Making Things

I have been working (intermittently) on putting together things for our impending arrival (ZOMG, YOU GUYS, I'M GOING TO HAVE FOUR KIDS), and I wanted to share some of them with you.

First off, we've significantly beefed up our cloth diaper collection in recent weeks so that Mr. Baby Case will have a clean, dry, environmentally-friendly bum. I'm really proud of the diapers I've found; the majority of them have been used, and thus discounted drastically from their original prices, but in fabulous condition. Plus Janie has been sending Juniper's pre-folds as she's grown out of them, so we have a great variety of diapers.

To complement the cloth diapers, I put together tons and tons of cloth wipes. I had several girly-girl receiving blankets that I hadn't really liked when I used them with King Peter (they were too small and shaped strangely), so I cut them up into double-sided wipes and zig-zag stitched around the edges. I got probably 40 wipes out of 3 or 4 blankets. This was leaps and bounds cheaper than buying them at the cloth diaper store or from other people with sewing machiens on Etsy.

I have a spray bottle on hand and will be using a mixture of water, tea tree oil, and lavender oil to clean baby's bottom. These wipes will simply go in the wet bag with our diapers and get washed up at the same time.

Another disposable I wanted to reduce my use of this time around was nursing pads. I recognize that disposable nursing pads are a gift and a wonder to Super Lactating Women everywhere (like myself--I could have produced enough milk for an extra kid when I had the twins), and I will probably continue to buy boxes of nursing pads on occasion, particularly for when I'm in public and don't want to risk any leaking. But for nighttime and at-home use, I sewed up several pairs of nursing pads, again using scraps of old receiving blanket and my trusty zig-zag stitch. I took the time to make the pads contoured, since breasts aren't, you know, flat, and to my nighttime pads (like the pink pair on the right) I added an extra layer of cut-up microfiber diaper doubler for more absorbency.

I'd like to take this moment to say that I really, really wish my serger were in working condition. It needs a part and some work, the cost of which is out of our price range right now, and I'm kind of irritated by this. Because a serger? Would make my life so easy. I've decided that those people who say, "Oh, you don't need a serger for this project! Just use a zig-zag stitch!" are people who are in possession of sergers themselves. I'm not hating on them, I'm just extraordinarily jealous.

Anyway! I've put together a couple bibs and a hat or two, but what I'd really like to show you a peak of is the baby's quilt, which I've finally gotten around to starting:

That picture was taken last week, and I'm actually at the point where everything is pieced together, sandwiched, pinned, and ready to be quilted. Now I just need to find a nice block of kid-free time (ha!) to do the actual quilting. It's a very simple, approachable pattern, and I'm very happy with how all of the fabrics are playing together.

The owls are still pretty adorably grumpy.

In addition, I had enough extra fabric to piece together a small car seat quilt, too. This quilt is crib-sized, which means it's pretty large for a baby, and I realized I didn't have anything small to throw on him in the car seat. I hate having random scraps of fabric just sitting around in my small sewing room, where space is at a premium, so this turned out to be a perfect solution for all the leftover fabric. I'll be sure to show you that when it's done.

Otherwise, my time is spent herding children, cleaning up their messes, and feeling extraordinarily pregnant. All in all, a great start to what is definitely going to be a great fall.