This must be my form of Xanax

I'm not going to lie -- the stress of the pregnancy has hit epic proportions of late. Now that the baby is far along enough to be considered viable (even if just barely), every time we have a transfusion or an ultrasound, we're asked to what length we want the doctors to go to save the baby should she need to be emergently delivered. Would we want her intubated? How heroic of measures would we want taken? You know, the God-like questions. It all just makes me want to vomit. But each week that passes, she gets bigger and stronger and further away (albeit at a snail's pace) from those scary survival and disability numbers we keep hearing about.

So in the meantime, I'm in hyper sewing mode. It helps. Something about being creative and working with my hands...the rhythm of the machine...the reward of having a finished quilt...it all helps calm me down.

This weekend I finished up my third mini-quilt for the girls' room. Time to move on to sewing Beetle's lovey.




Edited to add:

I don't plan on washing this quilt since it will be a wall hanging. But if I did, the edges of each block would fray and get all fuzzy for a nice effect, I'm sure. I'm just too chicken to toss it in the machine at this point. Plus, I did a cheat and used fabric glue to attach the binding to the back side. Shhh. Don't tell anyone.

The finished size is about 16 inches square. It was fairly easy to construct once I figured out how I wanted to pieces to lay.

Details, as promised

Before I forget, I wanted to answer a few questions I received about the work-in-progress aqua and red bedroom I'm decorating for Lila and Rosalie.

How did you get started with the room?
At first I had no idea what direction I wanted to take it other than not girly pink. Then I came across this picture on Lovely Design and I fell in love.

{Quilt and image from lovelydesign.blogspot.com}

I've never (ever) been a fan of red but this color combination sang to me and felt so fresh and lovely that I decided to just run with it. This quilt became my inspiration around which I started to work. My biggest concern was making sure the room didn't come across patriotic looking so I made the blues/aquas my primary color and accented with red. I also added yellow to the mix, but it's sparing.


Okay, I've made my lovely pelmet boxes. Now how do I hang these darn things?
Jenny's tutorial is awesome but I had the hardest time figuring out how to hang my pelmet boxes using Jenny's instructions. I just couldn't find picture hooks that were narrow enough to fit on the edges of the boxes without showing. And I couldn't wrap my mind around how metal hardware glued to fabric would stay put over the long haul. So..... I decided to use safety pins. Bear with me here as I illustrate my technique with not-so-great photos.

I took a safety pin and pinned it into the fabric and batting on the top inside edge of each end so that the circle end of the safety pin was at the top. I used the circle as my "hook" and just placed it on a nail that we tapped into the wall. The two pictures below are views of the inside part of the pelmet box if you were holding it out from the window and looking up. The masking tape is there to prevent the plaster from popping when we put a nail in the wall.

And here's a side view of how it's attached to the wall, though it's usually flush. I just pulled it out a bit for purposes of this picture. By attaching the safety pin on the inside of the box, you don't see it at all when it's hung.


Can I get dimensions on that mini-quilt?
Of course. The pinwheels were about 3 inches (2.5 inches finished) and the quilt itself is a mere 12 inches by 14 inches. You can get more details on where to find a template here.


Where did you get the fabric for the chair?
I found it locally at an interior design shop but the cost was way out of my price range. So with fabric name and manufacturer in hand, I looked online and found a handful of discount retailers who were willing to sell it to me for almost half the cost. I got bids from five retailers and ended up purchasing through Discount Upholstery Fabric. If you decide to shop online, be sure to verify shipping costs, taxes, etc. to ensure you’re comparing apples to apples when looking at all of your bids. Also, make sure the retailers are selling first rate fabric, not seconds or remnants, unless you don't care.

Name game

Let's lighten things up a bit on the baby front, shall we? Beetle Noah will soon need a real name that is both appropriately feminine and not so insect like.

Ted and I are making some progress on agreeing to some names (which I'm not sharing - sorry) but we are still a long ways off from having a handful of agreed upon options. It probably doesn't help that I have lots of criteria against which I judge a name. This criteria usually elicits lots of eye-rolling in our house.

