‘Maternity’ Posts

Scrapbooking {Breastfeeding}

October 12th, 2012

We’re in Melbourne at the moment, enjoy this post of a scrapbooking layout I did the other week! -T xo

Warning, this post contains boobs!

 

Breastfeeding has been a pretty special journey for Lior and I. Full of some tough times, but also wonderful times. I didn’t want to include much journalling, as all these photos were from different times. Plus, I am still breastfeeding him, and figure a more reflective, journalling style page will be relevant when we end this journey, not now. Therefore, all I’ve included in these photos is the date each photo was taken.

How nice is this American Crafts thickers? They’re called Garden Cafe, and the colour is custard. BUY them here.

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WIP: Baby Sleeping Bag

October 1st, 2012

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Do you ever put off doing something for so long that it’s lost its use? This is why usually happens to me, but with this project I am determined to get it done on time! It helps that every night I’m reminded it needs to get done!

Lior has a sleeping bag which keeps him warm at nights. But as we move into Spring and then Summer he needs something more light weight. I thought instead of paying $60-$80 for a new grobag I would have a go at making my own.

I told my nana what I was planning, and she gave me an old sheet to use. Perfect!

I’m not really a pattern type person, or a perfectionist, so I’m just using Lior’s current sleeping bag as a rough ‘pattern’ and cutting around it. This is as far as I’ve got so far, and possibly as far as I will get all day, unless I get stuck into it tonight… Wish me luck!

If you sew, do you just trace around things like me, or would you be the one measuring it to make sure it’s the perfect fit?!

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Just a little something I’m working on…

September 4th, 2012

Just in case you think the only thing I do with photos is scrapbook them, here’s a little something I’ve been working on. Each month I take a photo of Lior on one of our quilts, with his name, so that we can see how much he’s grown (you can see them all over at our family blog).

Tutorial coming soon!

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Doily Onesie

May 29th, 2012
Doily onesie- handmade

I saw this mega cute doily onesie on Pinterest the other day, and immediately got a little sad that I didn’t have a daughter to make it for. I sent my heavily pregnant friend Katie a message on facebook requesting that her baby be a girl so I could make it for her instead! Well, she was very kind and DID have a girl, which meant that I could make the doily onesie I saw!

Lets just stop for a minute and appreciate the fact that I actually MADE something I pinned! Woah.

Anyway, this is the little cherub below. Isn’t she devine?! The onesie is a 00, so she still have a while before she can wear it, but I think it will suit her!

The onesie itself was super easy to make, because I just purchased a doily from the opshop (I actually had bought it quite a while ago- they’re one of those things I always buy when I see nice ones!!), and used some embroidery thread to stitch it on. I didn’t want to go crazy with the stitching, but for a baby’s outfit it needed to be pretty secure, so I did three ‘rows’ of stitching- one in each of the main section of doily. So up and down around the very edge, through the middle of the middle section, and then around the top of the inner section. I think it looks best with the doily positioned over one side of the onesie, as opposed to straight in the middle, and this also makes it much easier to do because you don’t have to worry about it being even!

Tilly Brain

P.S: Sorry for the dodgy photo of the onesie- it was a quick iPhone shot before I rushed out the door!

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Progress: Hungry Caterpillar Quilt

January 5th, 2012
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Tomorrow I’m officially 38 weeks pregnant, so I thought I should probably get a wriggle on with bub’s Very Hungry Caterpillar cot quilt. Not that it’s a huge rush I guess, it is Summer here after all, but if I don’t give myself some sort of deadline then I’m unlikely to ever finish it!

Since my last update I spent a morning at my friend Debbie’s and put together the front, wadding and backing. So. Much. Pinning (and not the fun kind)!

I’ve used a really light wadding because a) If I ever put this on the baby in the cot I don’t want it to be super heavy and b) If I put this up on the wall I don’t want it to be super heavy so it falls down. We’re renting (boo!) and have to use those awful sticky wall hooks instead of nailing books into the wall. We could probably ask to put one or two nail hooks up, but seriously, we have quite a few things up already, and that’s without my putting up even a 10th of what we had in our old house.

But back to the quilt… I’m still not 100% sure how I will do all the quilting, so I have just started on the parts I DO know about- some straight lines to ‘steady’ the quilt. I find with the free motion quilting that it’s easy to get gathers etc. so having a few solid lines in key places on the quilt will reduce the likelihood of that happening. I’ve gone around the panel, just inside the striped/spotted border (outside quilt line on diagram below), and also gone around the top and bottom images, in the white part (inside quilt line on diagram below).

Very Hungry Caterpillar Quilt Progress

My plan is to quilt an outline around the shapes in the three images, and continue this pattern out until I get to that inside quilt line, or the dots. I’m not sure if I should quilt it out like a spiral, or quilt out in complete outlines, just getting about a 1/8 bigger each time. Either way the idea is that the images will ‘puff’ out a bit, and the white around them will be really tight from all the stitching.

