Recon Flannel/ Franela Reconstruida

(Scroll down for the English version)

Aqui esta la conclusion de mi proyecto de hoy. Cogi una franela de mi esposo- una que me habia dado para usar hace dos anos- y la corte y cosi para que me quedara. Para la proxima voy a tomar fotos de antes para que asi se pueda ver mejor lo feita que se veia. Tengo otra franela que puedo reconstruir y prometo tomar fotos de lo grande que me queda. Lo que se pierden de una foto como tal es ver como me quedaba de larga y ancha en los brazos, que tan larga en general me quedaba (aunque me gusto lo largo despues de los arreglos) y el look bombacho no me interesa ahorita.

Asi, con solo fotos de los arreglos, no se nota tanto el cambio, o sea que lo detallare:

1. Usando mis medidas, hice una puntada curveada a los lados de la camisa, para ajustar la cintura y crear una nueva silueta.

2. Encogi la manga quitando un poco de tela en el hombro. Las fotos estan oscuritas pero por lo menos se ve en la primera que la camisa me queda en los hombros. Normalmente si algo que queda en los hombros no me queda en … lo demas.

Ya. Eso fue todo. Que les parece?

Tambien pueden ver mi nuevo corte. Me lo corte yo misma y me encanta. No solo me encanta que me puedo hacerlo yo misma sino que no tengo que esperar hasta conseguir cita y entrar con el miedo de que me lo vayan a embarrar. Antes no me preocupaban estas cosas; sera que es algo que surgio despues de tener a mis bebes.

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Here’s the end result of a recent flannel recon. Bilingual papi gave me a couple of flannel shirts about two years ago and I’ve been waiting for the right moment to reconstruct them into something I’d want to wear. Something that wouldn’t make me feel like I was a day or two postpartum. I always forget the before picture… next time… What you don’t get to see in the before picture is how frumpy I looked in this flannel. It was sized an XL shirt for men, making the length super long (which I kept), the arms too wide and long and everything else just too oversized for my taste these days.

Since the before photos aren’t available, I’ll detail the fixes I made:

1. Using my measurements I sewed a curved line on each side, triming the original side seam and creating a new silhouette.

2. I also took in the sleeves by tucking in a bit at the shoulders. In the first picture you can really see it. The shoulders used to look like drop shoulders but really they just looked like I was wearing a baggy shirt- which I was. Normally if it fits in the shoulders it won’t fit anywhere else.

So that was it. What do you think?

You can also see my new hair cut. I started cutting my hair a couple of months ago- as in I cut my own hair when I get that urge. Thing is… I love it. I love that I can cut my own hair and don’t have to wait until I can get an appointment and possibly be disappointed with the results, which I never used to be, so this must be a new thing since having kids.

Letters to a toddler

Bilingual baby is getting into this book that we’ve had since before she was born called The Jolly Postman. The pages of the book are formed like large envelopes and each envelope/page has a letter to a fairy tale character. Cinderella, for instance, gets a letter from a publisher along with a book which is the story of how she met HRH Prince Charming. Bilingual baby likes going out to get the mail and we usually spend quite a while playing at our mail box. Also, she’s converted one of our night stands into a mail box for herself and baby brother. Now, with the letters from this book, she’s actually got some actual mail to stuff into the night stand.

Lucky me, I saw this entry into SouleMama’s blog showing a page from her new book. She made a letter satchel for her kid. How cute to make these for the kids but I’ll probably go with buttons or velcro insead of a snap.

News from the front: Baby brother is now walking. He started walking on my birthday (August 3rd) and hasn’t gone back. He’s loving his new skill. I am, too.

A note about my choice of link to the Jolly Postman. I get tired of linking to amazon and wanted to go for something else. This link also takes you to some more activities you could do with an older child that’ll enrich (as they put it) the reading and comprehension of the book and its themes. My kids are way to young for these little lessons and I’d only do them if I felt it went along with their interests. For now, we’ll just stick to the toddler activities of putting the letters in the envelopes and taking them out to read (I mean, skim) their message. Have fun!

