Make Your Own Maternity Clothes

I don't (or didn't) have nearly enough maternity clothes.  After seeing this post on making your own clothes I decided to give it a try.  I also used this post as a reference.

So far I have done two capris, a pair of jeans and a skirt.  The skirt is by far my favorite and the only one I took pictures of.  The process is pretty easy.

1.  Cut off the waist band.  I just left the zipper in place, but I took the zippers off on some of the pants.

2.  Use a tight shirt and cut off enough  for a band.  This band is huge but I like to double it over.  Half of the shirt would have been plenty.

3.  Pin the shirt and the skirt/pants together and sew.

It's that simple.  Sorry I don't have a picture of the finished product, but I don't like taking pictures of my lumpy belly.  Be assured it looks great.

Now a few thoughts on doing this for pants.  Don't use jeans that are stretchy or tight.  Why?  Because they don't stay up.  It's annoying.  The jeans I made are cute but will have to go to my skinnier sister.  Also, I used some old tanks for the jeans that were not very study and they just ripped apart.  I am trying to add an elastic waist band to one pair to keep them up.  We'll see how that goes.

In any event, the skirt was a raving success.  And my nice hubby gave me a gift card to a maternity store for mother's day.  Between the few things I've made, my new stuff and the generosity of my sister loaning me hers, I think I will make it through the summer without looking like the frumpy mom I am.

The Blankie Jar

From the time Kimball was 6 months old (or so) he has had a blanket named Blue.  It was a small piece of blue fleece with knotted tassels around the edges.  It became pretty ratty and occasionally lost one of the tassels, which was cause for extreme trauma.  On these occasions I would perform the necessary repair surgery to reattach the missing tassel.

Sadly, Blue was lost this last December when we took the boys on a trip to ride TRAX.  I suppose it was inevitable.  Although we had been successful on various recovery missions in the past--no such luck this time.

I thought it would be more tragic than it was for Kimball to lose his Blue.  But he handled it well enough.  He refused all attempts at making replacement, and even the backup Blue we had on hand for just such an occasion was insufficient in his toddler eyes.  I thought the days of the blankie had passed.  I was wrong.

A few months later Kimball adopted a new blanket.  I suppose such bonds take time and cannot be artificially created.  This new blanket is two pieces of yellow flannel that is tied together in tassels around the edges.  

This is the only photo I could find of the new blanket.

One night, soon after the adoption of the new blankie, Kimball began to cry in bed.  This was not a normal cry of I'm bored and don't want to go to bed.  He sounded genuinely upset.  Bryce rushed to his aid and I heard a cute conversation wherein Kimball sniffled that a piece had come off of his new blankie.  Bryce resolved this issue like any good Dad and told him that Mom would fix it in the morning.  They put the piece in a "special" place on the book shelf.

In the morning I was up before Bryce and Kimball bounded upstairs to tell me that his blankie needed to be fixed.  I got out my suturing kit (i.e. needle and thread) and we went to retrieve the missing piece.  We hunted and hunted but I couldn't find a thing.  I told Kimball that he would need to wait until Dad got up because I didn't know where the piece was.

Soon enough Bryce was up and brought me the missing piece of Kimball's precious blanket.  It was a thread!  That's right a measly piece of thread.  You know how flannel frays a bit with wash?  Well, Kimball's blanket is flannel and quiet frayed where the pieces have been tied together.  One of the threads had come off and he wanted me to sew it back on.  

What did I do?  I sewed it back on.

The problem?  This new flannel blanket is frayed everywhere!  Do you know how often one of those silly threads comes off?  Almost daily.  And you have another thing coming if you think that I will be sewing threads back onto fraying flannel for the next  . . . whenever! 

That's when I came up with the blankie jar.

It's an old pimento jar that Kimball gets to collect pieces of his blankie (i.e. threads) in.  He often finds random threads and declares them "pieces of my blankie".  What do I care.  At least I don't have to sew them back on.

Monsters for Christmas

A month or so ago Kimball found this book at the library.  I decided to make a few monsters for the kids for Christmas.  They turned out so cute.  I think the rocket ship and the little aliens were the biggest hit.  Each alien has his own pocket on the ship.  There are two pictures of the other monsters I made because one is reversible.  The other is a pocket mouth.  

They weren't too difficult to make, especially with the patterns in the book.  But they couldn't have been possible without the fun plastic eyes I scored on eBay.

My Baby Dinosaurs

Happy Halloween!  This year I decided to try and make costumes for the boys.  I scored an old pattern on eBay that is at least 20 years old, and simple enough for my limited skills.  I also found the fleece on sale for 50% off.  I think they turned out cute.  Kimball wears his everyday and even sleeps in it.  I would say that is money well spent.

Before you get all impressed with my sewing skillz, you should know that these costumes would not have happened without several tutorials on youtube.  Seriously, what did we do before the internet?