I’m still undecided what quilting I will do in the dots, and in the border. Perhaps it will look complete with just the images done? I’ll show another update once this has been done, and we might do a little vote on what I should do next! In the mean time, don’t be shy to tell me what you think!
Very Hungry Caterpillar Quilt Progress

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Pregnancy Scrapbook: Weeks 24-27

December 20th, 2011
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Week 24:

This page above might be familiar. It’s almost the same as week 21. I’m going to say that therefore it doesn’t need too much explanation!

pregnancy scrapbook week 21

Week 25:

This week was our wedding anniversary, so I just wanted to show a picture of Luke and I on that day. I used a few random bits and pieces, but used the Simple Stories Baby Steps letters which I’ve used a few times now.

pregnancy scrapbook week 22

Week 26:

This week was also a little different. I had this weird shaped photo, and I had to rack my brain a bit trying to think of a nice way to display it. I had originally cropped it so thin because everything else is really quite pointless and distracting, and I was a little sick of 4×6 photos I’d had for the last few weeks. PLUS I knew the next photo would be a belly shot as well…

So I used the same colour schemes as I had been using, but used a few different embellishments. I’d found that beauty rest accent card when I was rumaging around for some other things, and thought it would be perfect for this week with the body pillow!

pregnancy scrapbook week 23

Week 27:

Ah, another belly shot! This one is a significant page because it’s the beginning of the third trimester. The title for the page is on the photo. If I did this again, I would consider photoshopping all the photos I used so that the title was always on the photo. It’s a REALLY easy way of recording what week it is.

I thought that the ‘You & Me’ accent tag was appropriate here seeing as I was feeling baby so much more now, and really feeling quite pregnant.

 

Notes:

This will be the last pregnancy scrapbook progress post for the year. I’m spreading them out now so that we hopefully finish these posts around the time bubs comes. I’ve been thinking of how I should finish the scrapbook, and I think I want to finish with a photo on the next week, of me holding the baby in the same position that my tummy has been in. And then maybe share a few thoughts on how the first few days/week has been with him/her. What do you think? I’d love some suggestions!

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Pregnancy Scrapbook: Weeks 20-23

December 14th, 2011
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Did you know we have a facebook page!? “Like” it here to join in the conversation, and check out exclusive links to projects, and inspiration!

Week 20:

I quite like this page. This was the week we moved to our new place, and an important milestone because it’s half way through!

I quite like the layered affect on this page. It’s mostly using supplies from a pack of scrap papers I bought one time, and some leftover bits and pieces I had laying around. As you can probably tell, I like tags, and have included one in the layers, and I’ve also used numbers from the Simple Stories Baby Steps collection.

pregnancy scrapbook week 21

Week 21:

I really like this page. I like the green lace pattern above and below the photo, and I love the photoshop title. This is the second side belly shot in the album (I think!), and I’ll be putting a few more of them in now that I’m ‘showing’ a bit more!

I also like how the page next door is similar. The journalling strip is the same width as the photo, and this was just total luck. The piece for journalling is actually the packaging for some cute paper birds I bought. I just chopped off the bottom (which had the branding etc on it), and positioned it on the side so that you could see the nice cut out edges.

Also, here’s a tip- if you make a mistake in the journalling, then just take a small sticker and put it over the top. This sticker is fine by itself in this particular case, because it works in well with the flower pattern. If you were trying to cover up a mistake on a blank piece of card, then you might need to bundle it with a few other pieces.

pregnancy scrapbook week 22

Week 22:

This week we’re back to those cricut letters for the title, and keeping things pretty simple. Like with quite a few of the pages in this album I’ve tried to use up supplies where I only had a few bits left, so this is a bit of a muddle of heaps of different supplies.

pregnancy scrapbook week 23

Week 23:

There’s a quite few aspects of this week’s pages I love. For one, I love the cicrcle theme on the journalling page. The way the doily fits so well behind the journalling flower is just one of those perfect things you can’t plan. To keep with the circular theme I’ve put the journalling AROUND the doily.

I also like the stitching around the photo. Because I’m using both sides of the background paper I just sewed straight onto the photo, and then attached it with my adhesive like I normally do.

Supplies:

Like I say, there’s a bit of a hodge podge of supplies used in this, and that’s okay as long as you’ve got something consistent throughout the scrapbook. My conisisten areas are:

 

Stay tuned in the next few months for some exciting news about a new ebook! Particuarly useful if you’re getting pregnant yourself!

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Progress: Very Hungry Caterpillar Cot Qulit

December 1st, 2011
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As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve made some progress on my hungry caterpillar quilt. Now, it’s either going to be a cot quilt, or a wall hanging. I’ve yet to decided…

I have another Very Hungry Caterpillar panel which will be the alternate.

Very Hungry Caterpillar Cot Quilt Wall Hanging

My mum gave me this set of fat quarter fabrics for my birthday last year (2010), for this very quilt. No I wasn’t pregnant, and no we weren’t trying, but I had bought the panel at the beginning of the year (or even earlier maybe), because I loved it, and well, I was going to have a baby SOMEDAY.

I basically just cut the fat quarters into a few 2 inch strips, joined them all together, then trimmed them into 5 inch strips. I then joined them together where necessary, to make the length, longer. And unpicked some to make the widths shorter.

