Grandmother-in-law's Churndash Quilt

I finished my grandmother-in-law's quilt tonight. I used an all over feather pantogram with a dark green thread to tie in the border she used in the rest of the quilt and because my mother-in-law wanted to take attention from the large number of bright competing fabrics used in the churndash blocks. Usually I try to not to have the quilting compete with the actual quilt top, but I think it works okay in this quilt.

Here is a picture of the quilting in process.

And the completed quilt (my MIL will do the trimming and binding)

And a picture of my mom just for fun. I sure do love this woman.

Getting the mail

How far is it okay to go and leave a newborn? Can I go outside? Can I mow the lawn? Can I walk down the street and get the mail. Really, I feel pretty uncomfortable leaving her seat in the van or in the house while I bring in groceries. I only recently stopped feeling all the babies bellies to make sure they were still breathing before I went to bed, and I still think about it but am too exhausted to do it.

What do I think is going to happen? She can't even roll over herself unless I prop one arm under her. She is much safer than leaving my three-year-old alone for the time it takes me to shower. I happen to know that the nerdlet won't balk at all at trying to make herself a cheese sandwich in the sandwich maker. I can just see her place something on the counter to climb onto so she can pull the sandwich maker out of the cabinet above the stove. Here is an even more frightening thought. She could decide to make macaroni and cheese. She can actually tell you how to do it and although we have never covered the vitally important step of turning the burner on, I would not be at all surprised if she had picked that one up on her own.

Anyway, I decided to get the mail today. I wasn't really leaving the baby alone. The nerdlet, the bear cub, and their daddy were upstairs sleeping and I went as fast as I could. The mail isn't really that far, possibly 500 feet if I had to guess. I left her sleeping and came back to her working on getting into a full blown fit. She seems to know when she is completely alone in a room and has demonstrated this ability to wake herself up when I go to the bathroom or upstairs to retrieve one of her sisters. I assured her that it was okay because what she just experienced was about the limits of what her paranoid mama could handle anyway.

So did I get the Burda magazine I was looking for? No, I didn't. I did get a $50 coupon made out in my name for laser lyposuction. That's right, someone in the plastic surgery business has decided to target new moms with an advertisement geared to intensify any self hatred they have of their bodies that could not possibly have completely recovered from birth and include a generous $50 coupon. Is that not the most considerate thing you've ever heard of? Now, what I want to know is who is selling them my name and address. I doubt it is the hospital directly as I'm pretty sure that would violate HIPPA rules (though I will admit to signing off that they could give out my health information to anyone claiming to be family). I imagine there is something that is open record in either the birth certificate registry or the newborn shot record. I suppose it could be the pediatrician's office because they could sell that info without actually giving out any of their patient's information. It's just another thing that seems so wrong to me.

10 things that make me happy

It's been a while since I did this and I don't keep any sort of tally on it so some of these might be repeats from one of my other lists or from the things I'm thankful for.

1. Caffeine!
2. Really comfortable shoes
3. My gym (though it will make me happier when Darth Baby turns 3 months and I can check her into the nursery there and go anytime and not just when Q is home).
4. My Kindle (I like it so much someday I might actually spend money on a Kindle book and not just read the freebies)
5. Rachel Coleman (I know I've listed Signing Times probably more than once, but Rachel is completely inspirational, too).
6. That the nerdlet and bear cub like to eat healthy foods
7. The beautiful 70 degree weather we're having right now
8. Lemon scented liquid handsoap (I really need to find a place where I can buy it in bulk)
9. Cloth diapers (See note on bottom)
10. Glee (They actually seem to be trying to cover every type of prejudice - race, gender, homosexuality, disability, and currently obesity)

It is a really, really good thing both that I use cloth diapers and that Darth Baby dislikes being wet. Last night, Q watched the girls since I have been sick and am still recovering, and since he didn't want to mess with pulling clean diapers out of the dryer, he put Darth Baby in a disposable that we have on hand for trips. I apparently don't even think to change Darth Baby unless she cries about it or the diaper is so full that it leaks out everywhere. Those jokes about disposables holding pounds of waste are true. That diaper was so heavy.

