My Crafty Weekend

I was very busy this weekend. I'd had a bunch of ideas of things I wanted to make, baby-related. So Saturday, I braved the cold and rain and hit the local thrift store for supplies. I ended up finding about 5 woo l sweaters (pretty impressive for Texas), some old tshirts, some jeans (for a non-baby project), and a whole bag of baby toys for $8 (the bag, not the entire bill). I had so much stuff there was no need to go looking at other stores for supplies, besides, it had been an hour and I needed a bathroom break. So I headed home to start washing.

Saturday night, I cut out pieces for baby yoga pants, a denim tote, a bunch of wool supplies, and also printed out and organized the instructions for all the projects I wanted to do. I ended up finishing a pair of black baby yoga pants, and even embellished them, and made a bunch of flannel wipes.

Baby pants:
Flannel wips:

Sunday, I tackled the bigger projects. I decided to make a dust ruffle for the crib. In part because it looked rather bare, and I didn't want to shell out $20-50 for a dust ruffle, and also because it could be used to hide stuff we store under the crib. I went digging through my fabric stash. Suddenly I'm glad I didn't purge my fabric when I was cleaning house last fall. I found some muslin and some pretty cottage print in blue roses.

I sat and contemplated sizes and construction details for a good hour before I was satisfied that I had a good pattern. Yes, I created the entire pattern from scratch. My engineering degree ought to be good for something, right?

Well, it took about twice as long to construct as I thought it would originally. That's usually the case. But I also didn't count washing and drying time in my original estimate. Also, I did a simple hem, and I should have done a finished hem, since it's so ravelly, but no one will notice but me.

Here's the finished dust ruffle in place on the crib:


Finally, I tackled making a couple of toys. I'd gotten the inspiration from some projects I saw on the net and wanted to see if I could make them. I cut up a cashmere sweater that had been slightly felted and made a bunny out of it. Sewing it was a pain, but eventually it went together. Almost screwed up and sewed the ears so they would have been inside the bunny when I flipped it. Happily I caught my mistake BEFORE I started sewing.

When it was sewn together, I figured I'd have to wait until Monday to hit the fabric store and pick up a package of fiberfill to stuff it with. Then Daniel had a brilliant idea. Why not take one of the grab-bag toys that I didn't want to keep and take the stuffing out of that. Fantastic! The toy I grabbed even had a little rattle inside. It had just enough fluff to fill up the bunny. I'm rather proud of my little bunny rattle.



The gray box behind it is a heavily felted wool that I sewed into a cube. It, too, needs fiberfill or stuffing of some sort, and I don't have any more toys I can cannibalize. I'll think of something soon.

Daniel was funny last night. He kept asking me if this was nesting, since I was being "scary productive", in his words. I felt productive, but no baby yet. And I didn't have any urges to do any actual cleaning. So far, I've been resisting those pretty well.