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Monday 5 August 2013

Upcycling Projects: Home Made Sleeping Bags

This blog has been neglected for a couple of weeks. The cause of this absence is that the 1337 Grandma came all the way from Singapore to stay for a month to spend time with her grandson (and as a side note bonus... with hubby and myself).

I'm very grateful for the times when mum comes to stay. She's obviously got her own stuff going on as well as another grandson who she's the weekday carer of but her coming over means that hubby and I have another pair of hands around the house to help catch the things that slip through the cracks (like making dinner, and finding time to have a shower and making sure that the sink doesn't get full before doing the dishes.. etc)



Having mum here also means that I can go into work full time and try to make headway on the obscene amount of money we'll need to have to put a down-payment on a house. 

Between working 5 days a week, spending time with Mum and the usual caring for an increasingly talkative child, I haven't had time to finish writing the backlog of articles I've had planned for this blog. 

While Mum was here she also took the opportunity to teach me how to sew... again. Last year, Hubby got me a sewing machine, which I had great plans for but never really had the time or the confidence to use properly. The 1337 Grandma is a wizard with her sewing machine and is responsible for all the burp cloths, swaddle wraps, bedsheets and bibs that The Little Man uses. Last trip she saw the Grobag that I bought for The Little Man off eBay. I thought I was all savvy having bought it second hand in pristine condition for $30 but she looked at it and said it would be so easy to make. 

She made a couple for my nephew but didn't know how big The Little Man was so didn't make any till she got here. Fortunately she let me work on it as well and it was a great project to work on together. 

Altogether we made 4 baby sleeping bags. We got cloth remnants at spotlight and picked up some zips total price about $5 in materials per bag. To own truth the most expensive thing was the zip because I wanted the really nice chunky kind. We made our own binding from scraps including:
  • an old single bedsheet I own for some reason (even though I haven't been in a house with a single bed for about 7 years) 
  • 1 of hubby's business shirts which got an ink stain on a small patch on the sleeve (which we cut out)
  • a couple of odd pillow cases which don't seem to match any of my sheets.
Other sewing projects included: 
  • adding a lace edging to one of my skirts (it was a little on the short side and made me a little self conscious when bending over to pick up The Little Man.
  • hemming the legs on a pair of jeans. 
  • making burp cloths
  • learning how to make binding
Mum and I also got started on a T-shirt Rug but it takes a while and we didn't get it finished while she was here. I'll do a post on how to make one soon. I've been taking pictures of my progress as I get through it. A very time consuming task but also very addictive. 

Just having Mum around seems to make things happen. The people at work are also glad that I'm able to come in more than twice a week, they're already asking if mum can come visit again in July when we're going to be pretty busy finishing up a bunch of projects. When my mother is around, things just seem to get done. 

Now we're going to have to adjust to fending for ourselves again. And working on convincing her to come over one more time this year. Maybe I'll get The Little Man to ask her :-D

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