whoops! there goes december

so it's december 18th and i've been very unhappily procrastinating getting christmas gifts done.

i say very unhappily because for once it wasn't my own lazyness keeping me from sticking to my plan. i have all these gorgeous materials sitting here, a looooong list of things i had planned to get done this month (prior to christmas and the whole baby having thing), a gorgeous old new sewing machine which is yet to be properly set up and aaaaaaaaall this creative energy but zero time for any of it.

of course december has been our busiest month since moving to germany with dave being gone much more than i had anticipated (yes, i was very naive not to factor in 3 hours of travel time and showing up an hour before each performance for every day of his december job).
of course i had overestimated my own energy level. of course i had underestimated the strain that sleepless because belly tends to be enormous in the last trimester nights would take on me.
and i certainly did not anticipate my kid coming down with the worst cold i've seen a toddler have.

she's better now but the past couple of days have been rather challenging. it should've been days filled with productivity, it ended up being days spent trying to do the math on how to best spread out the maximum milligrams of acetaminophen she's allowed to have withing 24hours, cutting several yards of flannel into hankerchief sized snotwipes (no time for laundry), filling at least a dozen sippycups a day with fluids, being annoyed with our bad pediatrician, reading "hand, hand, fingers, thumb" over and over and over again, watching hours of zoo tv while cuddling a burning child...

blaaaaaaah! this weekend she should be over the worst, but dave is gonna be gone nonstop playing four theater performances and a gig. so i guess i may have monday and tuesday to sew up a storm. or to get sick myself and over the worst of it in time for christmas celebrations.

next year will be different. it's gotta be. i'll either skip the whole handmade holidays thing alltogether or i'll start making gifts in august. let's hope it's option number two. i really don't want to go back to buying gifts from chainstores.

so. note to self, kids always get sick when it's least convenient. be prepared.

exciting friday morning

today i had to do something i don't normally do... take pictures of a fabric delivery right out of the box!

usually all my new fabrics get the prewash, line dry, iron with lots of love treatment first and then i lay them out nicely and take pics.

in this case i'm too excited to wait! i ordered from an ebay seller for the first time (i normally get most fabrics from etsy supply sellers) and i'm amazed by how quickly this order made it here from the states! the price per yard was a little higher than what my favorite etsians offer, but it was worth it for me in this case because i managed to get all the different fabrics i had planned on buying for a while from ONE seller rather than having to order from two or three different stores. AND i found a nice michael miller print i had never noticed anywhere before. yay!

so, here's my online fabric store recommendation, especially for everyone in europe... la-chakra offers a truely amazing selection of designer cottons, managed to fit 8 yards into a flat rate envelope, shipped so quickly i received my order a week after placing it AND marked the envelope as a gift (which i'd never expect anyone to do but after all my recent spendings on custom fees i'm glad to not have to hike out to the customs office for pick up, explaining and paying them a fortune). incredible!

now, here are my new beauties...



top to bottom: garden party "dancefloor", garden party "tablecloth" (2yards), garden party "mingling", michael miller "groovy guitars", michael miller "damask rock", michael miller bertha, alexander henry "sew now! sew wow!"



did i mention i love anna maria horner??



i'm so stoked about this micheal miller print! i wasn't even aware of it's existence until a few weeks ago (coincidentally i found this fabric the same night dave got his awesome vintage bass guitar) and all the photos of it i looked at online made it look totally black, white and grey. now that i see it "in person", it's actually slightly off-white which is soooo much prettier than i expected it to be. makes it looks somewhat vintage. yay!


bertha is another new favorite of mine. i had never noticed this print anywhere until i browsed la-chakra's store and thought it looked like it could be either totally gorgeous or completely hideous. i was very intrigued and ordered a yard thinking i could always resell it if i didn't like it. well, turns out it's gorgeous and i wish i had like five yards of it because it's perfect for so many projects i had in mind. i'll get the patchwork and applique look without having to do all the extra work, which is perfect for me right now since i'm getting a little sewing lazy these days. so yeah, it'll be some tough calls to make when it comes to deciding on what to do with just one yard of this treasure.


and finally the alexander henry print. i had seen this on etsy a few times but from the pictures it always looked a little too white and bare to me so i really didn't want to buy it. then i ordered that huge stack of garden party fat quarters and got seven little fabric charms with it (ruth from sewlovefabrics really is wonderful to work with!) and thought, wow! this looks great in person! so i decided to order some next chance i got and now i have a nice full yard of it and it's just sooooo pretty! it'll become two sewing machine covers in the hopes of me actually covering my machines when i have something truely pretty to do so with.




yeah, enough fabric ramble. thanks for letting me share my excitement with you. i know, i owe ya pics of my very few recent projects and i promise i'll get to it as soon as my kid returns home and lets me take pictures of her outfit.

maternity leave and sale

so this is it. i'm officially putting myself on maternity leave.

it really has been a tough decision to make. i had just gotten into such a great flow of work and it felt so good to focus on something other than being a mother and wife and i've just recently discovered all these great sources for gorgeous materials which i'm now dieing to work with...
but i've spent the past two weeks in misery wanting to do so much and feeling more and more physically and mentally unable to keep up with myself and my desire to create and now i'm giving in and just taking an official break.

no more sewing for the joontoons store for a while. well, i might finish the two mei tais i've started, but i'm not putting any pressure on myself.

there's still lots i want to get done for joon, the new baby and i have a couple of things i'd love to get done for christmas, but i need to mainly just let go of the idea of "working" every day and instead focus on taking it easy, enjoying these last few weeks of being pregnant and of being a single child's mommy. it feels so important right now to soak up every minute with joon!

the pregnancy is still going super well, but the baby is already sitting very low just like joon was and i can tell there's constant pressure on my pelvis, so my midwife told me to put those legs up and not do anything that's not a neccessity. i plan on not having to go through the whole hospital stay and bedrest due to premature labor thing this time around.
our midwife will be on call for us starting january 18th. that's only slightly over a month from now!! whoa.

so, in celebration of maternity leave, i've decided to have a small weeklong sale on etsy. yay, yay, yay!

while i will no longer be creating new pieces and don't know when i'll return to sewing for the etsy store, i'll keep the store running until i go into labor at which point the store will actually go on a few weeks of vacation as well.

oh, i've been meaning to take pics of the few things i've managed to create these past two weeks, but somehow i haven't even been able to update my facebook status on a regular basis... it looks like i may get around to taking pics tomorrow though and i'm excited to share with you the goodies i've sewn from my favorite michael miller fabric. :)

much love and crafty holidays spirit to everyone!