of  the sewing/bloggy world when I tell you that you will be handed a pina colada popsicle in hell before you regret buying this pattern.  You will ice skate through hells many circles, hand in hand with Frosty the Snowman before you regret buying this pattern.  You will.... hell....something cold....  you get the point.  If you are a new sewer, this is THE pattern to start with.  You will love it!  Plus the sizes range from wee babes to 5T. 

Anyone see a little baby spit-up?  Classy.

My fabric choices lately have been determined by frugality.  The twins have some gaps in their wardrobe for spring and summer.  My plan is to spend $0 by using up fabric I already have.  Inspired by this top made by Kristin at Skirt as Top, I threw some fabric paint onto some grayish blue fabric and called it a day. 

This next top was a fun puzzle to make.  It is a pattern from Happy Homemade Volume 2.  This was my first time sewing from a Japanese sewing book.  Newsflash:  I don't read Japanese.  Shocking, I know.  It was surprisingly easy and fun to figure out how to sew this garment based on the illustrations alone.  I love the drape of the top and already have fabric cut out to make another.  And let me just say that I am hooked on this sewing book.  I am planning to puzzle out how to sew some shorts next.  Cherie from You and Mie has a great series that is very helpful when sewing from Japanese sewing books.  Check it out here.

Am I disturbed by the lay-down modeling pose Camila has mastered?  No, I am jealous.

The fabric for this top was originally un-bleached muslin that I RIT dyed and then dropped bleach on to create the splotchy look.  I think it is okay.  I probably won't try this again, but it was a fun idea to experiment with.  The flow of the pattern and the splotchy fabric look like a cloud to me, which I love.  The dreary spring weather lately has me dreaming of sitting in a sunny patch at the park while my kids play and laugh with puffy white clouds overhead.  It will be happening soon.  Happy sigh. 

And some post-photo-shoot-photos.

Look what we found!  Papa's beef jerky stash.  Snacktime?  Done.



Yep.  Photos taken on top of the deep freezer surrounded by lunch remnants.  Nailed it.

Short and full of hexagons

I want to keep my blog promises, but I keep writing and then erasing this blog post.  I refuse to knowingly add to the crappity crap that the Internet is full of.  So to that end, let me simply say that I have not finished any projects to show you (booooo!) and all the funny toddler stories I can think of are either too personal or involve poop.  I don't want to embarass my daughters too much by publicly sharing private stories and NO ONE wants to hear about poop. 

Here is one of the projects that is in progress right now. 

It is a baby quilt.  The top part is done.  No I am not adding anymore hexagons (as my husband keeps asking me to do!).  The polka dot fabric in the right hand corner is for the back and the other aqua-colored fabric is for the binding (small strip of fabric that goes around the edges).  So whaddya think?  This is the kind of thing I will be selling in my Etsy shop this spring and I would love some feedback.  Do you think someone would want to buy this?  Should I change something?  Tell me!  Tell me!


I have 4 other projects in the works, but a little baby I know refuses to nap out of my arms so no pics today!  Back to snuggling.  It is not exactly torture.

Boooyahhhh! I sewed a shirt.

Let's not even get into the fact that I apparently took a 3 week hiatus from blogging.  I'm back.  And the big news around here is that I sewed myself a shirt. 

This is a BIG deal!  I have never ever sewed myself something that was even close to fitting.  When I was 18 and in college, my roommate (and lifelong friend), Jamie and I bought all the makings for sewing an amazing skirt:  fabric that was both cheap and ugly.  We then spent an evening attempting to sew these amazing skirts on my big ol' 1970's era Montgomery Ward sewing machine.  Not only were the skirts ugly but we permanently broke my machine.  Now two things should be going through your mind right now.  One:  why did Kelly bring a sewing machine to COLLEGE?   Great question with a complicated answer involving my attending a very conservative college that banned alcohol and making out.  And two:  Who is responsible for breaking this historic relic of a sewing machine?  Much easier question to answer.  Jamie did it.  Though she more than paid me back when she came and stayed with us for a week when my twins were newborns.  It was a week full of trashy TV and gossip.  Just what my overwhelmed post-partum self needed!  Sewing machine debt paid.  :)

Since this epic attempt at skirt construction, I have sewn my kids some pretty basic items.  These little dresses were my first attempt. 

Aww... look at my little babies...

