Berries, teeth, diapers, kitten, skirts

The strawberries are here! I'm not talking about the giant tasteless supermarket variety of berries that are flown in from 3,000 miles away (picked last week). I'm talking about the tiny, dark, super sweet kind that were picked early in the morning and brought to the farmer's market. The real kind:


Also really good right now is the Superbuzzy fabric that arrived earlier after I stalked their site for days waiting for the new stock. Everything I got is so lovely that I can barely stand to part with it, but I have big plans for sales. Harlan likes it so much he won't even let me photograph it:


The only thing I need to actually do is make everything. Other than that I have to sell it. Both concepts are simple in nature, but Harlan was up every hour or so for the last three nights moaning and groaning with a fever, and now I'm exhausted. The daytimes are not much better and the culprit appears to be some new teeth making their way in. I spent Tuesday evening on the sewing machine zig-zagging away on the microterry diaper inserts that I needed to make rectangular in shape so that they would fit into the G-diaper linings. Did I mention the diaper system I ended up finding? A woman from the neighborhood whom I know told me about her ingenious cloth diapering system that does not use any horrid bulky pre folds. She puts terrycloth diaper inserts or doublers into the linings of her G-diaper covers. She also wraps a bio-degradable liner around the inserts so that if poop should occur the only labor involved on her part is sliding the liner into the toilet. This system is still a bit bulkier than disposables, but I do prefer it to shelling out money and going to Target every week for disposables. Also, it's the strangest thing, but there is no odor from the diaper can with the cloth diapers.

Last weekend we went to a wonderful birthday party for one year old Hayden. I made this Japanese kitty for her and I hope she doesn't mind the lopsided eyes. I want to enlarge the pattern and make some more to sell. On the business front I have been working on some embroideries (like the cowgirl kitty in the previous post) to make into small quilted wall hangings or pillows. I am still not sure which way to go with this because I don't have an idea of what people might rather buy. I do know that my appliques are on hold right now because I am just enjoying making small quantities of items that I can work on when I feel like it. It's not that the appliques are not fun to make, but I am easily sidetracked and due to feeling generally overwhelmed these days I am reluctant to invest time in larger plans.

I got this book from Amazon and I can't believe it took me this long to find it. The book explains how to custom make any basic skirt pattern for your specific measurements. There is a super easy to understand formula and diagram for how to create the pattern on paper or directly on fabric. Even someone who has never sewn on a machine before could figure out to make their own skirts. I'm afraid I may be even more sidetracked than usual when it comes to craftiness...