Hypocrites

I've debated over posting this for about a week and I decided finally to do it. I may delete it later because it is quite personal.

My dad's mom was one messed up woman and I used to wonder if it was her genes or her lack of nurturing that resulted in my dad being the way he is. She is a woman that would throw her own mother to the wolves and I never witnessed or felt warmth from her. She was Nazarene and as my dad's family are the only people that I know that were Nazarene, I don't know if it was their church or the branch of religion, but they were big on memorizing Bible verses. I actually have had a few nightmares about my Grandmother in the basement of their Nazarene church.My dad memorized the entire bible and won the state competition for Bible verses. He is not a believer in any way shape or form, but I remember when I was 16 that he could still quote verses what had to be two decades after the last time he picked up a bible. The point is that memorizing Bible verses doesn't mean anything in my book.

My dad was in the army. When I was ten, my dad was a major and looking to be promoted. We lived on 'Colonel's Row' and I did something to greatly embarrass him. As punishment, he put me in solitary confinement for the summer. He stripped my room bare, removing everything but the beds and dresser. He even took off the dresser mirror. I slept a lot, but there is only so much that even a child with an undiagnosed thyroid problem can sleep. My dad would occasionally let me out to work, such as mowing the lawn or doing the dishes. I took these opportunities to sneak in books. The only books we had were encyclopedias, a dictionary, and the Bible (and my dad's hunting and fishing books, but I was sure he would notice if I messed with those). Now the people that know me in real life know one of the reasons I have such weird pockets of obscure knowledge. The Bible was a copy of the New Testament and I read it straight through. I had no one to discuss it with as that would have given me away and so I came to my own conclusions about what I read. A lot of the impressions that I got then have stuck with me to this day. One of the first things you read about in Matthew, the first book of the New Testament is about how being a hypocrite is about the worst thing that you can be. It states that it is worse than the evil that was present in Sodom and Gomorrah. I came to the conclusion that you should keep your religion private and to this day I still have a hard time praying in front of other people.

I have a cousin that has done a horribly evil thing to her family and she is married to a pastor and quotes Bible verses on her facebook all the time. My niece Little Miss was abused in unspeakable ways and my sister's in-laws that failed to protect her and also continue to make decisions not in her best interest (thank goodness for my sister being there to protect her) are Bible thumping 'Christians'. They are not Christians in my book. I know that not everyone that quotes Bible verses is a hypocrite,but these people certainly are, and I think if Jesus came today instead of then, he would be mentioning the people on the Internet instead of the Pharisees.

UT Quilt

My mom came to visit us this weekend so that Q and I could celebrate Valentine's Day early. We saw Tangled and then ate at Red Robins (Q is a huge burger fan). It was really cute but I'm glad I didn't take the nerdlet to see it in the theater because there is a scene in there that seemed written specifically to freak her out, and we would have had to leave if she saw it on the big screen. It's better for her to experience it on a smaller scale, I think.

I also got to catch up a little on some sleep and finished the top for my sister's 2010 Christmas gift, a UT quilt. I've had the main part done for a little while, but I didn't like the fabric that I bought for the border so I waited until I found one I liked and finally got to sew it on last night. I'm much happier with it now and it will go on the quilting machine once I've had an opportunity to finish a quilt of my grandmother-in-law.

Here's the quilt with the nerdlet in front of it. She requested to be in the picture. She loves the Longhorns and has been trying to claim this quilt since I first pulled out the material.

My plan now is to sew myself a few tops and make some pattern weights out of glass since I'm currently using cans of food or various other items in the kitchen.

Answered questions

I figured that I would catch up by answering some questions that I've gotten.

The nerdlet and I are still making Monday cupcakes. I'm not set on just cupcakes, but the cupcake maker makes it easy so if there isn't anything else that comes up that is what we do. She got to make carrot cake with her aunt S a few weeks ago instead, and later in the day she asked me when she was going to make cupcakes, so in the future I will make it clear ahead of time that we are making whatever instead of making cupcakes.