 

These simple dresses were sewn this summer and worn to the park on many a hot day.  They are made from an old-lady house dress I picked up at a thrift store and are pretty hot to trot.  Enough skirts and dresses have followed that I started to think that maybe I could attempt clothes for ME.  So I bought a pattern from Australia and stressed about it for a month.  I know what you are thinking:  "Get some real problems."  I know.  But finally this week I chopped up an old maternity dress, carefully followed all the directions (which is the not-so-secret secret to successful sewing!) and voila!  Shirt.

Don't hate me for being amazing at modeling.  It is a gift.

I don't love the fabric but I love the fit and how comfy it is.  Now this next picture is AWFUL lighting and well, I just had a baby 2 months ago, so I am a LOT bigger than I want to be.  But you can see how the back is nice and long. 

Check out this awesome cropped version.  And here is where you can get your hot little hands on the pattern.  It is definitely a pattern I will be reusing.  I plan on making the cropped version for layering when I can make it in a smaller size (weight loss motivation!).

That's it for now.  We've been having lots of winter fun around here.  You know the trinity of winter fun:  snow, play dough and paint. 

And I'm not the only one excited about the snow.

 I plan on being back next week with one hilarious story and one sneak peek at a finished item I will be selling in my Etsy shop this spring!  Thanks for reading! 

On why I hate the term "Supermom" and love Gilbert Blythe

Many of you who know me in real life know that my husband and I had some trouble getting pregnant.  In fact if you hunt around my blogger profile you will find an entire blog dedicated to that topic.  All in all it took around 2 years to conceive our twins.  In the infertility world, that is not all that long, but for me personally, it felt like a mini lifetime.  During that time, I would often daydream about being a mother.  My daydreams were fairly idyllic, to say the least.  There were lots of dreams of time spent frolicking in the meadows and woodlands. while kind-hearted foxes and raccoons wistfully smiled at the beauty of my children and I twirling about in dresses and petticoats (yes, yes, this is hyperbolic, I'm not that weird).  You know, Anne of Green Gables kind of stuff.  Real motherhood has proved to be quite different.  I am no Anne with an E.  And I rarely meet up with magical woodland creatures whilst sober.  And I am almost always sober.

 Most days, I laugh almost as much as my giggly toddlers and enjoy most of our time together.  But then Clara keeps me up a few nights in a row and some hearty exhaustion sets in.  On those days I find it harder to be patient when my twins "help" me with dishes by dumping entire cups of water on the floor, or when I change 6 poopy diapers in one hour (only happened once, but it was epic). 

 

And I don't know about you, but I find very few truly honest spaces on the Internet when it comes to motherhood.  I can't be the only person who has days when I yell at my kids and let them watch an hour of cartoons while I read a book and attempt to hold onto my sanity.  But then I log onto Pinterest and apparently every other mother out there is doing amazing activities with their kids ALL DAY LONG. 

And I feel like a failure.   Because sometimes I snatch instead of gently taking.  Sometimes I log onto Facebook when I should be reading books with my girls.  And sometimes I am jealous of people who have just one baby to look after. So just in case you have ever read my Facebook posts or this blog and thought that I am a "supermom" (I HATE that term), the truest of truths is that I am not. 

When I was pregnant with Clara, I read Simplicity Parenting by Kim John Payne.  I am already a very Attachment Parenting-Montessori-Waldorfy influenced parent, so this book jived with my general hybrid of parenting philosophies.  Keep it simple.  It is okay for kids to be bored sometimes.  Simple toys.  Daily and weekly rhythms/routines.  Time in nature.  Limited TV time.  To sum it up:  Do your best and that is enough.  I seriously need to tattoo this upside down on my boobs, to remind myself of this truth when I am nursing.  Supermom is an unhealthy myth.  I cannot do everything perfectly for my kids.  Impossible.  All that I can do is my whole-hearted best and then be at peace with myself.  And trust that all the beautiful moments will overpower the yucky ones and my children will FEEL the magic of woodland raccoons and foxes smiling at them (in a non-rabies-infected kind of way) throughout their lives. 

