geek in training

It’s no secret that I like my geeky sewing projects, right? I mean, look what I spent half the year sewing for. So I was pretty excited when The Monthly Stitch announced that this month’s theme was going to be sewing all things fandom-related…

Except, you know, that whole pregnancy thing I’ve got going on means that my usual tactic of secret costumes is currently out. Plus I just did Disney, and I don’t really have anything else in my stash right now that would make good geeky maternity clothes. Unless I wanted to do a Starship Enterprise-esque maternity top, and I’ve just never really been that into Star Trek.

Ok, I’ll admit that copying this shirt was really tempting. But I didn’t.

So I made stuff for Hobbit instead. I’m not messing with clothes yet since we don’t know if we’re having a boy or a girl, but you always need bibs, right? This is the same pattern as every other bib I’ve ever posted on here. And these first four aren’t even all that original, since I made a set for a friend years ago. But I did do a few things differently this time.

Since Lord of the Rings is my all-time top geeky love, of course I had to start with that. So I did a White Tree for Gondor and a horse for Rohan. Instead of the DIY screenprinting I did last time, I tried out the freezer paper stencil method. (Mostly because my screenprints kind of cracked in storage and are now useless.) And ohmygosh, even though cutting out all those little bits was kind of tedious, this worked SO much better than the screenprint! I think the lines came out much cleaner, too.

I also re-made the two hobbit-themed bibs I did last time, except I also did the stencil for this instead of what I had to resort to with the previous set, which was re-painting the letters with a tiny paintbrush because the stamps didn’t work. Since I’m calling the kiddo “Hobbit” anyway, it fits, right?

I also did a couple sci-fi type ones, though these were much easier thanks to the fabric. The TARDIS one is leftover fabric from my Cooper bag lining, and the Star Wars one is pieced together from the leftovers of the bibs I made for my friend Julie a couple of years ago. Yay, scrapbusting! Though I had to steal some fabric from my mom’s quilt stash to finish this one off.

I will admit that I also printed a Firefly-related stencil, but then opted not to actually cut and paint that one yet. Because since it said “I aim to misbehave”, I figured that would be better for a t-shirt when Hobbit is mobile. Or a toddler. Probably the latter. I know these probably read as “boy” colors for the most part, but I figure girls can like blue and Star Wars and Doctor Who too! I do!

Aside from the Star Wars bib, which has more of the darker blue print fabric on the back, the rest are backed with flannel like I usually do. I also inserted another layer this time, because my mom suggested that it might help keep stuff from soaking through the two layers of cotton too quickly. So I have a layer of polyurethane laminate inside each of these. 

Going a little different for the canine photobomb today. I’ve been trying not to go crazy buying toys and stuff–ok, I’ve also been having to talk Doug out of a lot of these–but we couldn’t resist this stuffed Pluto that we found on Friday because it was on sale and it’s soooo soft. I finished the Star Wars bib first, and Doug put it on Pluto and has left it on ever since. I told him I needed it back for these photos, and he said that was fine as long as I left the bib on Pluto. So I’m doing this one for you, Doug!

I will be making a few more bibs, because I promised Doug I’d also do some hockey-related ones. My mom’s also made a bunch already, too, so I should be very well-stocked on these!

2014’s top 5, part 3: Reflections and Goals

 

Finishing up my series today, with what I’ve learned this year and what I’d like to accomplish next year.

Reflections: 
1. I am not the fastest of makers. This is especially true when it comes to knitting, but it’s true for sewing as well. I looked back at last year’s reflections, and this was actually the first thing on my list then, too! I think the difference this year is that I’m more ok with it. Looking at my top 5 makes for this year, aside from the Tiramisu dress, everything on there was projects that required more thought and detail– welt pockets, underlinings, linings, bound seams, etc. But they ended up fitting really well and getting a lot of use. Yes, I know two of them are coats, but still.

