Preemie hats finished

N's 5 weeks in the NICU gave me plenty of time to knit - but mostly frog. I completed just one hat, which was too small by the time I finished it:

Sewing is so much easier and faster. Yesterday I made these for him:

Basic instructions: sew up a tube using stretch fabric, the circumference of which equals the baby's head circumference less 1 cm. Draw 4 darts at the top (about 2-3" long--these were a little too short so the hat was too boxy):

Stitch up 2 darts on opposite sides:

Stitch the remaining 2 darts in one long seam:

Turn up a deep hem and stitch:

Done!

Double your sewing pleasure

...or halve your sewing pain, as the case may be. What I've learned in the process of sewing 24 capes for M's 5th birthday party (theme: superheros):

1. A rotary cutter is not only more accurate but also many times faster (I could cut 8 layers of broadcloth in a single bound). Mine is by Fiskars and it's GREAT.

2. The sewing machine is not supposed to make that knocking sound. Clean out the lint below! I used the dustbuster (rather than the teeny lint brush that came with my machine). The smooth silence is such a joy, as is the absence of skipped stitches. In my defense, my mother's machine (a beautiful sage green all-metal Kenmore, probably from the 60s) always sounded like that, I just assumed it was normal!

Worst blogger, with good excuse

I am the worst blogger ever. But since I have a readership of only about one (counting myself) I'm not disappointing too many people. I do happen to have a good excuse this time for not posting in a while. At 3am on Monday June 2, my water broke, more than 9 weeks before my due date. This time it wasn't just a little trickle, as with Little M five years ago (I was walking around downtown at the time, and, I'm proud to say, I briskly but calmly walked 2 blocks to Geary St. and took a bus to the hospital. A gentleman offered me his seat, which I had to decline).

This time was more like a scene from a lame sitcom. I was awakened by a sharp pain on one side of my belly (like a muscle cramp) and rolled over in bed to try to relieve it, when I felt the leak. I jumped out of bed and ran to the toilet, as more amniotic fluid gushed out along with a small red blob onto the bathroom tiles. Yelling at Big M, "Wake up! My water just broke!" (response: "Huh? Wha?") while I raced around pulling on street clothes, calling Kaiser's Labor & Delivery dept in San Francisco ("My water just broke 10 weeks early!" "What is your medical record number?...What's your telephone number?...Has your address changed since your last visit?" "Christ! Shouldn't I go to the hospital?...Then why are you wasting time getting all this information NOW???"), grabbing beach towels (because they're dark and would hide stains) to sit on in the car. Little M starting to cry, "I'm sleepy!" We had friends lined up to take care of him closer to the due date, but they wouldn't be expecting to be on call yet, so he had to come with us.

Once I got to the hospital I felt a little less panicked. Within the first few hours I had an IV inserted in my arm, a dose of antibiotics (to try to delay labor), a steroid shot (to help develop baby's lungs), and an ultrasound to see how much amniotic fluid remained. Then there was nothing to do but wait (and endure various injections, manipulations, pinpricks, and hospital food).


Fortunately, the baby waited another week before deciding to come out. Unfortunately (for me) he required an emergency C-section. I'll take a vaginal delivery even without painkillers over a C-section any day. That's all I have to say about that.

Baby N, born June 6, 2008, gestational age 32-1/2 weeks, 3 lbs 9 oz., 16.5". He was tiny but strong. I heard him cry in the operating room shortly after delivery, and he didn't need to be intubated, though he did get extra oxygen (piped into his incubator) the first few days.

Last Friday June 20 was his last day in the incubator. The next day his IV was discontinued. With luck we may be able to bring him home by the end of the first week of July.

Burda 8577 Maternity Top

This is my version of Burda 8577, also reviewed on patternreview.com. I bought the pattern and this fabric when I was pregnant 5 years ago and back in school, full-time, studying organic chemistry and calculus and other subjects that I nearly failed in college the first time around (in the 80s). No sewing was accomplished during that pregnancy.

I have more completed maternity projects to post....This 2nd pregnancy has really gotten me gassed to sew--but it's still pretty irrational to spend time sewing things I can wear for only 4 months, when I can certainly get by on the several tops I got at Target ($4 each, clearance sale). Is this the so-called "nesting"?

Downsizing box #3: mostly bed linens.