Pio Pio etsy

Ever since embroidering this little chick onto a onesie for baby brother and his cousin, I’ve been meaning to get more embroidered and up on my etsy shop. Before I had a good excuse… I didn’t have an etsy shop. Now, I don’t have an excuse. Therefore, I’ve made it a goal to embroider some more onesies with the chickie.

While gathering some more onesies, I started sewing up a chick out of an unused sweater. I’ll fill it with some wool and embroider some eyes. (I don’t mean to make this a theme…)

my etsy store is up!

After a lot of hemming and hawing, I finally posted my first item for sale on my etsy store. I’ve posted one of the pods I made. Check it out:

www.bilingualbaby.etsy.com

In other news, I do have sewing shoulder! Aagh! I went to the chiropractor on Saturday and that helped a lot. She’s awesome! She does Network Spinal Analysis which is a more holistic approach to chiropractic care. There’s no cracking but rather gentle precise touch, as this site explains.

I won’t be sewing for a while, just so I can recuperate. However, having browsed etsy a while (and with a friend asking me if I make purses) I don’t think I’ll be away long. I do have a pattern for one of Amy Butler’s bags- the weekender. I got the pattern back in August, before I had two kids. In the last 4 months, I’ve looked online and just haven’t found the right fabric for this bag. Maybe I need to think outside the box and really create my own thing here.

I bought a cute quilting book called Quilts, Baby! by Linda Kopp. Her designs will get you back to your machine in no time! They are so cute and modern and get me thinking that I should do more embroidery. Not all by hand, though. This other book that I checked out from the library, the Amy Karol one, is really not going to help my sewing hiatus. So inspiring.

I’ve got a list of things I want to do. Not like laundry or clean up my mess. No! It’s got things like get etsy store up… well, let me just show you my list:

1. tiny mouse designs podeagis

2. babywearing class (I scheduled it but haven’t received any interest)

3. babywearing group (This week we’re finishing up the back health series so I’m working on getting the next serise booked)

4. translating (there’s a chance I could do some translating of children’s books)

5. Spanish group for toddlers (still in the brainstorming and could-I-do-it-and-not-go-nuts stage)

6. Blog for mamasays (a local thing- just posted my first entry)

7. Modern dance class

The Full Moon Tea Party

I had such a good time. We saw a bunch of friends there and most of them were involved in making this shin dig happen. So much fun. It was such the perfect event after a winter full of illness and snow bound life.

I didn’t sell anything but that’s okay. I’m going to keep this short because, well, the weekend and all. It’s not over.

I’ve put the sewing machine away (which really just means I’ve taken it off the dining room table and put it back upstairs) and I’m in the process of clearing the table of all the fabric, notions and scraps of paper that held all my notes from the last month or so. While trying to organize my fabric, I found some pieces that I want to use soon.

For now, I need to take care of my sewing shoulder. It actually is muscular… from all the sewing (sitting in a slouched position- not recommended) that I did. I guess I was sewing a lot. There are a couple of my podeagis at Bebop Baby Shop in Essex Jct but the others I’m going to put up on etsy. The brown pod got a lot of attention; as did the big pink flowery one.

I’m reading a couple of books:

Raising a bilingual child

Amy Karol’s (The Angry Chicken) sewing book which I may have to buy for a couple of friends

A book of essays by Mario Vargas Llosa (one of my favorite authors)

another book by Jose Saramago- I just couldn’t finish Ensayo sobre la lucidez.. maybe someday.

…and why can’t I make up my mind?

I suppose that’s what I have this blog for: the back and forth. I talked again with the friend whom I ‘made the costume for and she made some suggestions that make me change my plan for tonight. She suggested that if I was going to change the price after tonight that I should leave the price change at no more than $20. She agreed that $85 was a fit price and, in unison with another friend (we were having our sewing circle), suggested that I have a month-long sale. In essence, the pods will be $65 for all of June. People might not be too quick to decide if they want a podeagi tonight and I shouldn’t have a price so low that they feel pressured either way.

