The Homemade Nursery: A special blankie for a special baby

As you may remember from my post about my Nurture Hope quilt, I am quite fortunate to be pregnant.  My husband and I had been holding off on doing much in terms of preparation for the baby until we took holidays back in November.  Then we got started and have been plugging away every since.  I'm going to share individual projects we embarked on over the past few months, and then a final blog post with the big reveal of the whole room. 

I adore making knitted blankies for new babies.  So of course I had to make one for my new baby!!  And I wanted it to be the most special blankie I have ever made.  We don't know the gender of our little chinchilla (birthday surprise!), so I also wanted to keep it pretty neutral.  After much browsing on Pinterest, I found a perfect pattern by Leyla Alieva on Ravelry.  It uses strategic increases and decreases to create a leafy pattern, and it is gorgeous.  

In progress... those leaves!

I selected a bamboo silk yarn because it was so soft and luxurious, without being fluffy.  I wanted something with a smooth strand to really highlight the pattern.  And bonus points for being a natural material.  I often knit with acrylic yarns, but I wanted to splurge and get something real and of good quality this time.  This blanket is knit with two strands at a time, which makes the overall blanket a little heavier with a really nice drape.  

Finished, but not blocked

I increased the overall dimensions of the blanket because I wanted it a little larger than the pattern's size.  I just knit more leaf repeats across for more width, and a couple extra row repeats for more length.  It was an easy pattern to customize this way.  The finished blanket is just wonderful.  After some gentle blocking, the leaves and the spaces between them have such good dimesion, and the yarn held up well and is still so soft and has a nice lustre to it.  

After blocking.... so much definition between leaves.... it really is a special blankie.

The blanket fits perfectly with the rest of the nursery decor, and will hopefully be a favourite for years to come for our little one.  

The Homemade Nursery: One-of-a-kind Diaper Bag

As you may remember from my post about my Nurture Hope quilt, I am quite fortunate to be pregnant.  My husband and I had been holding off on doing much in terms of preparation for the baby until we took holidays back in November.  Then we got started and have been plugging away every since.  I'm going to share individual projects we embarked on over the past few months, and then a final blog post with the big reveal of the whole room.  

As a general rule, I am not a fan of diaper bags.  I find that they all look the same, and are never very attractive, even the ones that are supposed to be trendy or modern.  I decided to try my hand at making a diaper bag, as I have more than enough fabric building up in my stash to put together something I would find appealing.  

I started with this Hello, Bear print, and built the rest of the bag around it.  

I had some leftover Essex linen from another project, and a gorgeous orangey woodgrain to use for the lining.  

Supplies gathered - the arrows didn't end up getting used

I decided on the Supertote pattern by Noodlehead, and it was absolutely fabulous.  The instructions are so clearly written, and I learned a few new techniques entirely from the pattern.  I often find patterns include instructions that require further googling to understand fully, but not this one.  You can't go wrong with it.  I am super impressed with myself for executing such a professional looking bag, and honestly it is thanks to the fantastic pattern.  

The front, with piping and a magnetic snap pocket

The back, with quilt-as-you-go panel

The bag itself is really nice.  It has a magnetic snap front pocket, and two elasticized pockets on the inside.  It is fully lined, quite roomy, and very sturdy.  I used a quilt-as-you-go method to make the front pocket and back panel to give it a little more pizzaz, and I am happy with how it turned out.  

The inside stocked with a few supplies.  Also featured: inset zipper!

I included a little "handmade" tag, because I like to brag celebrate a homemade creation. 

Homemade anything is better than store bought everything.

I am pretty excited to put this bag into use! Baby can get here anytime, as the bag is packed and ready to head to the hospital.  

The Homemade Nursery: A Custom Dresser Remodel

As you may remember from my post about my Nurture Hope quilt, I am quite fortunate to be pregnant.  My husband and I had been holding off on doing much in terms of preparation for the baby until we took holidays back in November.  Then we got started and have been plugging away every since.  I'm going to share individual projects we embarked on over the past few months, and then a final blog post with the big reveal of the whole room.  

One of the first things I knew I was going to want to do for the baby's room was refinish a dresser.  I find that most dressers bought brand new these days are kinda..... hunks of garbage.  They are wood printed veneer pasted over junky particle board, and fall apart at nothing, all the while not even looking nice.  And they want $300 for them!  I wanted something with holding power, something strong and real, something worth the money.  

So I took a tour of the local thrift shops and used furniture stores, hoping to find something made of real wood, in a vintage style that could handle some modernizing.  I was super lucky to find this mid-century modern dresser, in good condition, just asking for some love.  

I feel like I stole this beauty.... it was only $75!

So I took it home, and sanded all the varnish off using my fancy new power sander (because doing this by hand would have killed me).  

Sanded and ready for staining

Once it was down to bare wood, my husband took over and stained the frame of the dresser a nice walnut colour, and sealed it with a clear coat finish to make it all shiny and nice.  I painted the drawers white, and then we sprayed shellac on all the unexposed surfaces to seal in the slightly musty smell the dresser had acquired over the years.  