2. That being said, I’ve also learned that I really like having a quick “palate-cleanser” project between the more detailed stuff. Usually some kind of knit project.

3. I feel like I’ve kind of rediscovered how much fun refashioning clothes can be this year. I didn’t really do any last year, but I’ve definitely picked up on that more this year. I’ve ended up wearing these zipper leg jeans quite a bit, as well as my Amy Pond shirt. (Generally minus the tally marks, though.) I’ve definitely been doing more of that lately, since I’m literally running out of things to wear! So I’ve been maternifying unwanted pants. Since one pair I’d had since college wasn’t fitting so great anymore anyway, and the others were pants that my mom was getting rid of, it’s been gratifying to be able to get some much-needed maternity pants into my wardrobe for just the cost of a half-yard of black knit.

4. The Wardrobe Architect project was really an invaluable process for me to go through. Even though I was trying to buy less fabric overall anyway, and I’m pretty sure I succeeded, I feel like what I bought will mostly fit in well with my existing wardrobe. It’s also easier to weed out some of the new patterns now, since I have a better idea of what I actually like the look of on me. Of course, this is all subject to change now, since I also have no idea what sort of a waistline I’ll have when this whole pregnancy thing is over!

5. I’ve actually developed some self-control on adding to the stashes. Though I sort of fell off the wagon at actually tracking pieces of stash used up before buying more, as stated in my Stash Diet pledge, I did a good job of sticking to my plan! Aside from pieces of fabric that my mom gave me because she didn’t want them, almost everything I bought this entire year fell into one of three categories: a) Fabric I bought on vacation, b) Fabric I bought because I needed it for a specific project and I literally did not have anything else that would work (i.e. Thinsulate for my coat, yellow knit for the minion costume, etc) c) Stuff I would categorize as the “extenuating life circumstances” exception–mainly buying a few pieces specifically to make things for the baby, or the 3 things I’ve bought specifically for maternity clothes. I also didn’t buy much yarn at all this year–I think the one skein I bought in Paris may have been it–and I didn’t really buy many new patterns this year, either. Maybe 6 total, and 3 of those were ones I won in a Pattern Review drawing because my Robson coat randomly got picked when they were highlighting Sewaholic. So yay me?

Maybe not. I just looked at the numbers, and I actually added 10 more yards to the fabric stash than I started with at the beginning of the year! But it does look like I used about 70 yards overall this year, and I’m already in the process of using up those baby-related fabrics. So not too bad.

Goals:
If you had asked me this three months ago, I probably would have said “learn to make bras and/or undies”. I don’t think that’s going to be happening this year, lol! Especially the former. So here’s what I think will be the best things for me to focus on for 2015…

1. Finish a capsule wardrobe that will get me through the first half of the year. I’ve quietly been working on this anyway, between my most recent makes and things I’ve bought. I’m attempting to use the Wardrobe Architect principles for this, and I do have a definite palette emerging. But I definitely need more clothes, since I didn’t have too many things in my wardrobe already to get me started. That’s definitely a downside to favoring styles that are more fitted at the waist! So once I sort out what I need to survive/see if I get any fabric for Christmas (a safe bet, knowing my mom), I’m going to see if I can sort out a decent plan of attack.

2. On a related note, I need to work on my pattern hacking skills. I’ve noticed that there really aren’t that many good maternity-specific patterns out there. I have managed to acquire Megan Nielsen’s wrap top pattern, also this pattern that can double as a maternity and a nursing top. The latter sounds like a really good use of my precious sewing time. But aside from that, I really haven’t found anything that looks interesting to me, so I guess I’ll have to create my own. I’ve got my Renfrew hack to keep tweaking, and I did pull out several other patterns from my stash that looks like they might be useable for this purpose. If I can figure out how to do a couple of other things that will be good for both pregnancy and nursing, great.