The other piece of advice from my other friend was that whatever I got for the podeagi’s should be enough to deal with parting with it. In my case, I’m loving every single pod I’ve made and I want to keep each one. That’s what she did when she sold quilts, which I can imagine getting pretty attached to.

So, any other suggestions I should consider? I should talk to my mil who has been in marketing for a long time… she’d probably have some pointers.

After tonight, I’m resting! I think I’ve got sewing shoulder, if there is such a thing. My shoulder was hurting yesterday and I think I slept on it funky the other night. I changed which side baby brother was on and that’s been helping. If you’re wondering whether it’s all the babywearing, I’ll offer you two thing: 1. yes. I’ve considered that it might be due in part to the babywearing but I’m not convinced; 2. bilingual papi already asked that question. The one thing that has been different in the last couple of weeks is that I’ve had deadlines. Again, after tonight, I’m resting. I’m also going to have a professional take a look at my arm and help me out.

I’ll keep you all posted on how tonight goes. I’ve got my how-to brochures and my business cards, the toys, and the podeagis I’m going to sell. Wish me luck!

Pricing my work or How I learned what things are worth

I got paid for the costume I made last week. The costume turned out pretty nice. Now, I have to say that living in a Wal-Mart world, I don’t actually know what things (and the people that make those things) are really worth. The friend I made the costume for does. She offered me more than she had intended to offer because she liked my work. Then, she insisted that she wasn’t offering me enough. Before talking price, I thought I’d just ask for the cost of materials. I don’t sew costumes professionally and the costume was for a friend, so why ask for more. My friend thinks differently. She made the point that she valued my time and wanted to compensate me accordingly. To make a long story short, I learned a valuable lesson and have come away with many a question.

This lesson made me rethink what I should charge for my podeagis. Of course, there are start-up costs and a lot of the costs will go unnoticed but the price I was telling friends was barely going to give me enough for materials. I started reading up on how to price your work and one of the things I read was that when you set a price much lower than your competitors you are devaluing your work and your worth. I mean, if you go to craft fairs and price something so low it looks like a big box store price, people might wonder about how good your work is and may not even buy what you’re selling. Plus, at a craft fair, the bargains are sought at the end of the day and through barganing and most people go there looking for a quality hand made one of a kind item. After doing some calculations and finding (read: searching for) some peace of mind, I can see how a podeagi can go for $100 on etsy. In talking with a couple of trusted friends, I have come to think more about what my time is worth. Basically, that my time is worth something and that there are ways to quantify it into a numerical value.

Let’s do some fun (and sad) calculations to see what a mothering wage might be for me. The minimum wage here in Vermont is currently:

$8.06

and I am alone with the kids for 9.5 hours

then, if the government respected the work mothers do, I’d get $76.57 a day.

$382.85 a week

roughly $1,531 a month

and roughly $16,845 a year, with a month worth unpaid, just cos my employer would be the gov.

Now, I’m only talking minimum wage here and I’m not counting all the havoc that reeks at 5 o’clock or 7 or even 2am. I’m not counting that. I’d still be happy with this compensation. What about a single mother? She may or may not get help from someone every single day at around the same time.

I’ve heard of people paying their childcare provider $10-12 an hour. It does depend on where you live but let’s look at that figure for a minute. At $10 an hour I’d be paid:

$95 per day

$475 per week

$1900 per month

$20,900 per year

The stark truth is that when I get my social security summary, it keeps telling me that I have made $0 since bilingual baby was born. In a capitalist world, this means I am worth nothing. I have no value to society because I can’t make a dime. Obviously, I don’t agree with that, but the way mothers are treated one might change one’s mind.