Next, we attached the hardware.  I found the most perfect brass animal heads for the top two smaller drawers at Anthropologie (and spent almost as much as the dresser itself on them!). 

For the four larger bottom drawers, we spray painted the original hardware with a brass paint to match the pulls.  

Almost perfect!

I am so proud of how this dresser turned out! 

The final product

Close up

It is definitely a classic example of not knowing how to do something, googling it to learn, and executing it well.  I encourage anyone thinking of giving an old piece of furniture a makeover to give it a try.  We didn't find any aspect of the project difficult, and the results are so worth the effort.  

This dresser is the perfect addition to our baby's Homemade Nursery!

Rainbow animal parade : a blanket for Logan

Another special baby arrived about a month ago, so of course, a special blankie was in order.  Logan was born in August, a typically very hot month.  So I didn't think this through very well when I decided to make a knit blanket backed with minky.  This is a pretty heavy, toasty warm blanket!

Rainbow Animal Parade blankie for Logan

I have been wanting to try colour work for a while now, and thought this would be a perfect opportunity to try it out.  You can definitely see an improvement of my skills as the blanket progresses.  The first few animals are knit a little too tightly, so there is a wrinkle to the blanket.  But I don't think Logan will mind!

I chose to use a rainbow of colours, with a different animal for each colour.  I started with puppies, because Logan's parents have a dog that they love very much.  Also the chart looked pretty easy!  Next was kitties because they were on the same chart!

Puppies (this was my first attempt at colourwork.... and it shows! So many gaps and overstretched stitches)

Kittens (getting better!)

After my first two charts, I decided to get adventurous and tackle a more complicated hedgehog chart.  Unfortunately, the yellow yarn I have doesn't really show up great against the background, so the details are a little washed out.  So moving forward, I selected more basic charts, so that the picture really popped.

Hedgehog

Squirrel couples, an elephant family, and a row of penguins followed, which all turned out pretty nicely.

Squirrel couples

Elephant family

Penguins

Then rabbits, tree frogs, and lastly, some dark teal whales.  I varied the directions the animals faced for visual interest, and well as had different scales of animals; some rows are small and some are tall. I think with the rainbow of colours, the blanket is really cute to look at! 

Rabbits

Tree frogs

Whales

I knit this blanket using a steek.  For those of you unfamiliar with the term, that means that I knit this in the round, with 3 purl stitches joining the end to the beginning of each row.  This made for quick work: I am waaaaay faster at knitting rows than purling. Also, I can't imagine doing the colour work using purl rows....

You can see the steek in this photo of the complete tube - it is the ghostly line running from top to bottom down the centre 

When all the knitting was complete, I sewed down either side of the steek using my sewing machine set at the smallest stitch length and a matching thread, then CUT down the centre between the stitches.  With scissors! 

Gulp! Here we go!!

That was very nervewracking!  But it worked!  I had a flat blanket instead of a tube, and nothing was unraveling, which I had pictured as the worst-case-scenario.  The only problem is, because of my tension issues when first learning the colour work technique, the top half of the blanket was a little wider than the bottom half!  So I attempted blocking for the first time.

It looks pretty darn good blocked!

I have been knitting for at least 10 years.  And I have never blocked anything prior to now.  I think this means I am lazy.  I just used a big piece of plywood and some tacks to stretch and block the blanket.  I used a sponge and a bowl of water, since I didn't have a spray bottle, which resulted in a pretty saturated blanket.  I had to leave it outside in the sun to dry for  a whole day.  

Then I popped it off the board, and started on the border.  I went with a basic crochet scallop because that is always a pretty edge for a little girl's blanket.  I did a few rows of single crochet around the whole thing to set up the scallops, as well as to seal in the feathery edges from cutting the steek.  This way, they were contained inside the crochet stitches.

Three single crochet rows, then the adorable scalloped border

My last step to this blanket was to attach a backing.  I didn't want to gift a blanket to a baby with all those floats from the colourwork.  That is asking for some stuck fingers, or snagged yarns.  I had some minky left over from my Cozy Butterfly Rag Quilt, so I used that as the backing.  This was a much tougher task than I thought it would be.  Despite the stretchyness of the minky, it just could not keep up with the stretchyness of the knit.  So it was a little bunchy and kind of terrible.  That's when I hit my "I can never give this as a gift, it's awful!" moment.  So I stepped away, and came back to it the next day after doing a little brainstorming.  I used my sewing machine to stitch some "quilting" into the blanket.  Holding the knit layer stretched tight to the minky, I was able to tack the front to the back and significantly reduce the bunching problem.  I wish I would have taken before and after pictures to show you what I mean.  Unfortunately, I rarely remember to capture my failures on film.

So after much hoopla with the backing, the blanket was almost complete.  It just needed a label!  I made a little home-printed custom label using a Heather Ross mouse, and attached it with a blanket stitch.  Now this blanket is ready to gift!

The sweet label

The finished (and only slight bunchy) product!

