Home-grown meal

We are in the midst of our first really cold spell (as I think many are).  Anyways my cooking has turned towards cold weather food.  Last night we had chicken and dumplings, mashed potatoes and corn....all grown right here (well mostly).  The chicken was from one of our chickens last spring.  The corn was the very last bag of frozen corn from last years crop and the potatoes were some of the last few from this year (I did not maintain my potatoes well this year so we did not get many).  For dessert we had sweet potato bread from last years sweet potatoes (this years sweet potatoes did great, but we still have some left from last year to finish up).

Quilts and decorating

 

I made this quilt for Madeline's nursery.  I spent the first half of my pregnancy working on it just a little bit at a time and it came together wonderfully.  With the exception of the fabric on the back and around the border I did not buy any fabric for this quilt (it would have been very expensive if I had bought that many different fabrics).  Family members have been giving me their scraps and I love how it worked out.

 

 

 The baby will be staying in our room until we feel she is ready to stay in her own room.  She has a space with some of her things and a craddle and chair in our room.  This quilt is on her chair in our room.  My Aunt made this quilt for her and it is beautiful (her quilting skills leave mine in the dust).  Note the dog who insisted on being a part of the show when we opened gifts.

 

We are loving the handmade baby things these days.

Several months later here I am....school is back and we are 2 months away from the highly anticipated birth of the newest member of our family.  I have been sewing a lot lately and this weekend I made this dress for the baby.  Now I just need to make or find a warm sweater and some stockings to go with and maybe this will be her Christmas dress.

Found the pattern for this dress in a stash of patterns that were in a bedroom closet when we moved into this house.  The pattern included this dress pattern and a pants pattern that I have used to make pants for my nephew.  If I can find enough fabric I like in my box of scrap fabric I will make some pants for baby next.  For this dress I used leftover fabric I used to line a skirt I made myself a year or so ago and a bigger piece of scrap fabric given to me when I was collecting for a quilt project.  So far in all the sewing I have done for baby I have only had to buy fabric for the back of her quilt and for the cushions on her chair, everything else has been made from scraps I had or that were given to me.  Finding good ways to use small pieces of fabric is fun and works well when you are sewing for someone who will be so little.