Quarantine Chronicles: Maternity Wardrobe

It surprises me how few fashion posts and info there is out there for pregnancy. I mean even fashionistas get pregnant, right? Any who, I thought I'd write a bit about my process with it all, because I think it can be difficult to deal with the changes of your body and the pressure coming from everywhere about how big or little or whatever you should be while pregnant. At the very least you should be able to feel cute in what you wear.

I got pregnant in December, so the fist part of my pregnancy was while it was cold. We did have a colder, longer winter than we usually do in Northern California. It lasted through March, because of that I do have some cold weather clothes this time. One thing I do suggest is, if you can, get maternity clothes sooner rather than later. It just makes life easier and more comfortable. I found that I wasn't comfortable in normal clothes around 8-10 weeks. This was because my pelvis poppped out pretty quick and made pants, leggings and things of this sort tight. It was also uncomfortable for me to have anything squishing my uterus. So getting leggings and a pair of maternity jeans at about 10 weeks made me a lot more comfortable. When you feel sick and fat, because of being bloated, having comfy bottoms make things nicer.

In the beginning I used a lot of my normal clothes, and honestly still use quite a few pieces that I wore before. While it was cold I just layered more, I would wear dresses with a shirt under or a coat over. Here are the pieces I used most often for that, and they all still fit at 5 months. The green blazer is a linen blazer that I wear often in the colder months, but is too hot now. It tightens an outfit at the waist while leaving space for growing belly. The brown cardigan is something I crocheted up for the changing temperatures and it's wonderfully comfortable in lots of weather. If your curious, it's a wool silk blend yarn, which is amazing. The blue button-up was a loose fitting shirt when I wasn't pregnant and even now it fits, although not so loosely. I would wear it under dresses mostly, but now wear it over and tie it up at the waist. The other piece is a slip. It's the only one I own for now, but it's a great way to add another layer for warmth and since I don't really wear bras, it really saved me some pain from rubbing against fabrics while my breasts were developing.

These were my main garments until very recently and some still are. The two top items, the dress and top, are no longer being worn, because it's too hot now. The dress is a cute linen dress with an empire waist line (so under the bust and not at your natural waist). It served me well when it was colder, but now with the long sleeves and it being a the high 80's, it's too hot. The top was bought with some maternity clothes and I wasn't paying close enough attention to the fiber contents. It's, of course, polyester and as soon as it wasn't 60 degrees or colder I felt like I was going to die in it. So it's out now too. The beautiful white dress was one I made years ago and was designed with pregnancy in mind. It's empire waisted as well (which is very flattering during pregnancy) with a bust area that can expand. I wore it earlier in the year with my slip under and the green blazer for some more warmth and it's so pretty! Now that it's a bit hotter I wear it with the blue shirt tied over and it's just as cute! The overalls I bought a few years ago for gardening, but wear them often just because I like them. I knew they would work throughout my pregnancy, because when on a hike once, my niece who was 7 at the time, got in the back of them when she was too tire and she fit well back there. Before being pregnant I would wear them in the summer with a bandeau or bralet under and it was actually comfortable. So I plan to continue that this summer.

These are a few of the things I actually bought for my maternity. Now that I'm bigger the maternity tees are more comfy, because they don't ride up like normal tees will. Most of my normal tees do still fit though, but probably not for much longer. The leggings are amazing! I got some from Kohl's which were ok, but the ones from target are super cool! In total I got what you see here, plus two other tees and two leggings that are mid-calf length. I think I could've gone without the tees and the jeans, but it did help having options while I was still getting used to dressing for pregnancy. The leggings you should definitely get! If you buy nothing else for pregnancy, these will make the difference!

As it's gotten warmer I've pulled out more of my summer clothes and with all the time I've had I mended a few older pieces that have added to my wearables. The only piece here that is technically maternity is the shorts which I did buy along with the other items from before. The shorts don't have the belly bit, which is needed for summers here, since it gets so hot. They are really comfy and I plan to make one more pair out of linen and some elastic, because I don't think one pair will be enough. The lace top I've had forever and because it's see through the fact that it's big on me normally was not a negative. Now it still fits me fine and I have an under tank that fits me great. The white top was actually something my mom passed onto me and I kept it since it wasn't fitted at the waist and thought it would be a good top for pregnancy. I often wore this under that green blazer before I was pregnant and while I was still small. It was very cute. The green dress is a repair I did a few weeks ago after the decluttering when I rediscovered a bunch of mending projects I had set away and forgot about completely. So I mending it all up and it is the cutest maternity dress! It makes me look like a pregnant faery, which I am so down for!