 

Because you know what?  When Anne Shirley (you know, of Anne of Green Gables lore) had kids in the later books, she had hired help.  What??!!  Yep.  Read Anne of Ingleside and Rainbow Valley and you will see.  Plus she had dreamy Gilbert to hump and bump with at night.... but I digress.  ;)

Bottom line here is that I am going to re-read Simplicity Parenting and be generous with myself this week.  I love my kids to pieces.  They are my 3 little miracles (as all children are) and I do my very best to mother them with gentleness and just a hint of razzle-dazzle.  But sometimes the razzle is not dazzling and that is okay.  Tomorrow I will do better.  And maybe some of you who read this blog feel this way too sometimes.  Maybe you also want to kill the term "Supermom" and then go out and have a beer, while the hired help watches the children, obviously.  I am looking for more real.  More honesty.  Motherhood is hard enough without trying to pretend that I am perfect.

Off topic really, but this is one of the things I sewed this week. 

Her name is Lucy Goosey and you can find the tutorial here to make her.  She is adorable and imperfect.  I am tempted to keep her for our home because she is so joyful!  But I am hoping she will be a gift for a certain friend just beginning the IVF journey, so I will hold onto her for a couple of months as we wait and see and hope.

 Because holy hell, motherhood is worth all of the self-doubt and exhaustion.  It is worth it when I hear my toddlers whisper "mama mama" to each other back and forth in their cribs as they fall asleep most nights. 

Oh, and if you have never read Anne of Green Gables and this post makes no sense at all to you, go read the book!  And read Simplicity Parenting while you are at it.  And then go hump and bump with your own Gilbert if you are lucky enough to have one, for heavens sake.  On that note, I better scurry off.... winkety wink.  My own "Gilbert" is pretty dreamy.

Ugh.. why am I embroidering again?

The nice part of being a second-time-around mom, is that breastfeeding has been fairly easy.  With my twins, I had to pump for the first weeks while my girls were in the NICU and then we hired a lactation consultant to come to our home to help me master the "womanly art of breastfeeding."  Which for moms of twins is code for being topless 20 hours out of the day.  For realsies.  Like, I once was a split second away from answering the door with both of my boobs out.  Trust me that all parties involved would have been horrified!

Anyhoo, all that to say that while I am still sitting on my bum for countless hours each day, the feedings themselves are much easier.  Except now while I am nursing during the day I am also reading "Go Dog Go" to one toddler while giving the other a horsey ride on my legs.  Sometimes.  It is not always as crazy as all that. But c'mon ya'll?  What's the point of having three kids under age 2 if I can't shock people a tiny bit?  And off topic, but one afternoon last week I unhooked my nursing tank top and a pacifier fell out.  It had somehow fallen in and had been hanging out, unnoticed, since the last feeding.  Of course it was instantly snatched up by a happy toddler!  And no, I did not bother to sanitize it!  Duh.  These nursing boobs continue to delight and horrify. 

 In the evenings, when the twins are asleep, Clara likes to feed a lot.  I think she likes to nurse best when it is quiet.  So to keep myself somewhat busy, I have been embroidering while watching "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" (my newest Netflix obsession!).  To be honest, I don't love embroidery.  I think it is something I will love someday whem I am 50 years older than I am now.  Like cross-stitching, I think these needlecrafts are kind of "old lady" crafts.  But I really love the look of vintage-inspired embroidery.  So I made a little something for our living room.

We have lived in this apartment for almost a year and I have very few things hanging on the wall.  I'm not sure why that is.  Last week I decided that if we are going to stay in this COZY place for another year or so then I need to decorate more.  I spend 75% of my cold winter days in the living room, so it seems like a logical starting point.  Enter what I am calling our "happily embroidered family."

 The design for the faces is not my own, it is from a beautiful book called Zakka Style that you can find here.  It is a really wonderful book full of gorgeous projects.  This embroidery design is really for mini-handwarmers which I easily adapted for this simple project.


For my project, I had three circular cork boards from IKEA.  I bought them on a whim a couple of weeks ago because well, that's what happens at IKEA!  Then I simply cut out pieces of circular fabric, embroidered the design and glued them to the boards.  All for under $3!  I feel okay about them.  I'm not in love.  I am somewhat of a lazy embroiderer and have only ever learned to backstitch.  But I kinda dig the rustic look they have.  Next time, if there were going to be a next time, I would have done a better job of hiding my stitches in the back.  You can see them through the white fabric.  But ehh... I'm shrugging my shoulders a bit because I'm really not a perfectionist.  And these mini cork boards are going to be used for pinning up messages and reminders.  So they can be a bit rough. 

This is me!

