adventures in trying to be martha stewart.

I consider myself to be a creative person. I have (what I think are) brilliant* ideas and a knack for looking at someone else's trash and seeing what I could make out of it (I am pretty sure this "talent" comes from not wanting to spend money on anything). The difference between me and people who actually have craft blogs and end up on The Martha Stewart Show is that sometimes my ideas get lost in the execution. I wish that I could just tell my ideas to a robot that would draw/make them. Nerd alert.

Last year when we were in Egypt, I got really inspired and decided that I was going to go home and design a children's clothing line for the "distant day" that we would have children. Two things happened after that: 1. I went to Haiti and came back with a disease that crippled me for months. 2. I realized I didn't know how to draw or sew.  Then something else happened: I found out I was pregnant. and I was WAY behind on my children's clothing line (read: hadn't started it).

I got an amazing sewing machine as a Christmas/Birthday gift and have been trying to figure out how to sew ever since. It's been going pretty well...all things considered. Recently I have focused my sewing projects on a little baby that is going to show up around here pretty darn soon.As Steve put it, "she should look (dress) like she belongs to us". Well said, Mr. Daddio Schallert. So, I have been trying to make her some clothes so she fits in with her incredibly trendy** parents.  It is certainly not a clothing line...more like a bunch of fabric scraps that I found in the Boutique (free thrift store on the YWAM base) sewn together sloppily. But these sloppy fabric scraps were sewn from the heart ; )

My most recent attempts at Trendy Baby 2011 are:

 I saw a tutorial for this online and modified it according to what I had laying around in the ol' craft closet. In the end I used a (pre-made) bloomer,  a flowery fabric scrap and one of Steve's old t-shirts (for the straps).

I saw a few tutorials for similar hats online and after reading through them sort of just "winged it" and modified as I went along. I don't have a printer at home so I had to draw my own pattern (not my strong point). My pattern was about 4 inches too short so it turned out really small, but I am hoping it fits tiny baby's head for the first few weeks (or at least days). I also don't own a pair of pinking shears (yet) or even a pair of moderately sharp scissors (I am pretty sure the ones I have are rusty...eek) which is to blame for the extremely ragged edges (and the 15 minutes it takes me to cut anything out).

*Ok, they are not that brilliant.
**Yeah, not really. We live on an island so we are sort of out of the fashion loop.