3. Get as much sewing for “Hobbit” (what I’ve been calling the baby while we don’t know the gender) done as possible, before June. Obviously, though I may sew a few outfits, I’m not going to make every little piece of clothing. They’ll get too small too fast. But I will need to do some things like curtains for the nursery, and I have some bibs that I’m already working on (which will hopefully be done by the end of December, since I’m using them for The Monthly Stitch’s current theme). I have a piece of printed suedecloth that has stumped me for a couple of years on what to use it for, but I think it would make an excellent gender-neutral diaper bag. And my mom and I are planning on working together over the winter to make cloth diapers. I know it’ll be a lot of laundry, but it’s cheaper to make cloth diapers than buy them, and it’ll definitely be cheaper in the long run than buying all disposables. More money saved means more money to spend on fabric, right? I still need to get most of the supplies for that, but I did get some of the waterproof outer fabric already. Because there was one yard left on the website and it has TARDISes on it. Seriously. I couldn’t pass it up.

4. Since basically everything I’m going to be able to sew for myself for awhile is knits anyway, I might as well work on things like finishing techniques and getting my serger tension right. Right?

5. I think probably the biggest goal for after Hobbit comes will be finding time to make things. I know it’ll be a challenge, and probably impossible for at least the first month while I’m a sleep-deprived zombie cow. (Not the best time to work on a hobby that involves sharp cutting/pinning implements, I’m guessing.) And I do also need to prioritize music time, since I do plan to continue teaching lessons. I’ve been following Cindy’s blog with a lot of interest lately, given that she recently had a baby herself, and I think what jumped out at me the most is the idea of doing one thing a day that lasts, since so much of caring for a newborn is laundry and feeding and changing over and over again. Practicing music can also feel repetitive and like it’s never done, since you spend so much time working on the same passage or the same piece for days or weeks in a row. So hopefully I can find a way to make that happen. Even if it’s just sewing one seam, or knitting one row, or sticking just one picture in a photo pocket. I guess it’s a good thing I’ve gotten more ok with being slow, right?

2014’s top 5 Highlights

Continuing with the lists… I was originally intending to lump the last 3 topics into one post, but this particular category ended up being pretty wordy. So I’ll spare you the mega-post.

The new category this year is “Highlights”, which is pretty much anything not sewing-related going on in our lives. I don’t know about you, but sometimes I find it hard to share life stuff on here, mostly for fear that I’ll bore people. So this seems like a pretty good way to keep it real! (Of course, I have actually talked about some of this stuff on here…oh well.)

1. Travel. This was a really good year for that, and I’m really enjoying that I can say that I went fabric shopping in both New York and Paris this year! And there was also my girls’ geekout weekend in Atlanta for DragonCon. Aside from those three trips, Doug and I took a day trip down to Washington, D.C. for our first anniversary, which was also a lot of fun, and I also got to spend a day hanging out with some of my cousins down at the Delaware beaches. That’s been a tradition since I was a kid, and I’m glad I found some time to go down this year, even though I wasn’t able to stay overnight at all this time. (The picture is me and Doug at the Eiffel Tower, because why not?)

2. I got a piano this year! Both of my grandmothers have been trying to downsize their belongings recently, because it’s getting difficult for them to live on their own since both of my grandfathers passed away in 2013. So one of the big things going on in my family right now is that my parents are building a new house, and both of my grandmothers will be moving in with them in the spring. My mom’s mom had two pianos, so she asked me if I wanted one. She actually gave me the bigger one! So this is a baby grand that my great-grandfather originally purchased in 1928. It’s horrendously out of tune, which I’ll need to remedy at some point, but I like the family history behind it, and it’s been fun brushing up on my other instrument. I took piano lessons for about 7 years when I was a kid, but my parents didn’t want us overloaded with too many extracurriculars, so once I got to 7th grade, they asked me to choose between continuing with the piano or the flute, which I’d been playing for about 3 years by then, for my music lessons. Obviously, I picked the flute, though I still played the keyboard at home for fun when I could, and I also had to take one semester of basic piano as part of my music degree. (Which, since I already knew how to play scales and stuff, I basically spent learning the “Linus and Lucy” song from Charlie Brown specials. The professor didn’t care as long as we tested well.) The other thing connected to this is that I’m actually teaching one beginner piano student now at a local school, in addition to the flute. So in the long run, this could be a very good thing for my music teaching career.