My sweet husband, Arturo.

 

And our three little loves.

 



My plan is to hang them in a cluster near a family photo.  I meant to hang them up today and snap a picture, but wonder of all wonders, my toddlers took a 3 hour nap!  No way was I messing with that by pounding nails in the wall!  And by the time they woke up, the sun was no longer at its peak.  But I think you can get the idea.  I know that posting amaturish projects to a craft blog is probably not the best way to acquire readers, but that's okay.  Why pretend that I am perfect?  I have limited free time right now, and this is the one craft project that I finished last week and I am okay with that for now.  Maybe you will subscribe to this blog for more stories about boobs, eh?  Or maybe to see more photos of my kid looking like Zoolander?

This is completely unposed by the way.


Regardless, I am glad you are here reading this.  Just trying to stay afloat and enjoy this crazy stage of life!  Writing and sharing on this blog helps.  Here is a peek at what my COZY apartment usually looks like by the afternoon. 

My life is crazy but it is also overflowing with goodness and giggles and an enormous amount of poopy diapers.  So onward I will sew.  Anyone else ever find weird things in their nursing bras?  And please please please tell me that other people let their homes get to this level of crazy?

Sewing mishaps

Okayyyyy.  So some of you may remember that last week I started a blog series and I said I would be continuing it yesterday and today.  Well, that has not exactly happened.  In the first place, I decided I don't like the series.  The projects I had lined up were not exciting me and I have many other projects I want to do instead.  And the good news is that I am the boss of this thing, so I make the decisions.  So blog series cancelled.  Although I will show you one of the small projects I made for the series down below.

This past weekend, I packed up a few things, plopped the baby in the car and we headed to my parents.  They live just an hour and a half away.  The perfect get-away distance, in my opinion.  My husband watched our twins at home and I had a quietly blissful weekend with only the worlds easiest baby to look after.  Plus my parents held her 90% of the time when she wasn't nursing.  Score! 

Predictably, early Saturday mornng I pulled out my sewing machine.  Little did I know that my sewing machine wanted to teach me to be secure in my own general incompetence.  First up on the  humility tour was a peasant dress pattern that I was attempting to make into a tunic for baby Clara.

  I had this great fabric, but I didn't quite have enough of it for a dress so I shortened the pattern. And well, I shortened it too much. It is now a doll dress.

 It fits Clara, but it doesn't look good. And it is quite possibe that the elastic on the arms could cut off her circulation. I'm not a huge fan of amputating my babys arms. Call me old-fashioned. Sewing mishap #1.

This baby tunic turned doll dress was for my old series.  I was going to make two projects based around my favorite quote by the activist, Cesar Chavez.  This was the fun one!  I took printable fabric that you can find here, and printed out a public domain photo of Chavez.  I trimmed the fabric to the size I wanted and sewed it onto the tunic.

 Although the tunic itself is way too small, I really like this little detail and am definitely going to try it again.  Plus how cool that my girls have an activist doll dress, right?  I am fully aware that this is something they may tell their future college roommates about as they laugh at their quirky weird mother.  Totally down with that. 

The pattern I used for this dress is really great.  My project hurled chunks through no fault of the pattern.  As I used to always write on my biology lab reports in high school, "this project failed due to human error." The pattern for size 0-3 months is FREE and can be found here.

On that same Saturday, I decided to finish sewing tunics that I had been working on for my twins.  I had purchased the pattern from one of my very favorite bloggers.  The fabric for the bodice of both tunics came from this huge polka dot sheet I scored at a resale shop.

 

 I have tons left, so you can expect to see more polka dots on this blog in the near future!  The finished tunics looked amazing.  They turned out exactly how I wanted.  Only trouble is that when I arrived home and attempted to try the tunics on the girls, they would not fit over their heads. No matter how hard I tugged and pulled. And I have no shame. I tugged and pulled pretty damn hard. Sewing mishap #2.

I really think that this mishap is a result of the pattern, and not human error.  My kids have pretty normal sized heads, I think.  No one has ever told me, "Wow!  Your kids have monstrous heads."  And as every parent knows, strangers are weird and vocal and will totally tell you stuff like this.  So the absence of monstrous head comments leads me to believe that Camila and Maya have normal sized heads.  Now I fully intend to fix this mishap by simply making a buttonhole opening on one shoulder.  I'm not sure why the pattern didn't call for this in the first place.  I still think this is a cute pattern and the directions are pretty clear.  You can purchase the pattern here.  Just make sure to add a zipper or a button somewhere in case your NORMAL-sized kids heads don't fit either. 

