Sewing

Hi everyone,

I thought it was time for another update on the belly side of things. ♥ Its 38weeks now, well, 38 weeks and 3 days and my belly has grown exponentially, or at least I feel like it has anyway.

I am getting frustrated that I am soo slow. Trips up and down the stairs are taking waay too long for my liking!

My belly button has well and truly popped out. It is more of a doorbell now. Ding Dong!

I had another midwife appointment yesterday. Baby is three fifths engaged, so it’s nearly time!! I’ve been bouncing on my birthing ball like a maniac, trying to coax the little monkey to move down a little further.

Wednesday was a day full of Braxton Hicks, which was really exciting, but alas, yesterday – nothing. Not even a twinge! sigh! Nevermind, it will come in it’s own good time.

I’ve been nesting. ♥ Nesting, nesting, nesting! The nursery is coming long nicely. Here’s some piccys. It was fun building the cot together, and I got goosebumps when I was putting the freshly laundered sheets on the bed. It was so amazing to think that any day now we could have a little baby in there…I wonder what he/ she will look like?….♥

Craig has been nesting too. But in a manly way of course! He put shelves in the cupboard, put insulation in the loft, carpeted the laundry area, and built up the bookcase you can see in the picture. He no sooner had it built when I was fussing around putting all the bits and pieces on the shelves. Its just too exciting!

And see those little baskets? One is for hats and gloves, one is for bibs and the third one is for socks – so I decided to make little tags with my cuttlebug and nestabilities, and pin it to the basket with little mini safety pins and a little ribbon! I just drew the images on myself with a drawing pen, and used markers to colour them in. Cuteness!

I took a trip to the fabric shop with the intention to make curtains and a bedding set for baby’s room, because they are really quite expensive in the shops. Little did i know that fabric is quite expensive anyway. Whoops! Never mind. I just took that as motivation to make a cute set to make the perfect nursery. Here’s some of the final piccys.

It took me AGES to do the curtains. Only because it meant using larger pieces of fabric and im not that mobile at the moment, so there was a lot of standing up and sitting down and stretching out. I’m really pleased with them though. Yes, i did design them myself, and no, i didn’t follow a pattern – i just made it up in my head as I went along. All the more reason i’m really chuffed with them me thinks! Miya was very helpful at times: sitting on the fabric, chasing the tape measure and generally getting the the way. Such a cutie! What will she think when this baby gets here!

The duvet took me just a few hours – I made it in an evening because I was feeling really motivated in seeing the nursery get another step closer to completion. ♥

I also bought one of these vinyl stickers for the wall, but it hasn’t arrived yet. Grr! I wonder if it will arrive before baby gets here? I’ve ordered a white tree with red blossoms, and i’m going to stick it onto the blue wall. I think it will bring the whole room together. I also have some photo frame to go on the opposite wall, but i’ll probably wait until baby gets here before i put them up – that way i can put baby photos in them, and maybe embellish with pinks or blues, if you know what i mean!

Although impatience is kicking in, I’m trying to make the most of my time at home. Long lie ins, crafting a little bit here and there, and taking little trips to the shops or to see friends.

Yesterday, I spent the afternoon with the talented Lindsey Jones for a preggy photo shoot. Oh my goodness, I never thought it would be so much fun. It’s exciting to be on the other side of the camera for a change. We took photos inside and outside and I really can’t wait to see the final piccys. Here’s a sneak peek that she sent me last night – how cool does that look!!! oh geez, i seriously want to break into her house and steal her memory cards just to see them all, but on second thoughts i don’t think i could subtly slip through a window in my current condition! ♥

And as for this weekend…I don’t care how pregnant I am, I am not going to miss this! ‘Make it!’, a craft fair in Farnborough.

Hubby is bringing me as a treat, and to make sure that if all the walking around stalls and excitement gets baby going, he can look after me. I’ve just told him that I really only need him to carry all my purchases! Heehee!
If you are going to Make It! please let me know, maybe we could meet up for a coffee (which is really a code word for a bottle of water and a huge muffin for me!)

I’m off to the craft room now…wooohoo!
x

You may have noticed from my baby shower photos that there was a garland hanging in the background. I always love the look of a banner draped across a room adding a pop of whimsy and beauty.

In preparation for the baby shower, I picked up some super cute spotty napkins and matching cupcake toppers. Because we still don’t know if its a girl or a boy, I didn’t want to go down a traditional blue or pink route, so the bright polka dots certainly hit the spot.

I had originally planned to make a garland out of scrapbook supplies, but then I spied a tablecloth in the same product range. It was a weird material to be honest – it wasn’t papery thin, but it wasn’t fabric either, but it lay somewhere in between. It had a linen texture on top and a soft, almost cottony feeling underneath. Suddenly it jumped into my shopping basket begging to be repurposed into something fun.

So today I am going to share with you a tutorial on how I converted this humble tablecloth into a fun and quirky banner. What’s more the tablecloth cost £2.99 and it converted into 13 metres of bunting. WOW!

This is the the tablecloth straight out of the packet, so you can see that it came folded up as you would expect.

I took a piece of scrap cardboard and cut out a triangular shape to act as my template. I then folded the tablecloth in a concertina style, making sure the folds were as tall as the triangular template. I have to say this bit was the trickiest part, because when the tablecloth was opened flat it seemed massive and I didn’t want to crease it more than necessary.

Starting at one end, I cut through all the layers of the paper using the triangle as a template. I could have used a pencil to mark the lines but i chose not to – i just cut it roughly not really worrying too much about them all being perfect.

Then I took my template, flipped it over and moved it along to cut out the next triangle of paper. I continued all the way along until I ran out of paper.

When I was finished all the cuts, some of the banner pieces were cut along a fold so they were joined in the middle creating a diamond shape, but other banner pieces were not cut along a fold, so they were simply a triangle.

I separated all the diamonds from the triangles and decided to work with the single, triangular pieces first. I lay each pair face to face (spotty sides together) and then ran one at a time through the sewing machine in one continuous line.

Then I folded the banner pieces the right way around. Because I had sewn them face to face, the stitching was hidden to they now look exactly the same as the other pieces (but just slightly smaller)

Then I ran the strip through the sewing machine one again, this time about 1cm from the top. My original plan was to thread a piece of string through the top section, but in the end the paper was so light that the banner could be held up with simply using the thread used to sew it all together.

Look how pretty they look all together. For the diamond pieces, I just folded them so they were the right way round and then ran them through the sewing machine in a long strip, once again about 1 cm from the edge.

I can’t tell you how super easy this was to do, and I can hardly believe that I got almost 13 meters of bunting out of one tablecloth. The final result was definitely worth the 10 minutes of play at my sewing machine, and i will always have the bunting to use over and over again. The only thing I need to remember is that although it looks like fabric, it really is paper, so best not hang it outside!

I hope you have fun trying this out for yourself.