3. In the category of non-sewing/knitting hobbies that I don’t talk about on here much, I am still scrapbooking. The Project Life system has turned out to be a really good fit for me–I can save photos without feeling like I have to make a layout for everything, and the pockets make it really easy to finish pages quickly. I still do “real” scrapbook pages from time to time, usually for bigger events. And I still use my older supplies, usually in the form of cutting down big pieces of paper to make cards when I don’t have a color I want. But aside from still needing to write in a few notes and paste down a few pictures, I’m basically done with everything from the wedding to our first anniversary. And I already have some stuff in an album for year 2 as well. That’s a nice feeling.

4. Meeting writers. As if I didn’t have enough to do to keep myself busy, I’ve always loved to read. And I got to meet two of my favorite living authors this year! A couple of friends and I went to see Brandon Sanderson at a quasi-local bookstore signing, and I briefly got to meet Jim Butcher when he was signing books at DragonCon. (I was wearing my Belle costume at the time, and when he saw me next in line, he sang one of the lines from her intro song: “Look there she goes, that girl is so peculiar…” So that’s a fun story.) One of the friends I went to Atlanta with is a published author herself, and she introduced us to another writer friend, Diana Peterfreund. I bought two of her books and read one on the plane on the way home from Atlanta. I have yet to read the second, but I quite enjoyed the one I read, so I’m sure I’ll get to it before too long.

5. Family stuff. Being able to say I’ve been married for a year was pretty exciting for me, since I wasn’t sure I’d ever get married in the first place. And, of course, what’s been mostly occupying my brain lately is being pregnant with our first child! (And all the nausea that goes along with it, which is sadly still going on. I thought the second trimester was supposed to be better!) I’m sure this will be occupying a LOT more of my attention for 2015.

What about you? Anything exciting going on for you this year?

2014’s top 5 hits and misses

Time for the Top 5 lists, as hosted by the fabulous Gillian! I’m going to start off with hits and misses today.

Top 5 Hits
Looking back over my posts this year, I guess this was the year of pants, coats and dresses.

1. The Thurlow Trousers– all 4 pairs of them I made this year. I’m just showing the grey pair here, since they show up in photos the best. Along with the brown test pair I made in 2013, these got a ton of wear during the cooler months this year. And unlike most of my jeans, I was able to wear these pretty much all the way through the first trimester–it was just last week that I had to resort to safety-pinning them closed rather than buttoning them. So I’m feeling hopeful that, even though I’ll have to retire them for the remainder of this winter, maybe I can pull them out again next fall.

2. The Robson coat. I love the color, and I’m quite happy with the inside finishing. I will confess I need to do a tiny bit of repair on one of the pocket flaps where the stitching has come out, but aside from that, everything’s holding up nicely. I actually took this with me to Paris and ended up wearing it pretty much constantly, and it was the perfect added layer. Also, dragon buttons!

3.  The teacup Cambie. I loooove the print on this dress, and I have to admit that this is probably the dress that I’m most nervous won’t fit again post-pregnancy. Here’s hoping, because I really feel like this dress deserves more wearing than I was able to give it in one season!

4. The Tiramisu maxi-dress. This one did get quite a bit of wear over the summer, since it’s a little more casual of a dress than the Cambie, and that makes it easy to wear for teaching and such. This one did adapt very nicely to the longer skirt, and I’m glad I got a chance to try this hack out!

5. Even though it did take forever to make, I’m going to have to say the peacoat. The time I spent on the tailoring seems to have been well worth it so far, as was the investment in the Thinsulate. It’s much less stiff to wear than the old one, and so far, it seems to be keeping me warm.

