featured creativity - dave OR my husband rocks!

sigh. i don't know where to begin this post as the news i have to share are both incredibly awesome and sorta, well, troublesome. maybe these pictures will help explain...








my musician husband made himself a bag. not just any ol' bag. not a silly little shopping tote or a furoshiki or anything simple. no, a really cool bag. using three different materials and lots of detail.
previous sewing experience? he made a funky improvised what we'd call "ghetto" cushion for our rocking chair once and last week he made himself some pants from scratch (pictures to follow soon). and then he made THIS! i'm still in shock. and as i said, i think it's incredibly awesome! i love him for it. the bag is beautiful and it makes me so happy to see him proud and interested and inspired and eager to learn new things... plus, he understands my passion a little better now, too.
BUT and it's a pretty big but, we now have to constantly arrange who gets to sew what when on which machine. i am learning to share my time, tools and materials. not easy but it can and must be done. i suppose most married couples deal with bigger issues.

anyways, dave rocks! i love you, husband.

new favorite thing

and it's no longer mine.

my first little attempt at "quilting" resulted in a pillow for my sister.
it's her birthday today and she's about to move into her new room which will sorta have a pippi longstocking theme. perfect combination of reasons for me to go wild with scissors and the sewing machine.

i'm absolutely in love with the way the pillow turned out. in fact, i could stare at it for hours... so many of my favorite fabrics collected in one random chaotic design. it's perfect and just the tease i needed in order to really get started on our big family quilt. it's like a mouth watering appetizer.

anyways. long story short... here are some pics.









oh, in other really great news... my gran'ma is letting me have my great-grandaunt's very vintage singer machine. it's moving into my sewing space later this week hopefully. yay!

call me crazy

so i've started quilting.

that's somewhat weird because quilting is one of the last things i ever thought i'd do.

it just doesn't seem to make a whole lotta sense to cut perfectly good fabric into lots of teeny tiny pieces only to sew them all back together again and in the end have a big piece of fabric. plus, i'm terribly impatient and it appears quilting requires ridiculous amounts of time and patience.

well, logic smogic and the time and patience i'll just have to find somehow.

i made some space in my out of control chaotic sewing corner, pulled out the scissors and cut half of my cotton stack into lots and lots and lots more little pieces. yes, i used scissors. because i'm too rock'n'roll (read: too poor) for a cutting mat and rotary cutter.

now my ironing board and pfaff machine sewing table are covered in scraps and i'm picking up more fabrics (good folks. finally!!) at the post office tomorrow which will also end up getting cut.

i've done about an hour and a half of reading up on quilting online and of course decided to ditch all the instructions and advice and figure out my own approach instead. yes.

oh, did i mention that i intend for the finished project to be king size? that's where i decided to forget about all the seasoned quilter's advice... everything i read said to start with a baby quilt and i'm dead set on making a massive one right away for our big cozy family bed.

which leads to the cause of this madness. i feel the need to make a big bright colorful fun warm cover for my husband, myself and mostly the kids. so i'm making a huge blanket which will fit all of us now and when the girls are much much older and move on to college or art school or to travel the world, i can split in two pieces and each can take half.


mk. pics? pics.

Eleanor Mika

Hurra! Hurra! Mika ist da!

Eleanor Mika was born at home on Sunday morning at 5:32am. She's 19.7" (50cm) long when stretched out from her regular ball shape and weighed in 7lbs 6oz (3350 gram).

She was welcomed by Mama, Papa, Oma, Gramma, Maria, Midwife Alexa and soon after showered with love and affection by proud big sister Joon who slept through the three short hours of labor and birth.

Everyone is doing beautifully, we're fully enjoying our "Babymoon" at home surrounded by family. Mika is very healthy, a great nurser and very content, Joon is over the moon with joy over Baby "Me-Nah" and adjusting to her new role as big sister incredibly well.


We'll be back with more pictures and details soon. Much love to everyone!

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!

babynames

so i'm somewhere around the 30-weeks mark now, i guess and we've yet to find a name for our new baby.

she's gonna be an eleanor, that's decided, but we're not sure if that'll be the first or middle name and we need another name to go with it.

suggestions? we're glad to take them. seriously! please post your suggestions!
how often to parents-to-be (-again) actually ask for babyname suggestions? this is a rare opportunity for you, take advantage of it and give us lots and lots of name ideas, please. and don't fear going really far out there, i'd kinda like something exotic.

oh, and just in case our girl turns out to be a boy we'd also like to have a boy name prepared... the initials need to be M.D. thoughts?