Nurture Hope: an infertility story

After I had surgery almost a year ago, I was very hopeful that my husband and my dream of having a family would quickly become a reality. I followed up with our fertility clinic a few weeks into my recovery, and I was given a prescription for fertility medications to help us along that path. Unfortunately, when I went back in for routine monitoring a month later, my doctor found that the endometrioma (a cyst caused by endometriosis) on my left ovary that had been removed along with part of my bowel, had returned and completely taken it over. That means that, despite having just had surgery, my endometriosis was back and doing significant damage to my reproductive organs. At this point, my doctor recommended that we take advantage of the very small and honestly, a little unlikely window of opportunity we have after surgery, and attempt an IVF cycle. 

This was a scary thing for me to hear. I have never been keen on the IVF process, and the low chances, made even lower by my medical status, make the investment of emotions, physical pain/discomfort, and finances all the more of a risk. But we really want a family, and if this was the only way, then so be it. 

When I got the call that our name had come up on the waiting list to start a cycle, it was a few months sooner than I had thought it would be. So of course we jumped on it, and started the long and intensive process of oral hormone medications, injectables, almost daily blood and ultrasound monitoring, scary medical procedures, progesterone suppositories, and emotional turmoil. 

I made a beautiful hour basket to hold all my injection supplies- the process wouldn't be pretty, but gosh darn it, the needles can be kept somewhere pretty!

To help me cope with the emotional side of this process, I decided to make a special quilt to give me comfort at the end of this, regardless of the outcome. I wanted something cozy, with my hopes and dreams and pain sewn right into it, and significance in every stitch. 

So of course, I called my fave Charley Harper into action. His most recently released line was called Nurture, and it features mama animals with their babies. It was meant to be! And the name of the line fit perfectly with my meditation, and eventual theme for the quilt - Nurture Hope. Because above all, hope and faith are the most important things in this long and hard journey. And Hope doesn't necessarily come easily. You have to keep it tucked away in your heart, and feed it happy thoughts (which are sometimes hard to come by when dealing with infertility), and stroke it when it is feeling small and scared. And you have to do this even when The Facts are screaming at you that your hope is unreasonable and unlikely. You have to Nurture Hope. And this quilt helped me do that. 

I decided to make a sampler style quilt, so that each print with their different scales could be properly featured in an individual block of their own. First I spelled out the words Nurture Hope. Sometimes you need a constant reminder of your task before you, to help you stay on track. Having these words up on my design wall for a few months was very helpful indeed. Next, I made the large blocks, using a different print for the centre of each block. I didn't have a plan at all in terms of where the quilt was heading, so lastly, I made small blocks, and the ones with funny shapes to fill in the spaces between blocks in the layout. This was a very fun part, changing and rearranging until the final product was just right. And sometimes, initial thoughts and intentions changed or modified into something better. 

I have many parts of this quilt that have special meaning to me, and here I will share them:

Above all, the message is so important to me.  Nurture Hope.

Infertility is filled with ups and downs.  I try to maintain more ups, but sometimes you fall into a pit of despair.  Especially when your period arrives despite all your hopes otherwise.  Hence the red arrow is the down arrow.  

This little piece of artwork is called Family Owlbum.  That is just so special, and one of my favourites from the collection.

These penguins pretty much sum up living with infertility.  All around you, everyone has their egg, but you are alone in thinking "Where's my egg?"  Everyone has their eyes up and focused on other things, but the mamas without their eggs have their eyes focused squarely on where their eggs should be.  Rarely are your thoughts diverted otherwise.  My heart aches for the penguins without their eggs.  

Sometimes you have a million thoughts in your head during the IVF process.  What if I'm doing the injections wrong?  Is this feeling normal?  Does this pain mean it isn't working?  Will this work?  Of course it will work.  It's impossible that it will work.  What happens to me if it doesn't work?  It's not fair.  Fear, anxiety, glimmers of hope.  You must Be Still.  Have faith.  Nurture Hope.

The feathers represent for me that, as with fabric scraps that you can piece together to make something whole, so it is with life.  Sometimes you don't have the whole image to be able to have the perfect picture of life.  But you can still make a good life with what you have.  

This artwork is called Love from Above.  I truly feel that love is greater than all of us, and God's role in my journey has been integral.  Faith and hope can be hard to come by, but that constant love from above can keep you going when things seem bleak.  

And ultimately, love conquers all.  

For me, this process has been such a metaphor for this journey. You start with the major plot points planned out in your head, and then you have to fill in the middle with unexpected and unplanned aspects, all the while rearranging, adapting, and persevering through, even when you don't know how it's going to turn out in the end, fearing that it will all be a terrible mess, and all the while remembering to Nurture Hope. 

And finally, after all the waiting and all the work, and all the anxiety, you have a happy ending. A beautiful quilt, and a beautiful pregnancy. I am so happy to report that our journey has a happy ending. Against many odds, our hoping and wishing and praying has been for a baby to call our own, and now we have that chance. Oh happy day!