….I do crafty things. I make things and build things. I am so bad at it that typical projects end up taking twice or three times as long as they take other people. This proves to be a good (if not frustrating) distraction from whatever stresses me.

Here’s what I’ve been working on lately:

After spending a fortune on tiny “real” diapers to hold Baby Alive’s “real” pee and poop (seriously that baby pees every 15 minutes! It’s a commercialistic SCAM!!), I said no more feeding the baby or no more diapers. Choose. Then I got a grip and offered to sew up some cloth diapers that could be washable and reusable and Noah was ecstatic! He absolutely loves the idea of washable diapers. He has asked me to make some in a wide variety of fabrics - haha. My fashionista! I stuck with what I already had in the house. Sorry Baby Alive, it’s blue fleece for you!

I got a good deal on some nice bottomweight fabric and decided to sew up a Mae Mei Tai or three. This is the khaki version. The panels are interchangeable so I have about six awesome panels in various styles and colors. The headrest folds up or down (see photos). I LOVE the waist padding. I’m going to make a black one and a brown one as well. I’m playing around with the strap angles. Tony likes the strap angles on this one but I think they aren’t upright enough. I am also going to add Velcro to the top of the panel instead of just the sides because I don’t like the gaping.

That makes it sound like I just whipped it up, right? Haha. Actually it took me FOREVER to cut out the fabric and I screwed it up once. And then I screwed up the sewing at least a half dozen times and had to rip stitches out. There are still little things I messed up but I decided it was good enough for a first. But it took me all day and all night just to finish this one carrier. I think the next two will take a fraction of the time but, haha, this is ME we are talking about.

Meanwhile I have been obsessing over these adorable flower hats sold at boutiques and on eBay, inspired by Miss Lucy, see here. I love them  so I decided to crochet up my own hat and make my own version. Except, haha….

I don’t actually know how to crochet.

I have tried but I am a crochet failure. I found a hat pattern I loved and used some yarn I already had and tried about a dozen times before I finally posted for help to a message board and some incredibly nice person rewrote the entire pattern for me in terms I could understand. A few hours later, I had finished the hat (meant for a toddler-sized head). I am eager to make a few more now that I know what I’m doing. I’m going to size the next one for Addison and try to shrink this one or add some ribbon around the brim so it fits her better. I have some flowers I am going to attach today but I can’t find THE flowers they use to make the hats I love so I’m hacking it, like usual, and coming up with something on my own. I’m not happy with what I’ve come up with but hopefully it will work out.

Last but not least I am working on sewing up this outfit for Addison (click on the picture to see a better version). I LOVE Ottobre Design magazine. However, remember, I am just not good at this stuff. So throw in European sizing which means metric conversions, lack of seam allowances added to the pattern and the need to transfer each pattern piece onto paper first and ARGH! Plus also? This outfit starts at a size 86 which for those of you not in the know about European sizing, is approximately a size 2T. So, haha, I also get to try to scale down each pattern piece to fit Addison who is two sizes smaller! Wheee!!! This is hysterical. I can not even tell you how many times I will screw this up before I get it to a wearable state, if at all. It should keep me VERY busy!!!!!!

This entry was posted on Friday, January 19th, 2007 at 12:51 pm and is filed under Crafty. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.