Sewing

Is totally therapeutic. My Mom is giving me her old retro green machine but couldn't get it in the car. So she brought over the semi vintage 80's portable and I have been learning to sew.

Everything I make is way crooked. And I just now really got the hang of cutting out fabric straight. How did I pass Kindergarten? The more I do it, the better it gets.

My goal is to sew my own newborn and infant stash of cloth diapers (30 each size and 50-75 wipes). I am using a lot of flannel and terry that has been used before. I recived a pack of gender neutral receiving blankets. Well with Natalie, I was like PINK PINK PINK. So I re-purposed them into prefold diapers and wipes. I also ordered 9 yards of cute snuggle fabric from JoAnns a couple of weeks ago when it was half off. The monkey print was my least favorite fabric of the new stuff so it fell victim to the sewing stash last night at 1am when I ran out of other flannel!

The insides of my regular prefolds have two thick layers of terry in the middle. The monkey ones will a little thicker for nap time and night time. They have two layers of terry and two layers of flannel. The terry was from a robe whose sleeves were way too short and the inside flannel was my favorite pair of sleep pants that I tore when I tripped on the edge of them. Anyway, these can be snappied if I want but more than likely I'll just keep them folded and tuck them into the cover. Based off of what a lot of people have said, Thirsties covers seem to be a favorite and I was able to buy an XS and S in lilac to make sure my creations work.


I still have 1.66 yards of the turquoise space monkey fabric. Then I have 2 yards of this

and 3 yards of this
Natalie wants blankets made out of the pink ones. I think the turquoise space monkey fabric will be a pillowcase dress. That is within my skill range - as long as no one checks out the seams!

As the days pass, I find myself becoming more green, for the last 15 months I've live a very wasteful lifestyle. The first thing I've done is set up a recycling area. I am air drying a lot of clothes again. I am saving every leftover and if I am missing an ingredient for a meal, I come up with a substitution. I am using up sample sizes of everything and organizing everything I own so I won't buy duplicates.

One big thing I am doing is putting Natalie back in cloth. She was almost potty trained in May then she regressed. Then she regressed again when Dad died. I didn't want to go to Walmart (I mean really, does anyone enjoy it?) so I bought pull ups at Dollar General, their brand. YIKES. Yesterday TWICE, this child came up to me, pulled her pull up to the side, told me it was wet and PEED ON THE FLOOR. That is really more than I can tolerate when it comes to fluids (especially on my nice floors). Thank goodness for hardwood. So I started thinking, why am I not using the Kawaii dipes I bought DD2 on Ebay? They are one size so I could just put them on the largest setting.

So I washed everything up last night and brought out her sole fuzzi bunz dipe (they are like $15, that is why there is only one) to wear all through the night. No leaks - hooray! Today when I put her in the pretty yellow diapers, I told her that she couldn't poop in them, they were very special. And guess what? She went in the potty. See, she can, but she won't. Stubborn little thing.

I've bought several pieces of wool for the baby on diaperswappers this week. Wool is naturally antibacterial and waterproof. Also, nice wool is very soft. At a time I should be circling my wagons $$ wise, I am spending it on diaper fluff. Why? Because I want to.

I got back to work on Nov 2nd. I took a 2 week unpaid leave of absence. I need 6 months. But I can afford take 2 weeks so that is what I am doing.

That is enough for now - bye.