Top 5 Misses: 
Not all of these are necessarily sewing projects, or even entire sewing projects. But still…

1. The daisy Sorbetto. It’s not so much that this project was a fail, as that I just haven’t worn it much. I pretty much have this one skirt that it works with and that’s it. Plus it got cold pretty quickly after I made it, and, well…you know, all my clothes starting to not fit. I’ll probably pull it out again sometime, though I doubt I’ll get much wear from it next summer, as it’s not the most nursing-friendly top.

2. My jeans hardware installation skills. I think I would have gotten a lot more use out of the skinny jeans earlier in the fall, if the button hadn’t started to get loose after one wash. My dad used some of his epoxy-type stuff to ensure that it wasn’t going anywhere, and that’s worked. But it’s also made the inside waistband really scratchy right behind the button. I managed a quick fix for awhile by just sticking a band-aid behind the button, but I need to stitch a patch over it for a more permanent solution. I just never got to it, and now that those jeans won’t fit me for awhile anyway, my motivation to do so has been quite low.

3. This hat. I think it would have been better for me if it had been about an inch longer. It barely covered my ears at all, and that bugged me to no end. I ended up giving it to my mom, since it fit her much better. I guess I have a big head or something?

4. The Tauriel costume, which I attempted to make for the Sewcialists’ “March of the Shieldmaidens” sewalong. A combination of bad choice of fabric and less-than-stellar pattern alterations left this looking pretty awful. And though I love making costumes, I wasn’t having much fun with it, and was just getting stressed at how many more things I’d need to make for DragonCon vs. how long this was taking. So I ended up throwing it out and wearing my old Eowyn costume instead. Which was probably for the best.

5. Honestly, I think the biggest miss for me this year, or at least the last couple of months, has just been sewing time. It’s not that I didn’t want to, or even that I didn’t have any free time in which to do so. It’s just that my “morning” sickness ended up being so bloody awful and I just didn’t have the physical stamina to do it as much as I would have liked.

So what’s your favorite thing(s) that you’ve made this year? Anything you wish had gone better?

The slowest refashion I’ve ever made

I mentioned in my FESA post that I had finally finished a knitting project, and here it is!

This is the Roheline cardigan, as modeled by the floor. I tried to get a good picture of it on me, but I was completely unable to avoid the canine photobombs today. Plus the sky is about the same color as this sweater right now, and that really doesn’t help on the lighting front! Oh well, you can see the drop stitch detail better this way anyway.

I call it the slowest refashion, because the yarn is actually recycled! Several years ago, I bought three sweaters from the thrift store, as a cheap way to experiment with how my skin would react to some different animal fibers/percentages of wool.

I ended up tossing the yarn from #2, since it unraveled into a gross tangle of cheap acrylic and just enough wool to annoy me. I still have the yarn from #3 and love the colors, but I’m leaning towards tossing that one as well, since I suspect that even a measly 8% wool is going to be too much for me. So this all came from sweater #1. It’s a mostly cotton/acrylic/viscose blend, with a little bit of rabbit hair. And I guess I’m ok with rabbit, because this one didn’t bother me to knit with at all!


Making this was definitely a learning experience. I already knew how to do drop stitch, and had experimented quite unsuccessfully with short rows in a failed sweater attempt before. But I did finally learn how to do them properly on this. I had to learn Kitschener stitch for the underarms. I also taught myself how to do “magic loop” knitting so I could do both sleeves at the same time, which was mostly successful. I guess I still need to work on that, because I was unfortunately left with this obvious line down the sleeves where I was jumping between the two circulars and the stitches are a bit looser/sometimes look like I left holes. Is that normal? I did sort of try to block this when I finished, meaning I basically just dumped it in the sink, ran some water over it and squished it around, and let it dry. I know the yarns I can generally work with don’t block as nicely as wool-based ones, but I guess I should try actually washing this for real and letting it dry to see if I can smooth that out some more.