There of course have been some clothes I tried to make work for maternity that just didn't go well. The romper/jumpsuit whatever you want to call it, in the light tan color was something I got while shopping for the other maternity clothes. I got it two sizes too big so it would have belly room and the only part that was way too big and looked bad was the armholes sagged out. Luckily throwing a dart in there took, maybe, 10 minutes. It looks nice, but my husband just doesn't like it and always has a sad face on when I wear it. Plus after getting it home and trying to wear it a few times, the color doesn't lend itself well to being paired with anything! I may try to dye it and hope that maybe that revives it. The dress breaks my heart a bit. I love the fabric so dearly! It's this beautiful rustic silk, that has the most amazing texture. However, it's really not a good fabric for this style of dress. It's quite thick and makes the gathered skirt stick out on its own. I don't think this would be the worst look when I'm big enough, but by then it will be very hot and I think that fabric will be too thick for the time of year. The blouse is cute and looks pretty good on me, but with my belly it sits kind of high. With some shorts in the summer I don't think it will be too bad, but it's not great.

I plan to make a few more items to fill out for the summer. As I mentioned earlier, a pair of linen shorts, another two sundresses, a pair of overalls that are short length, and some bralets/tops. My biggest trick for keeping cool enough is natural fibers, even 20-30% polyester can make a huge difference in the garment ability to breathe and you need all you can get around here, especially being pregnant. Here's some pictures I have of these clothes actually being worn. Hope this was helpful or at least interesting!

The tie dye dress is my most recent addition. Stay safe and sane out there!

Quarantine Chronicles: The Great Decluttering

Before this whole thing went down we had planned a trip with my Dad to Disneyland. Tom got time off work and then everything shut down, so we had even more time to just sit at home together. At the beginning of that we also decided to cleanse ourselves of computer. In our boredom we started creating a list of tasks we could do and ended up with the goal of finishing up the entire apartment.

Everyone has that place in their house that things go when you don't know what to do with them. Crafters are probably even worse. We had those places and worked on each place one by one. The first to get hit was the big closet off of the craft room where we kept our clothes and stored some craft items. The goal was to eventually get all the craft stuff out of there, so by redoing that space we really had to redo a lot of the craft room itself.

Since I was going through all of the fabrics I had in the closet hoping to get them into my shelves where the rest of my fabric was, I had to go through my shelves to get everything I didn't want out of there. At the start I didn't think I would be able to get everything I wanted into the shelves, but somehow I made it happen! It was so nice to just have it all there.

Tom tackled a few boxes let over from our move, hiding in the corner and  he cleaned up the whole desk. After that we were on the downhill. I was able to quickly reorganize the shelves in our laundry room to make space for Tom car washing stuff.

 Then I hit a few other places and we moved things all around. I thought the best way to do this was to pull everything out of the places we didn't want it to stay and put it in the middle of the living room.

From there we decided what of it we didn't want. We have a few toys we have collected for the eventual baby and in the meantime for when my niece, Sephie, came over. We went through those and got rid of some and noted down what would be good additions

We also got this beautiful shoe rack that gave up such a nice space difference between the nursery and entryway.

It was so amazing to get everything cleaned up, or gotten rid of. The apartment has been so easy to keep clean since then, now that everything has it's place to go. And with the baby coming, it's nice that everything is in place.

 Hope you all are finding ways to use the extra time inside to maybe enjoy your lives more when this is all over. Every situation has the good and the bad, right? Stay healthy and sane out there!

Quarantine Chronicles: Sewing Adventures

Good day!
Hope you're all doing as well as possible! I've been doing a lot of sewing during our time at home and wanted to share my projects with you. If you have any questions about how I constructed the projects I can post a more detailed description in a later post.

I started out making several things for my coming little one, starting with the diaper bag. I had planned this for awhile, but never got started on it until the quarantine. Probably because it involved many things I haven't done before and I felt needed more time to focus on it. I don't usually make bags, but this one turned out so good! I will definitely be trying my hand at others.