Last night I decided to attempt to bolster my sewing confidence and make something simple that I couldn't mess up.  My sewing mojo is back after making these SUPER SIMPLE (I know!!) chevron pillows to match the fabric I pinned up to hide the disorganized sewing crap inside a cupboard.

 

 

 

 This week is going to involve more sewing-for-the-home projects, so stay tuned.  Unless of course I mess everything up and completely change my mind.  Because that could happen too.  Just keepin it real and trying to stay sane.

Handmade Pearls: Singing Away the Dark, Part 2

 

Yesterday I wrote about bravery.  Today we sew pillowcases.  If you missed it, here  is the story behind the project.  What I like about this project is it's simplicity and versatility.  You may not feel inspired by the book Singing Away the Dark like I was, but maybe you have a pile of fabric scraps or a garbage bag full of your childrens clothes that you just can't seem to give away.  Why not sew them into a simple scrappy set of pillowcases?  Or perhaps you too are inspired by a different book, song or poem that you want to base your project on!  Go crazy!

I chose a gray main fabric that had a wintery feel, to convey the early-morning winter setting of the book.  The scraps I chose for the cuff of the pillowcase represented the colors of the dawn breaking towards the end of the book.  I want these pillowcases to be pretty and bright for my daughters. For the dimensions of the pillowcase, I used this blog post as a guide.  You can certainly follow her entire tutorial for a more professional, albeit a bit more time-consuming pillowcase.  I kept mine very simple, but I still think it will last many years.  First of all you need to cut your main fabric into two pieces.  The front piece should be cut into a 21" x 21"square.  The back piece should be cut into a 21" x 33 1/2" piece. 

If you want to embroider your pillowcase like I did, use a "Mark B Gone" marker to write out the words.  Then use embroidery floss to stitch over the words.  I used a basic back-stitch, but feel free to get fancy-schmancy if you are embroidery-inclined, unlike me.  And remember to gently rub your fabric with a wet cloth when you are done stitching to erase the marker lines.

 Personally, I think it is best to embroider things while drinking a hot chocolate on a comfy couch watching some trashy TV, but maybe that's just me.  I chose to embroider "Brave Maya" and "Brave Camila" because that is the lesson of Singing Away the Dark in it's simplest, most child-friendly form, in my opinion.  I loved to trace cursive when I was a kid.  How fun to picture my daughters tracing these words, lovingly embroidered by their mama, when they feel a tad bit lonely at their first sleepover.  Oh the power of embroidery!  ;)

The next step is to sew a scrappy cuff that is 21" x 13".  I really wanted mine to have a random, scrap quilt look.  I hunted around in my fabric scrap bin until I found the right colors.  I then cut them into 2 1/2" width strips.  Wanting a random scrap-quilt look, I then cut each strip into a bunch of different lengths.

 The next step is a lot of guesswork, but I sewed the little rectangles into long strips until they measured to be around 21" in length.

 I ended up needing 7 long strips that I then sewed together into one rectangle.  Like I said, it is guesswork since the lengths were random, but that's half the fun, right?!  To finish the cuff, I used my rotary cuter to cut a clean 21' by 13' rectangular cuff.

 

Next up, I ironed the scrappy cuff in half, lengthwise.

 Putting right sides together, I sewed the front piece to the cuff so the embroidered side of the front piece met up with both rough sides of the cuff.

 I then did a zig zag stitch along the rough edges to keep them from unravelling in the wash.

 Iron.  This is now one front piece.  The cuff should be on the right-hand side with a nice folded edge.

Create a back cuff by lining up the front and back pieces and sewing back the extra length on the back fabric piece.

With right sides together, sew the front and back piece together along three of the sides (don't sew along the cuff because it already has a nice folded edge).  Zig zag stitch along the rough edges, flip the pillowcase right side out and ta-da!  You have a beautiful pillowcase.

 I hope that these pillowcases inspire some conversations with my daughters about bravery in the years to come.  They are almost ready to move out of their cribs and use pillows for the first time (yikes!) so this project is well-timed. 

Next Monday I will continue with the 2nd installment of this series!  It is an even simpler project combining Cesar Chavez and printable fabric!