For the most part, I knitted this straight off the pattern, since I frankly don’t really have the knowledge to add extra shaping to knitting yet. But I did add a little extra length to the sleeves, about an inch, which I think was a good move. It’s nice to have my wrists completely covered when it’s cold outside!

And here’s my attempt to get it as an outfit photo. This was seriously the best out of the multiple tries. Crosby really wanted to model today, I guess! Considering how long it took me to knit this sweater (a full 15 months!), and current events in my life, I am SO glad that I decided to do a cardigan for my second sweater, so I can actually wear it this winter!

I’m in a weird place right now, wardrobe-wise. I’m pretty firmly in the camp of having to wear maternity stuff on my legs already, since the waistbands of everything else are just getting too uncomfortably tight. But I’m still able to fit into my regular tops very well, as long as I’m ok with the “I ate one too many cookies” look. (Just minus the fun of actually getting to eat the cookies, sadly, since I’m still waiting for that nausea to go away.) So this is maternity leggings (from Old Navy) and a maternity denim skirt (from Goodwill) with my regular purple Sadie tank. I’m slowly in the process of trying to assemble a wardrobe that will be as mix-and-match as possible, but I think that will have to be a separate post for later. As of now, I have a lot of holes to fill. But since this cardigan fits very nicely with the palette that’s emerging, at least I have one layer to work with.

one day I’ll be part of your world

First off, thanks for all the kind words on my last post, both on here and Twitter! It’s been hard to keep things quiet, and while quite a few of my friends and family have known already, it’s nice to have the support of my sewing friends as well. 🙂 Of course, the baby is also the reason I could only show a preview of my Sew Disney project, and why the Gabriola skirt I’d originally planned wasn’t going to work! It’s a shame, because I did have enough fabric to do so, but non-stretchy waistbands don’t make sense right now since I have no idea how my sizing will end up when this is all over. Or if it would even fit now, tbh.

So here’s my whole outfit, with a little help from Malkin–and my hair even looks slightly red here! I wasn’t sure if it would, since it’s very cloudy here today. As I said before, the top is a Renfrew, though I did make a few additional modifications that I hadn’t mentioned before. I added a little extra width to the front (about 1/2″ total, I think), and I added some length–more in the front than the back, so I could do a little ruching on the side. I also left the bottom band off, simply because I didn’t have enough fabric left to cut it, even if it had been pieced together! The length looks all right for now, but since I’m sure I’m going to use this pattern to make a couple more tops, I think next time I’m going to add even more length to the front and put the band on anyway, just to accommodate any expansion and hold things in place. I’d definitely like to avoid that baby belly hanging out from underneath my clothes look if I can!

Since the Gabriola was a no-go, I raided my pattern stash for ideas. I picked out an elastic-waist maxi skirt, then realized that the hips were still pretty fitted and that this skirt wouldn’t work for too long as a result, either. So, believe it or not, it was a boxy Burda magazine pattern to the rescue! This is #119 from the June 2010 issue, and it’s literally two rectangles with two drawstrings that tie at the sides. No elastic, even. But I figured that could be a good thing, because then I can tighten and loosen this to fit exactly where needed. I’ll admit the result is a bit bulky around the waistband, but you can’t really tell as much when it’s under the shirt, I think. I did change the pattern slightly by doing a drawstring casing instead of a lining piece at the top, and I also did a French seam finish inside. If this ends up looking like a high-low hem in a few months, I wanted the insides to look good!

Here’s the side view–you can sort of see the ruching, but my hand’s in the way. Now that I’m seeing the top on, I kind of wish that I’d started the black a little bit lower so it wasn’t running directly into the sleeve seam. Oh well.

