The little miss is becoming a bit more demanding of my attention during the day (aka, she’s actually staying awake – sometimes because she has some awful gassiness going on), so I haven’t been doing much sewing the past couple of weeks unless Steve is around to give me a break. She likes the car seat though, so we’ve been venturing out more, so we both can have some peace (more on that in a separate post).
Anywho, I’ve never lived in a 2-story house until we bought our townhouse (I’m not counting the basement in the house I grew up in as a story, even though I lived down there for several months while my bedroom transitioned from little girl to teenager). So the stairs are a complete novelty for me…that is, until Kit came along and we quickly realized trekking up & down for diaper changes is a pain the arse! So we’ve been using the portable changing pad that goes in her diaper bag downstairs. Well, I decided it was too much effort to keep packing that thing up every time we went out, so I decided to make a changing mat for downstairs.
I had some Parisville laminate that Steve had vetoed as the option for covering the ugly 70s country fabric on my grandma’s cedar chest. Actually, I just realized I never blogged a photo of the cedar chest – I used some of the Ruby Star Rising viewfinders. The fabric wasn’t quite wide enough to cover the top, so I did some very careful & clever piecing and managed to keep the pattern continuous. I’m pretty proud of my efforts!
Ok, back to the changing pad. I had some laminate and some extra of the eyedrop print. I used a layer of batting (plus an extra layer for the head), and fused the whole thing to the eyedrop print with fusible fleece. I sewed the 2 pieces right sides together & turned out & top-stitched around the edges. It is impossible to sew laminate without some extra assistance to help the fabric glide under the presser foot. Luckily, I remembered reading somewhere that you can add a piece of scotch tape to the bottom of a normal foot, and that would be enough to make the fabric slide. Sure enough, worked like a dream (and was certainly cheaper than buying a rolling foot)! The size is approximately 12” x 24”.
left: diaper station; right: folded up
I also FINALLY got the top put together for the Parisville Trolls string quilt I had the gals in the One Block Over bee work on for me. Sadly, this is actually only the second completed bee top I’ve managed to put together, even though I have much older bee blocks awaiting my attention. Anyway, because the strings are pieced on a muslin foundation, the top is pretty heavy. I decided to skip the batting for the quilt, and back with a Valerie Wells Del Hi fleece instead. Keeping with my lazy quilter work ethic as of late, I sewed right sides together & turned out, avoiding binding. I’ve top-stitched the edges, and am in a quandary about what to do for quilting. I tried quilting around one of the Cameo girls, and don’t like how it looks on the back. I also tried tying some of the X intersections where the strings meet up. But it’s difficult getting the embroidery floss through all those layers of fabric! So maybe I should just stitch in the ditch around each 18” block?? Will that provide enough structure that the quilt won’t come apart when I wash it?? This quilt is for me, so any weirdness after washing will really only be noticed by me and I can live with that!
So that’s what I’m working on these days. And trying to finish hand-stitching the binding on the Flutterby quilt (ya know, the one that’s been quilted since last November…). Wish me luck, I’m going to be easing back into work this week, with a full day on Friday – so I’m going to try to squeeze in some sewing time if I can!
You go girl! I’d say you’re getting a good amount of sewing done with a newborn in the house. I hadn’t heard that tip about sewing laminate before–good to know and file away for future reference.
The Parisville quilt is beautiful despite the freaky hairstyles, and the cedar chest top is fabulous. Damn, I finally gave in and bought some of the typewriter fabric; now I think I need to have some of the view master fabric.
And, yes, stitching in the ditch around the 18″ blocks is enough since you didn’t use batting. But, double check everyone’s stitching around their center medallion to make sure they don’t need fray-check or anything before washing them.
The changing pad is cool (and very you!) but I love love love hte viewfinder bench. That is awesome!!