I had a chance just as the quarantine closed up several stores, to go out and get fabric for this with my Mom. We had a blast picking out the fabric for the diaper bag as you can see above. I had picked out the pattern, the Maker's Tote, almost a year ago. We also got supplies to make changing pads in a similar theme.

 I, of course, did a test packing after it was done to find out if it really was a good size and it's perfect. The only thing I might add on later, somehow, is a shoulder strap.

The next thing I made was two changing pads which were super simple. The hardest part was deciding what size I wanted them to be.

I got some iron-on laminate, so that I could make whatever cotton I picked out become water proof and used a soft flannel for the other side. Some cotton quilt batting went between and then I just did a typical bias binding like you do on a normal quilt.

I took the extra time to hand sew the binding down, so I wouldn't break the water proof side. That took a long time, since I'm still not that used to hand sewing, but it was worth it! They look perfect!

 I also sewed in a strap at the top. That way I could fold them in thirds long ways, then about the same up and tie them in a small bundle, for when they were in the diaper bag.

I still had flannel and laminate left so I decided to make some sheets for my bassinet. I put the laminate on the underside of the flannel so that it would still feel like flannel to lay on, but wouldn't let water damage the bassinet mattress.

I spent awhile sewing masks and cleaning the house. During which time we realized that a cloth bag would be the perfect way to store this wood train a friend got the baby. After going through my scraps to make the masks, I found this piece of fabric that I couldn't make into a mask to be used elsewhere, but I realized it would be perfect for the train. I lined it with muslin for neatness and extra durability and it turned out perfect!

I've run out of this to make for the baby, because I don't have clothing patterns for the little one yet, but I did buy those the other day! These are some of the books and patterns I got. They should be coming in by the end of this week, so next week I'll be having a lot of baby/toddler clothes to sew.

For this week I'm working on two maternity items I need soon. One is a cute pair of overalls that I'm making a shorts version of. It should fit me after pregnancy too, which is always great. The other is a sun dress from a light weight rayon fabric Tom picked out for me. You'll have to wait till next week to see those finished products. Hope your week goes well and I'll be posting again soon! Stay healthy and sane out there!

Quarantine Chronicles: Mask Tutorials

Hello people!

A week ago I was asked to make some masks for my mother's household. So I spent some time designing and making some cloth masks to keep our droplets to ourselves. This is not a design that will do much more than keep droplets out of your mouth while it's on, but it will also keep your droplets from other people in case your sick and don't know it.

It's a simple design that my husband helped me with to mimic surgical mask. It's two layers of cotton fabric, so it's breathable. You'll need two pieces of cotton fabric that are 8"x9", 6 inches of elastic, pins would be helpful, and some way to sew it together. I used my sewing machine, but it can be hand sewn if you don't have that.

Step 1:
Cut your fabric and elastic. Two rectangles of 8" by 9" and 6 inches of elastic is what I've been using. Thinner elastic is generally most comfortable and if you're making these custom than you can size the elastic better.

Step 2:
Place fabric piece right sides together. We're going to use 1/2 inch seam allowances so on the 9" sides measure a half inch on top and bottom, put a pin in place to mark it.

Step 3:
Now put the elastic up against the pin on the side away from the edge and pin it. This way they will but at the very corners at the end. I learned that pinning it straight more than a half inch in keeps the elastic from moving around right before you sew it. Also watch out that the elastic isn't twisted before you pin it down.

Step 4:
Sew with 1/2 seam allowance around the rectangle leaving a hole to flip it right side out. I usually just start 1/3 of the way down one of the sides without elastic.

Step 5:
Flip right side out and press all sides.

Step 6:
Pin pleats on the elastic sides, the sides that were 9" to begin with and are now 8". I found that 4 pleats are needed for comfort. Three don't allow good coverage, but 4 are very comfortable. I didn't measure these exactly, I started one inch down from the top on both and trying to get the bottoms to generally match. Mine were no more than a half inch, but not much smaller.

Step 7:
Top stitch around the whole thing. Be careful not to let the pleats slip out, so wait until your in the first pleat to remove the first pin. After that I removed the pins as I came to the pleat, a bit before it went under the foot so I could make sure the edges lined up well. This is mostly to make it look neat rather than any functional reason.

Now your done! It's pretty simple and quite fast after the first one. Be careful not to put the elastic on the 8" side, it's easy to forget. Hope this is useful to you guys and stay sane out there!

