the post that never got written

When I said at the end of my last post "...any days now", little did I know that only a few hours from writing those words down, that very day I'm going to have my baby.

It was a total shock and surprise. A full week away from the due date, and with all the doctors and nurses saying how high up his head and my cervix still were, everybody thought I'll be well overdue. We only reluctantly drove to the hospital to get a tiny spot of trickling fluid checked out, because you have to, to be on the safe side - even though we thought not much of it... Halfway out the front door I asked my boyfriend - Shall I change my top? It has a few holes in it... No need, he said, we are only being sent home after, so don't bother... In the hospital, being hooked up to the quietly galloping baby heartbeat monitor we were still joking around about the situation, thinking we will be sent homewards in a minute to concentrate on making some dinner.

Not so - instead suddenly it got serious. The trickle of fluid was in fact the waters breaking. I had no signs of contractions, or any amount of dilation, or any readiness of the cervix being anywhere near ripe enough for birthing... When the doctor switched on the ultrasound, it turned out that we had a breech baby! How he fooled everyone - nurses, doctors, me - with his bony little bum, for all those months..!

The options were quickly presented to us, and as soon as we heard the list of risks involved in natural or induced delivery in our case, I had no desire to do it naturally anymore. All my preconceived ideas about how it will happen went out the window: the breathing techniques, the no painkillers, no epidural, the ladida of it all... I was not interested in anything except my baby anymore, I wasn't interested in my fears or my preferences or how I will do during the procedure. All I could think of was our baby's health, so all of a sudden it was not dinner-, but emergency caesarean time.

 

 

I get exhausted just to think about how intense it was from that moment on, right up until a few days ago...now it's settling down bit by bit. We now think that the whole scenario was a blessing in disguise. Not at all because of the labour pains and how I didn't need to go through it. It's because how our little boy was in there and how unready my body was to give birth to him. Now we have a very healthy two weeks and a day old baby boy, he is beautiful and turning into a total milk fiend.

I will write down the whole birth story soon, before all the funny and teary details sink into post-natal oblivion. For now I just wanted to let you guys know that it's done, that he's with us and it's all good. We are very happy, a bit tired, very much on a learning curve with it all, but it's bliss.

I'm still on blog break, but will allow myself to write when I have a moment, hopefully starting with the full birth story. At the moment the scar and the baby are the boss of me, so we are spending most of our time indoors, mainly feeding and sleeping, not a lot of thrifting or crafting going on at all. All in its own good time.

Until next time then - enjoy your autumn (or spring) wherever you are; see you here again soon! xx

PS.: There was meant to be a post between the summer recount and the birth announcement, entitled 'Any day now'. It was meant to be about my final preparations, but obviously it never got written - hence the title...

goodbye summer, hello autumn

It's that time of the year again - the season is turning.

Only a few days ago I was looking out our kitchen window at the huge birch in our neighbours' yard and thought how green it still was despite the autumn feel hanging in the air. A couple of days later, and the same tree is adorned with yellow leaves. Autumn happens here just as fast as spring - you blink and the scenery is all different in a sudden.

Summer felt fantastic this year - about eight weeks of heatwave, sunshine, hot temperatures and gorgeous light. We shall have some really nice memories to reminisce over in the winter.

The amount of sky- and flower-gazing, and the number of teddy bear clouds spotted...

Those middle of the night talks and laughs with boyfriend on the balcony, sitting in a towel with a glass of cold sparkling water, trying to escape the sleepless heat inside the apartment...

In the daytime, going for little walks in town, keeping to the shaded side of the street, trying to cool down with funny flavours of ice creams and ice lollies - cactus, liquorice, and the cola one that colours your tongue black with medical carbon...

The lazy days, sitting in the breezy living room, just me and the bump, sharing a melting piece of extra dark chocolate...

Ducking into shops and cafes for a little time away from the midday asphalt heat, or into the cool cellar air of the big basement junk shop; and then the orange dress for a euro that became the only thing I could turn to during the hottest of days...

The lovely surprise when discovering those really good Hungarian plums that taste like childhood at the local grocer's...

The craziness of sweating by the oven in the hot kitchen waiting for a batch of muffins to satisfy stubborn cravings in a healthier but more labourious way...

The list goes on and on - I think I'll always remember this summer as a very special one.

And the journey of being pregnant is almost up to its finish line - it's really any days now - but that's actually another post I'd like to post before I go off the radar a little longer still.

I hope every one of you have had a nice summer, and a smooth start to the autumn!

PS. I've been not so good at replying to comments here, or leaving comments on other blogs lately, but rest assured I'm still reading and appreciating each word! x 

sewing like there's no tomorrow

 

I've been sewing a lot in the last few months. 

Most lately, I started on a receiving blanket in a thrifted jersey that has the cutest Miffy-esque print. I still need to buy backing, and hem it together but it's almost there.

 

Before that, I made a baby sling from thrifted blue paisley and some tomato red jersey. It turned out to be too long, probably due to having to measure across the bump, but I decided I wait until baby's here and shorten it then.

Before that, I made another pair of thai fisherman's pants, out of a thrifted length of blue washed silk for boyfriend.

By the way, would any of you like to have the thai fisherman's pants basic sewing pattern in the post?

I changed my pattern slightly to suit my sewing preferences more so I don't need the basic one anymore. Instead of putting it in the paper recycling, I thought I'd offer it here in case somebody fancies having it. If yes, leave a comment below! (If there's more than one takers, I'll put the names into a little draw.)