Downsizing: Box #2

Visiting family out of town at the moment, but before we left, I did clear out box #2 of stuff: some raggedy pants and T-shirts and several (more than I'd like to admit) micro-miniskirts and skorts that arguably I've been too old to wear for as long as I've owned them. Living in HongKong for a few years in the 90s I was unfortunately influenced by the local fashion, which tended toward Lolita-secretary. They are totally out of place in San Francisco, where the style is definitely anti-cutesy. Yet apparently I couldn't part with them while they were in perfectly wearable condition, since I paid good money for them. But they are taking up valuable space (over $350/sq foot) so it's time to go.

Making room for one more

Last year I vowed not to buy any new clothing, in an effort to be less consumptive and more frugal. My first purchase after my year of living frugally: a bunch of end-of-season maternity clothes from Target, which were so deeply discounted I could not have gotten the same number of outfits for less money at a thrift store or even if I made them myself.

But now with a baby on the way it's not enough just to stop adding to the things in our house. Our first baby's things will have to be kept for #2, so there's no downsizing potential there. But there's plenty of adult stuff that can go. So, new resolution: to get rid of one box of stuff each week until the baby arrives. 17 weeks to go. Here's my first box, which I posted on Freecycle last week:

A bunch of cookbooks and miscellaneous other books. It's irrationally hard for me to part with books, even ones I haven't cracked open in decades. When I was growing up, going the public library was the highlight of my week. Now as the mother to a little almost-reader, I really miss my beloved books that were passed onto my younger cousins when I outgrew them: all the Little Bear books for early readers, Harry the Dirty Dog, E.B. White's children's novels. I have a wonderful surrogate grandma who always gave the best, most thoughtful gifts (and still does).

One week later: the cookbooks were spoken for almost immediately. The rest are going to our local library for their book sale (if they'll take them) or to the Salvation Army which is just a few blocks down the street.

Best maternity pants pattern

Kwik Sew 3324, modified.
These fit way better than my underbelly-band jeans from Motherhood maternity (which also happened to cost 5x as much). The pattern is for pull-on maternity pants/cropped/shorts with self-lined front and back panels from ribbing, with elastic (1-2" wide) stitched to the lining side. The instructions were very straightforward, and it was super fast and easy to make. (One criticism about the instructions: they have you stitch the inner and outer leg seams first, then put one leg (they're now tubes) in the other to stitch the crotch seam. It's easier to stitch just the inner leg seams first, then the crotch seam, and then outer leg seams.)

Fabric used: a somewhat loosely-woven denim + 2-way stretch cotton-lycra + 2"-wide non-roll elastic (all from JoAnn's).

I made size XS (my normal size in patterns for bottoms is 10-hips, 12-waist), with 3 modifications:
1. Added vertical length to the stretch panels
2. Didn't stitch down the elastic (made a casing for it instead)
3. Redrew the rear crotch curve to make it more L-shaped.
Details below.

mod#1. I didn't like the waistband sitting at my "waist" (now the widest part of my torso) because every time I got into/out of the car or bent over to pick something up, the elastic would naturally slide downward (to a narrower part of my body), and so I was constantly having to hitch it back up. At 4.5 months, I expected the problem to get worse not better, so I took out the original ribbing waist panels and cut new panels from 4-way stretch cotton/lycra (remainders of a T-shirt dress); added 1" to the finished vertical length (or "height"?) so that the elastic waistband would ride above not at my belly; and used the XS measurement for the elastic instead of the S measurement to ensure that it would be snug. Next time I would probably add another 1-2" to the vertical length of the panels (you can see from the photo, taken 2 weeks later, that it won't be an over-belly waistband for much longer) and add ~1/2" to the vertical hip length on the pants pieces.

mod#2. I didn't stitch the elastic to the stretch panel as instructed. Stitching it down didn't make sense to me, because as your belly gets bigger the back side of your waist stays the same, so you'll need relatively more & more of the elastic to be in the front. It was easy to make a casing by stitching through both layers of the panel.

mod#3. I redrew the back crotch curve on the pattern to approximate the hotpatterns crotch curve. This worked out surprisingly well for my flat-ish butt and I definitely want to try this on some "real" pants eventually.

This is essentially the review I posted on patternreview.com, but after a few months those reviews aren't viewable unless you're a member.