Nearly a whole month!

I can hardly believe I've left blogging for so long. I just haven't really had much to show anyone. However I'm now in the middle of my first week of plant shutdown (annual leave) and am on a mission to sew as much baby stuff as I can. So far it hasn't been easy as Austy has been clingy with an ear infection and there's not a whole lot that can be done in the 2hrs between dropping him off at childcare so I was hoping to get a lot of the preparation work done (drawing patterns, cutting out etc.) while he was still with me but it hasn't happened.

So far all I have managed is to applique ONE curtain for Austy's room (and had it with the vilesofix falling off it's backing as I cut it out so am not ready to attempt the other one yet), a fitted bassinette sheet and a flat bassinette sheet. Not so good for three afternoons efforts. I still have plans to make lots of nappies, summer pyjamas for Austin, a nappy bag, curtains for the baby's room and finish Austy's big bed quilt as the cot/bed is not going back into his room after it gets moved out to paint. So what am I doing in here? Well I am sort of stuck to my embroidery macine to stop it every time I hear the threads splitting (which seems to happen far too often). I am not trusting this thing - it will stop when the thread snaps but it could sew for a whole 30mins with a very fine remnant of thread after the rest bunches up somewhere in the machine. I think I have already stuffed up the design because I trusted the machine to tell me what colour to do next, instead of the colour charts, and it was wrong... very wrong! So hopefully my unpicking didn't cause the fabric to shift too much. Fingers crossed and we'll see. (Can't you tell that my embroidery machine and I have a love hate relationship!)

I can say I have finally finished Austy's dust jacket and he has proudly worn it out in public twice. He loves the little pencil pocket the best, and I think I do too. I tried to copy every detail from Austy's Dad's real dust jacket, inluding the raglan sleeves, hidden buttons (changed to snaps for Austy's little hands) and divided mitred chest pocket. I didn't have a pattern so I was a bit apprehensive about drafting my own and put it off for some time. But with austy wanting to help his Dad in the shed building the big boy bed, there was no way out of it. The results are worth the fear and the effort though.

Here is a quick little project I made for a lady at childcare who used to be one of Austy's baby room carers. As she's not in the kindy or pre-kindy room where I head to pick up Austy so I didn't even know she was pregnant until the letter went out asking for gifts to be placed in the basket by the end of the week. In a mad panic for a quick project, I came across these taggy blocks. I decided to add a little photo window as well, and chose bright colours teamed with black and white to give baby lots of visual stimulation. There's a rattle bell inside too. The best part - it was all done in an hour or so!

I promise to be back with photos of my (hopefully productive) two weeks off. If I don't achieve much at least I know I have been successful in one thing - Austy is pretty much toilet trained! It was like a switch. After all these months trying he finally decided to wear jocks. I knew it was just a matter of having some time off work to help keep things consistent.

Oh and don't forget to add your guesses to my baby stats game - check the link in my side bar. Only 10 weeks to go now!! It's zooming along.