Tuesday, February 23, 2010

I can make more than just babies

It all started with some shelves.

I take that back. It started with our sitter. We hired Megan last fall and after falling in love with her she lost her housing and was considering moving back to Oregon. Desperate to not have to break in a new sitter just as the baby was coming into our home, we offered to let her live in our spare room. It's all worked out better than we could have imagined, but that's a story for another time.

The point I was getting to is we had to make some changes to that spare room. One of them was taking out a massive shelf full of books and clearing off a second shelf for her to use. We moved those books to the library/craft room where most of our other books were, and while piles of disorganized books crowding the space certainly made us look well-read, it was not exactly the decorating choice I preferred.


So we got new shelves. I loved them, but they needed book ends. After researching metal book ends and finding nothing I liked, I came across an Etsy shop that sold fabric book ends and I thought - Hey, I can do that! Thus, it started with shelves.



I sewed a dozen book ends out of fabric that was just waiting for a project like this and filled them with rice. Once I got them set up and the books organized, I was totally caught by the crafting bug. So the next weekend I followed up that project by making a table runner.

I've experimented with quilting before and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. But the wavy edges tells me I should actually read a book and learn how you're supposed to quilt instead of just making it up on my own.



After two weekends spent in creative mode, I seemed to be in a rhythm, so I followed that project with one for Lila. I was inspired by this tutorial on making cloth blocks for babies and embarked on that project next. I'm pretty much in love with how they've turned out. There are tags on the sides and they're embroidered with ABC and 123. The second block has a bell and the third has crinkle material inside.



Lila has already shown an interest in them and she's even tried to grab at one.


I'm loving being in the creative mode (which was most likely the inspiration for my new hair color). I'm making things all the time; from journaling, to sewing, to cooking every night. It's a good place for me. I'm not quite ready to go back into crafting as a business, but these are certainly the first steps.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Wow, I love the new hair color and the glasses too. Nice work on the crafts as well.

Jonathan