For example, I don't want the baby's name to start with "R" or "L" as I think having two kids sharing the same initial would make the other feel like the odd man out. I am probably over thinking this, but that's how I feel at the moment.

Like seemingly every other parent out there, I want a magic bullet: a name that is uncommon but not so out there that it would be odd. And, of course, I want it to "fit" with Lila and Rosalie.

It also would be great if the middle name could match the style of the other girls' names (Lila Wren and Rosalie Pearl).

The real challenge is finding an appropriate match for our last name, which I don't disclose here on the blog for obvious privacy reasons. (So please don't mention it in the comments if you post some name ideas.) Let's just say anything with an "el" sound doesn't work (i.e. Ella, Stella, Adele, etc.). Names with lots of "ssss" sound also tend to be a bad fit.

So those are all the criteria (not that bad, right?). Any ideas come to your mind? Comment away!

Home Sweet Home

Just a quick note to let you know that the blood transfusion today was without incident for both me and the baby. She was indeed anemic when they tested her blood, so it was good that the doctors did the procedure today. The day wasn't without some interesting moments -- of which I'll write later -- but this time it was more comical than tragic.

I'm off to snuggle with my sweet girls.

All I want for Christmas

Lila recently gave us her Christmas list:


Translation: Curious George books, nesting dolls, more pajamas, and balls.

Headed to the hospital...again

Well, here we go again. I'm leaving shortly to be admitted for our second blood transfusion, which will happen early tomorrow morning. In my absence, I have a few posts pre-written and scheduled to publish tomorrow and Saturday while I'm hopefully relaxing and recuperating.

Aw, shucks

Today I awoke to a very pleasant surprise. Jenny over at Little Green Notebook wrote a very nice piece about the girls' room. You can read it here.

I had previously emailed Jenny pictures of the pelmet boxes I created with her fantastic tutorial. She replied back and expressed interest in posting my pelmet box pictures on her blog. I totally thought she was just planning to include me in one of her "your pelmets" roundup posts, which would have been an awesome shout out.

But instead she featured our room. I nearly fell off my chair this morning when I opened her blog and saw the post. Thank you so much, Jenny.

And if that isn't fantastic enough, an editor at Ohdeedoh saw our room on Little Green Notebook and decided to blogged about it as well (here). Bonus!

I'm so very flattered and blushing more and more with each compliment I read about the room -- especially since the room is still a work in progress!

So if you are visiting by way of Little Green Notebook, welcome. Say hello so that I can visit your blog! In the coming days, I plan to answer some questions that arose from readers about the room as well as post some photos of how I hung my pelmet boxes and the inspiration picture that got the wheels turning in my head.

Mini-quilt sneak peak

At the rate I'm going on my latest mini-quilt, it might be a while before it's done so I thought I'd give you a sneak peak now.

I'm doing a mini version of the ticker tape quilt that Amandajean at Crazy Mom Quilts brilliantly created. Note that her full-sized quilt took her about a year (working on it here and there, I'm sure) so I'm not feeling too bad about my pace. I love the multi-colors in the original version but since this is going to go in the girls' room, I opted for aquas, reds and a splash of yellow. Stay tuned...

Smacking into the wall of Reality

Eight more weeks.

That's how long my doctors want to try to keep me pregnant, assuming Beetle cooperates. If they're successful, we'll have a baby in eight weeks, not the sixteen weeks a normal pregnancy would afford us.

I'm wholly unprepared.
Truly.

I mean I've only recently come to terms with the fact that I'm pregnant. I guess conceiving with an IUD in will do that to you.

If the timing plays out as they hope, Beetle will be delivered in January around Lila's third birthday. She'll be sick when born due to the Kell isoimmunization, that we know. Plus, she'll have prematurity issues to fight. I'm so not ready. Mentally, emotionally, or physically. Weren't we just at the hospital with wee little Rosalie?

Rosalie at 2 weeks old

"Free to Good Home" Block

Hello everyone! I'm writing this post in advance and having Blogger publish it for me because I'm fancy like that. ::wink::

I stole some time this past weekend to sew my November block for the Munki Munki quilt along I recently joined. I might try to get ahead of the game and do a few extras before the baby arrives. Lord knows I have the fabric. It just sits there and mocks me most days.