So then you look at a stay-at-home mom who wants to make a dime (enter Leila). Perhaps for the feeling of being a part of a world that considers people valuable (mothering children does not provide the immediate rewards that crafting does). Perhaps it’s simply because the cost of living is such and layoffs continue (bilingual papi still has a job, thankfully) all around. You find work-at-home moms who are practically giving things away when they could charge a tiny bit more for their handiwork. But they don’t. Is it humility? Or that it’s hard to charge what something is actually worth? Are we really so far removed from the person who crafted what we buy that we can’t seem to figure out what their time and effort are worth?

Enter the podeagis and toys I’m making. I can now see that my time and effort are worth something. In effect, I could now sell a pod for what other sellers are charging and not feel bad. Ellaroo sells their pods for $70, Zidee pods on etsy are $90 and TwilliePie pods on esty are $105. My price will be $85 but for the Full Moon Tea Party this Friday I’m doing an introductory rate of $55. One night only!

Fixing Heavy Baby

Bilingual baby has been taking heavy baby on many adventures. At one point, I noticed that her neck was looking a little… detached. You can see in the original photo of heavy baby, that her head is cocked to the right (her right). Over time, the chin line slipped up toward the eye line. So, I decided to pull the head out from the body and retie everything. I retied the neck really tight- much tighter than the last time and I think that helped everything else. Here’s a picture of heavy baby after I finished her the first time:

Here’s a picture now that heavy baby has been fixed. Her head is much more compact and I think that makes her look more realistic. Also, bilingual baby requested eyes… so, she has embroidered eyes, too.

Here is bilingual baby, clothed, wearing heavy baby in a wrap. Gotta love the sunshine!

Roman Costume: Help!

I’ve been asked by a good friend to make her son a costume for his birthday coming up at the end of the month. I’m wondering if you all can give me some ideas. Here’s a picture of what he would like (though he doesn’t know I’m making him a costume):

Sorry for the blurr. I’m figuring I’ll have an easy time making him a white tunic but it’s the armour or chest plate that I’m wondering about. He’d really like this design and I’d like to make it happen. How would you get this design on fabric? What kind of fabric would you use? He really likes the gold…

This is such a fun project.

8 Months with a 2 year old

Baby brother is getting so close to crawling on hands and knees. So far he does the army crawl. Very efficiently. He also pulls up to standing with anything that is still for more than a second. He has 4 teeth and more coming. This morning he was in so much pain. He kept crying and couldn’t fall back asleep. We transfered ourselves into the other room so that bilingual baby and papi could keep sleeping. Eventually, we both fell back asleep.

He loves playing with bilingual baby. He smiles almost every time he sees her. No matter what she does, he loves her. I hope he never forgets this lesson.

Bilingual baby has started singing. Her repertoire includes many kid favorites plus a couple of prayers. She knows that a song from her delights mamas heart. (Her favorite is “Riverbed” by Ron Sexsmith which we’ve been singing to her forever.) She’s started sprinkling in “because…” and “sometimes”, though not on cue. You just have to wait and listen. We’re still on our puzzle kick. Loves them. I also find something so meditative (fancy word to associate with puzzles, perhaps). I also can’t find the word for the feeling I get when a puzzle is completed. Cool thing about doing puzzles with a toddler is that you do the same one over and over so you get that feeling of satisfaction over and over again. My mom, the teacher, says that by doing puzzles she’s learning mapping…. whatever that means. Not too interested in the educational link, though I know she’s learning, just not focusing on it. I don’t want to offer her a toy on the sole basis of education. She’s still in pure fun mode. Why bog her down with an adult’s perspective of what play should be? Adult’s are dull when it comes to child’s play.

I have to admit that up until recently, most of my thoughts were in the shape of ideals and theories that are based on my hopes for myself and my family. A good source tells me that the first 4 years bring out all the fears a person has about themselves as parents as well as about their children. Certainly true on our end.

I’ve started sewing for myself and gardening. On the sewing front, I have to admit I have been making things for kids and others and don’t really know how to make things fit me.