You can also see that I’m not really showing much, if at all, at this point. I’m sure that will change soon, though. It’s been very hard to wrap my head around the fact that I’ve lost a few pounds overall, due to the nausea and the very limited, bland diet I’ve been eating to try to get through the days, and yet I’m still having trouble with my pants fitting! For the record, my Thurlow pants have fared much better than most of my thrift store jeans, and it’s just been this week that I haven’t been able to button the top anymore. So that does give me hope that they’ll fit again! (I haven’t tried my last pair of jeans, because I need to do a little repair on the waistband before I can wear them. But honestly, I’ve already worn maternity jeans a few times and they stayed up, so I may not bother trying.)

Stashbusting totals:
Top: about 2 yards (1 of the ivory jersey, and 1 of the black interlock left over from the summer’s black tank dress. Both pieces completely used up, hurrah!)
Skirt: 2 1/4 yards of the teal. I have about 2 3/4 yards left, which I’ll need to come up with a use for at some point. (I already bought a similar-colored short-sleeved maternity top on clearance at Target, so that option is out.)

And I’ll leave you today with an outtake–  I’ve got the standard Disney princess animal companion, and we can just pretend his name is Max for this picture, even if he is the wrong breed. But apparently Ursula’s spell messed up, because this mermaid only has one foot!

FESA report card, and other news

Now that it’s December, and the Fall Essentials Sew-along is over for another year, let’s see how I did…

Well, I didn’t do great. I had seven things on my original list. Very conservative of me, I thought!

1. Espresso leggings (Fashionable Foundations): didn’t get to them.

2. Roheline cardigan (Chic Chemises): The knitting part of this one is done– I barely finished in time, as I wove in the rest of the ends and sewed up the underarms on the 30th. I do still need to add buttons, but first I need to find some. The buttonholes ended up being a lot smaller than I expected, and I somehow didn’t buy enough of the original buttons I purchased for this. Either that, or I lost a pack. So I need to find some small enough to fit through those tiny one-stitch buttonholes. Not that I’m likely to button this much, but oh well. Pictures to come.

3. Darling Ranges dress (Fabulous Frocks): My original plan of sewing this for The Monthly Stitch’s Frocktober got scrapped when it became apparent that my peacoat would have to be a higher priority. Maybe next fall?

4. The peacoat (Baby It’s Cold Outside): I did finish this! And since I’ve already talked about why it was such a time-suck, I’ll leave it at that.

5. The Scraptember skirt: I worked on it, but didn’t finish it. In my defense, Julia’s had it in her possession for awhile to figure out what she wanted to do about another tier, so I haven’t actually had access to it.

6. A scarf: I knitted part of this while I was on vacation. And haven’t touched it since, so I could concentrate on my sweater.

7. The Disney sewalong project: Which would fall under Chic Chemises and Fashionable Foundations. You know I already finished the shirt, and I did also finish the skirt last week. I have a little extra time tomorrow, so hopefully I can get some pictures of the outfit then.

So, not my most productive period of sewing. But once again, life happened while I was busy making other plans…the truth is, there is a reason why my sewing mojo has been so low during the past couple of months, and it’s not just all of the tailoring involved in that coat. Some of you whom I chat with on Twitter may remember me mentioning some major jet lag and nausea when I got back from my trip in September. Well, turns out it wasn’t jet lag…I’ve also been busy over the last couple of months with making a tiny human! My “morning sickness” has really been 24-7 nausea for about 6-7 weeks straight now. So most of the time, I’ve felt too crappy after work to do much of anything other than sit in front of the tv, and sometimes knit. It really was pure stubbornness that enabled me to finish that coat!

Thankfully, I’m just about at the second trimester, currently on week 12, and hopefully that means I’ll stop feeling constantly sick soon. (Oh please oh please…) And yes, there is going to be some baby-centric sewing going on here, but I seriously need some more maternity clothes, so I’ll still be making stuff for me as well, I promise! Finding RTW maternity clothes that aren’t in boring colors or fit properly in places that aren’t supposed to change that much–i.e. my shoulders and the length of my arms–is really hard, you guys!