Quarantine Chronicles: The Beginning

Hello there,

It's been three strange weeks as we all shelter in place here in California. Like the rest of you, we have been trying to figure out how to continue some kind of normal enriching life. I haven't been working at my lovely yarn store for three weeks, but Tom is still working at the hospital. We are lucky that most of our income comes from Tom's job, and I was able to get unemployment. This means we haven't been economically effected in a major way, which is a blessing.

Neither of us fall into high risk groups, even with me being pregnant. So we are keeping to the safety procedures, but mostly for others safety. We have been missing our close people. My sister and her household are completely locked down, because of someone in her household that is very high risk. My grandparents are also fully isolated, and most people I know are generally not taking visitors. The world seems a bit lonely than it did three weeks ago, but I've got very good at video chats and have three different apps so I can chat with all my different people.

The saddest thing for me so far has been the fact that I don't get to share my first pregnancy with others besides Tom. It's definitely not that worst news some people have right now, but it's been sad for us. On the other side it's been a positive thing we have to think and focus on. This has kept us motivated to stay active and have been taking long walks most days and are keeping up on our strength workouts. Which feels great to do when we're not as able to be out and about.

After the first week we realized we were spending so much time on the computer and were sick of it. So we decided to try an experiment and not go on the computer for anything other than looking up specific stuff. We wanted to see what parts of our lives were being effected and how long it would take to kick the addiction and browsing. For caffeine it takes five days to go back to normal, so maybe it would be similar to that.

 

It was a great second week! The first day so or we spent a lot of time just trying to come up with things to do, but we came up with some long term goals and got to them pretty fast. We decided to declutter the whole apartment and were just able to finish today. We also had some fun with sewing and Melody (our cat) got into some fun while we were working. I'll be writing a few posts on those things, since I'm bored and I thought some of you might be as well. Hope you enjoy reading and that it relieves some of your bored during these times.

Dense Living: Japanese Style

After a few years of trying to rent into a rural like situation and having blow up in our faces about 3 times, we decided to accept that for the time being we are living in the city. Our idea of good city living is very different. You loose out on several different things, like our own gardening space and being able to keep animals, but you gain convenience and low management living.

I think you should always trying to use your space as best as possible, because in our age of over population space is a limited resource. After living in an old three bedroom house, we decided to downsize and try really dense living that we hadn't tried before. We recently moved into a one bedroom apartment and brought all of my craft room stuff with us. To be able to make this work space-wise we used the traditional Japanese style of dense living. We gave away our bed and our living room and dining room set and traded them in for a futon and a Chabudai table.

During the day we have the Chabudai table in the living room area and it's used as a dining and lounging space. The space we are now not using as a dining space is used as a nursery, waiting for when we get pregnant again and finally get a little one. The futon sits happily in the closet waiting its turn to be used and the "bedroom" is used as the craft room/office.

At night the table is folded up and leaned against the wall and the futon is put out in the living room. We thought about whether the living room or office would be the better sleeping area, but we tried the living room first, because it's more spacious and we liked it enough to never feel like trying out the bedroom.

We wanted to try this method of living out for awhile, because it seemed to interesting. We wanted to downsize anyways, because since the events last year in Butte county, it was too much for us to keep up with everything that needed doing at our old place. We knew this would be a long term living situation so we knew if it was awful, we wouldn't need to do it for long.

We are loving it! I'm surprised how good it feels to have all areas available for use during the day and not have a whole room that's left unused, or largely unused, during the day. The futon is amazingly comfortable. The first week or so I would wake up a bit sore, but somehow still feel more rested. Now I'm never sore. The Chabudai table is nice to eat at the a great place to sit a knit at too. We are still adjusting to sitting differently. Both of us are gaining more flexibility in our legs and strengthening our backs.

So just using the futon and table has been enjoyable, but it's even better when you count the areas we can use for different tasks now. The bedroom is now a fully functioning craft room and a work space for Tom to work on his videography. Plus the dining area is now a nursery that will function perfectly, because it's easy to access, but also a little out of the way.

I can tell why this way of living is still used in many places in Japan. It's so comfortable even in much tighter spaces. It also feels good not taking up more room in this crowded world than I really need. Do you guys have any questions? What are some things you do to live more densely or efficiently? Thanks for reading! Hope to see you next week!