Anyway, in my ninth month of pregnancy now even the goal of finishing the receiving blanket seems very ambitious.Although it's a matter of sewing around the fabric twice... I'd really like that Miffy-esque print to cuddle our babe so it will be the last thing I sew before I stop being creative for a while...

sun prints

It was exciting and fun to make sun prints for my graduation project many-many years ago... I used daylilies and different kinds of fabrics soaked in a cyanotype concoction I bought from a photography store. The above examples are some samples I dug out from the depths of my fabric cupboard; they are from that long-ago project of mine.

Making sun prints again would be a nice way to soak up and make the most of the remaining rays of August, don't you think?

Have a sunny Sunday!

the case of the fifty cents find

The other day, while doing general food shopping, I popped in to one of the two local charity shops on my way home to see if they had a lid for my latest Pyrex score. And what do you know, a perfect one in the right size complete with the JAJ logo was waiting for me right there on the shelf, priced at fifty cents.

I was rather unprepared for this to actually happen - I had no change on me, just my plastic. I didn't think paying fifty cents by card in a charity shop a decent thing to do, the transaction probably costs more that that... So I delved deeper into the junk to see if I could find some other nice things to put in my basket too. 

In the fabric room, I pulled out a lovely old screen printed panel from a big box. It's a double panel, I folded it in half for the photo. Maybe it'd be nice to fix it on the wall properly above baby's bed, and perhaps later it could be cut up for a quilt.

I also picked up two squishy sponge cubes covered in a fabric with Russian Cyrillic letters. I would have liked if there was a third one also, but I didn't want to leave these two behind just because there wasn't. Baby has two little hands after all, so one cube to squish in each.

And then I came across a pile of lovely old Ladybird books, which I think surprised me even more than finding the perfect Pyrex lid on impulse... Eight sweet old English children's books from the 1960s cropping up in this small Finnish town... I was delighted! They also cost fifty cents each, so once they were in the basket I went to the till and payed up feeling rather happy.

after the storm

A little pictorial update on the balcony - the sunflowers are taking their time to show their full beauty, so it's still mainly just greenery.

Last week's thunderstorms were a welcome relief from the heat, both us and the plants had a chance to refresh, which meant a few days' worth of better night's sleep in a cooler bedroom for me.

I really like how things are after a rainfall, with colours intensified and the air freshened smelling of wet earth.

vintage Hungarian cheese labels

I thought it'd be a good time to show you my vintage Hungarian cheese label collection, while I'm a bit unmotivated about browsing in the thrifts due to the soaring temperatures we are having here.

These cheese labels were an impulse buy from Ebay a few years ago. I think they cost me seven pounds with postage, and I only had to very briefly battle with one more bidder for them... I don't look for thrifty stuff on Ebay anymore, but for a short period of time all those years ago I used to hunt for vintage paper ephemera on there.

I reckon the trigger for my bidding was the childhood nostalgia that rose up in me as soon as I spotted a couple of cheese brands in the batch that used to be part of my school lunches and elevenses for years as a kid.

And the ones that are older than me were just so beautiful - my parents and grandparents surely remember them. Just love their screenprinted colours and the lettering.

Before we moved countries, I had these old labels arranged and framed up in a big steel A3 picture frame. Right now they live in an envelope. After pulling them out for this post I thought I really ought to get them framed again - they'd happily hang in the kitchen and become best mates with our vintage clock for sure...

quilt progress #5 - it's ready!

Yes, the quilt is ready! Before I show you the finished state, let me tell you first how I framed it with bias binding cut from the same fabric as the backing. I opted for bias binding because it won't wear out as easily as other edgings.

For bias binding, you need to cut at a 90 degree angle across the straight grain. Put a set square to the fabric's straight edge like in the picture below - the set square's long edge will show you the true bias. I use a long ruler to draw up the binding strips. To bind a 1 cm edge you will need to cut a 4 cm wide bias strip = 1 cm times two plus 1 cm seam allowance at both edges.

I needed around 4 and a half metres of bias binding, so I planned for 5 meters to be generous. Of course none of the strips cut would be as long as that. It doesn't matter, because it's really easy to join up bias strips - the only rule is that you need to sew them together at an angle, like so:

 

Once I had my bias strips ready, I first spent some time basting the edges of the quilt to prepare for sewing. You don't necessarily have to do this; the quilting stitches should hold everything together. The reason I basted was because my charms ended up on the bias at the edges of the quilt which makes the fabric stretchy, and I wanted no chance of distortion during sewing. Once all was secure, I pinned on the bias binding and stitched it on.

 

Usually you'd want to have a nice machined seam to show at the front, and then a hand-finished edge (or a very precise machined edge) on the back. 

After unpicking three times, I decided that I'll have to do it the other way around. My difficulty was that I wanted the binding to join exactly to the tip of the nice squares along the front, but I'd always end up sewing slightly over or under it... 

So I machined on the back and then proceeded to hand-finish at the front, in order to be super exact about where the points and edges met. I got on with the hand-sewing phase while watching old Miss Finland competitions from the 1950s and 60s on TV.

 

I need to mention that I cannot do a proper mitred corner to save my life. I struggled with it long enough by now trying to understand the actual technique to no avail, so I just made up my own solution.

I bound the blanket's shorter edges first. Then did the longer edges, leaving the joining 1 cm unstitched at each corner. Then just folded and tucked and hand-stitched until they looked like mitred corners. I'm sure it doesn't fool the pros but it looks good enough to me.

So, after 3-4 months of labour of love, this first quilt for our first baby is finally ready!