Another question I've had about the cupcakes is what I do with them since I don't let my girls have sweets very often. Most often the leftovers are sent with Q to work. He has a coworker that encourages us to think of him as one of our dogs but one that can have sweets and chocolate. He will eat anything that we have leftover. He has taken pizzas that we left out too long that I was going to throw out, and whenever I try a new food and don't care for it, it goes to him. Apparently he has this reputation not just with us but with all his coworkers, so we throw all the extras his way. I will admit that I finished off the cupcakes when we made dark chocolate ones.

So what do I do to mark the rest of the week? Tuesdays, we do toddler story time at the library and Kindermusik with the DSASA (Down Syndrome Association of San Antonio). The nerdlet isn't ready for older kids and the toddler story time is more than she can take on a lot of days. She mostly spends the time running or spinning in circles or hiding in stroller. Wednesday has turned in to Costco day. I used to go on Tuesday because new books and videos are released on Tuesdays, but I've moved it to Wednesday for convenience. Thursday, I used to take the girls to various parks in San Antonio. There are hundreds of parks in San Antonio and my plan is to eventually take them to all of them. I stopped for a bit because I couldn't drive while I was pregnant and now I'm not going because I'm a cold wimp, but it shouldn't be long until it warms up enough for us to start doing this again. I don't yet have a Friday activity, but I may make this a swimming day once Darth Baby is older. The gym daycare won't take Darth Baby until she is three months old so it isn't an option yet.

On the sibling rivalry front, the girls are doing pretty well. The nerdlet told us once that she wanted to give Darth Baby away when Q wouldn't put her down to play with the nerdlet but that is the only negativity or jealousy we have seen from her since we told her Darth Baby was coming. The bear cub hasn't really shown any at all in the last month, but she wants to be babied more. She wants to be held and cradled while she eats her bottle and she gets really, really happy if you sign or call her baby.

What is next for sewing? I want to do so much. First, I have a Christmas quilt I didn't finish because of Darth Baby coming. I just have the two borders to sew and then put it on the quilting machine to quilt and then bind it. I've traced a couple of patterns from the Burda magazine to make, a pair of pants and a gathered top. I also bought a few top patterns, but unfortunately Darth Baby hasn't been sleeping well at night and it really isn't an option to work on during the day. On top of that, while it is freezing in SA, we have rolling brownouts and so I don't want to plug in my sewing machine when the power is going on and off. Once it warms up, it will still be a while until anything gets done because it take at least a few hours to complete anything when you don't have any little ones running around.

The only other question I remember being asked is about my height. I'm only 5'4". I look taller because of the angle of the picture. After all, my tiny 3-year-old was taking the pictures. Also, I have pretty long legs for my height so that also helps. My husband and I have about the same length legs and he is about six inches taller than me. I was sort of hoping that the bear cub would have longer legs than the average person with Down syndrome because the females in my family have such long legs, but it doesn't look like that is going to be the case.

If I missed answering any of the questions I got, I'll try to put them in another post.

Where have you been?

I've been planning sewing projects and finally found some time to actually sew something. After having three babies in very short succession, I am not anywhere the size that I was before my first pregnancy. Even though I'm within 10 pounds of what I was prior to my first pregnancy, I'm actually much larger, especially around my middle. I have spent a lot of time reading various sewing blogs and getting excited about renewing my wardrobe (really, I'm starting from scratch pretty much in a new size).

I decided to subscribe to Burda magazine and got my first issue of the plus size this past week. I was a little intimidated by the fact that all the patterns are laid out on the same sheet of paper.


Because of the fact that I was a little intimidated by it, I decided to start with the easiest pattern in the book, a very simple pair of pants. Simple becomes a lot more complicated with a three-year-old constantly trying to help. The nerdlet put in two pins and was the photographer for the final version.




She's getting better than me at taking pictures. I made the pants out of black cotton eyelet gauze. I really like them, but in full disclosure, I need to adjust the waist band because I didn't stretch it as much as the gauze while sewing the waistband casing and so I need to add an extra piece of casing to each side of the center front, but they are wearable and very comfortable. I'm excited to make more Burda patterns.