The corner pieces are from the Very Hungry Caterpillar series- they’re the big foods he eats on the last day. I really love them there, firstly because I think the white around them breaks up the border a bit, and secondly because it enocrporates the last aspect of the book- the foods.

The same piece of fabric had the fruits on it. I used the main bits of the fruit on the singlets, as just added random pieces of fruit appliqued around the side. I’ll quilt over the top of them so they stay in place.

Very Hungry Caterpillar Cot Quilt Wall Hanging

So it’s bascially all finished, I’ve really just got to add the wadding and backing, pin it all together, and then quilt and bind it. I’m not 100% sure how I’ll quilt it yet. I think I would like to quilt around the main shapes (caterpillar, butterfly, leaf) so that they puff out from the quilt. And I might just repeat the outline over and over till I get to the edge of the white space… It’s hard to describe.

I’m not 100% sure about the rest of it though, so if you have any ideas, please share them with me!

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Baby Singlets- Hungry Caterpillar Style!

November 30th, 2011
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For someone who loves crafting, I don’t spend a WHOLE lot of time doing it. Usually it’s because nasty things like the internet suck me in, and I just LOOK at awesome crarfts without doing anything…

And that is the reason why craft nights with friends are so awesome. Because a) you’re with friends, b) you aren’t on the internet and c) you get to actually start/finish some craft projects! Last night I hung out with some friends, Krystal, Tish & Debbie, and we got quite a lot of projects done!

Very Hungry Caterpillar Singlet

I worked on my Very Hungry Caterpillar quilt wall hanging/cot quilt (I’ll show you how it’s progressing tomorrow), and these singlets.

They’re progressive singlets, so Bubs will start with one apple (0000), then move to two pears (000), then three plums (00), four strawberries (0) and five oranges (1). I still have to get some singlets in double zero and one so that I can finish the set, but you get the idea. :-)

Very Hungry Caterpillar Singlet

I just sewed over the edges with my machine. If you like your done ‘properly’ then you’d best button hole the edges. But if you like things a little rustic, like I do, then either rougly machine stitch round, or free motion quilt over it all (I would probably choose the same colour as the fruit if I was going to do that).

Very Hungry Caterpillar Singlet

 

So yes, what do you think? I’m looking forward to January when I get put Bubs is the very first one!

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Pregnancy Scrapbook- Page By Page (3)

November 17th, 2011
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So Tuesday has come and gone, but, just a few days late,  the pregnancy scrapbook is here! *phew*! This week we’re looking at pages 16-19.

Week 16: This week I’ve changed from my regular format of a 4×4 photo, and gone with a full size 4×6 portrait shot. This is the first time I felt like I had a bit of a ’round’ belly, so I’ve tried to replicate that feeling with the papers and embellishments. I’ve used the Cosmo Cricket Odds and Ends ‘Eclectic’ cardstock, and then some fabric shapes which I made into a flower over the side of the picture. Also, in keeping with one of my themes (titles sewn onto the background) I’ve cut this week’s title out of the cricut and sewn it on!

Pregnancy Scrapbook Week 17

Week 17: This week I’ve tried to keep things quite simple. 4×4 photo, with some embellishments (7 Gyspies “Top Ten” stickers, and Crate paper Restoration “Phrases” stickers). Again, this is on a Cosmo Cricket background, just the ‘B side’ of the same ‘Eclectic’ paper.

One of the things I’ve started incorporating into my pages is some vintagy papers. So the journalling side has a piece of an old dictionary, and some old paper on top. The stickers are from the Simple Stories “Life Documented” sticker sheet.

Pregnancy Scrapbook Week 18

Week 18: Again, we’ve got that same background paper (Cosmo Cricket Odds and Ends ‘Eclectic’ cardstock) and a 4×4 photo. I’ve found this to be the PERFECT sized photo for two reasons.

1) This is a 6×6 page album, so the photo fills up a significant space, but leave enough room for embellishments and 2) Most of these photos are instagrams, and I can get them printed at Big W just like my other photos for 10c each. Just make sure you select the option to ‘not crop’, so that it gives you white either side on the 6″ side, and doesn’t chop half your photo away. Also, as a secret third reason, having mostly these SQUARE photos means I can plan the layout ahead, without wondering if it’s a portrait of a landscape shot.

I’ve used a few older supplies for this week including some Webster’s Page ‘Days of the week’ journalling cards, and another old journalling card which I think might be Cosmo Cricket? But I really couldn’t say for sure…

If you’re interested, the font I’m using for most of these diecut titles is “Missed Your Exit” which I downloaded for free from Kevin & Amanda!

Pregnancy Scrapbook Week 19

Week 19: I’m going to tell you a little bit about the photos I chose for this week. The journalling explains that this week I started to feel the baby moving and kicking inside me. So I tried to take a photo of me ‘feeling’ my belly. I think in a pregnancy journal like this it’s nice to have photos that are particularly relevant to differnet things that happening in the week, not just the change in belly size.

I’ve used a lot of stickers from the Basic Grey Curio element stickers on this week. All the embellishments apart from the lace are from that collection.

And THAT my friends is it for another week!

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