Look at us, we started the nursery!

Folks, we have a nursery! After a few months of putting it off, then brainstorming, then putting it off some more, we finally cleaned out Mr. Right’s office/guest room (what a great guy), taped everything off, and got the thing painted, all in 24 hours.

A special thanks to my awesome sister who came over and painted the nursery for us! Talk about a servant’s heart. She knew that my doctor said no painting for me, and Mr. Right is crazy swamped with finals (oh, how we’re all counting down the minutes until grad school is OVER), so she just decided to do it for us. It was such a blessing.

You should have seen Mr. Right and I prepping the night before she came to get the room ready. I was in my work dress (because dresses are so much more comfortable than anything else right now), on my hands and knees taping off the baseboards while Mr. Right was on a ladder caulking holes and removing blinds. I’m not very graceful under typical circumstances, but I’m like a clumsy beast at this point, so I’m sure the neighbors got an eye full through our blind-less windows at 9:30 at night. And I’m just pregnant enough to not really care.

nursery 1

The next morning Mr. Right assembled our crib, and suddenly the room felt like a nursery. He has since moved in other furniture (an armoire for storage and a dresser that we’ll use as a changing table – pics to come), and slowly but surely we’re moving closer to being baby-ready.

nursery 2

The nursery will be mostly neutrals – grays and whites – with pops of color in our accents. This fabric, which is part of the quilt I’m making for her, is the inspiration for those pops of color – lot’s of tangerine-oranges, turquoises, and a few other random colors here and there.

nursery 3

And here’s the rest of the fabric for her quilt. We’ll be using the leftovers for pillows, possibly a bedskirt, etc. You know, whatever I get inspired to sew. Don’t be surprised if you don’t find some leftovers in my Etsy shop in the form of baby quilts or pillows.

map

And, finally, we’re thinking about using this picture for above the crib. Mr. Right and I have a real love for internationals (especially our ESL students!), and we also love to travel, so we think this is the perfect picture to go above our tiny sleeping baby. Plus, it reminds me of a quilt.

Stay tuned for more pictures as we make progress on the nursery. I’m 29 weeks along, so not too much longer until she’s here with us napping in this very room!

The Pregnant Girl Patchwork Quilt

Have I mentioned that I’m feeling better? To all of you dear friends and readers who have prayed for me and encouraged me through SIX LONG MONTHS OF ROUND THE CLOCK MORNING SICKNESS (bleh), I am pleased to announce that I have been (almost) completely nausea free FOR FOUR WHOLE WEEKS!

This is me doing a happy dance. Which is actually pretty disturbing considering the giant belly bouncing around.

So anyway, now that I’m feeling like a normal person these days (a ginormous normal person with a bowling ball sitting on her lap and a baby whose favorite position is bear hugging her bladder), I have been back to doing things I love. Like quilting. And eating. Lot’s and lot’s of eating, to the shagrin of my OB who all but wagged her finger when she saw that the scale reflected my newfound love of food (did you know food actually TASTES GOOD? I had forgotten.).

But enough of this rambling… I have quilt pictures to share. So back to the point, now that I’m feeling better I was able to reunite with my beloved sewing machine and whip out a new quilt top – not for any specific purpose other than it made me happy and I’ve been hankering to try this pattern.

9patch3

This is called a 9-patch pattern – if you look closely, you can see that even though all the scraps run together, they’re sewn into blocks of nine, and then those blocks are combined to make bigger blocks. I used a moda jelly roll so cutting the squares was super fast (you can also do this pattern by sewing strips and then cutting them, but I was feeling all organic and wanted to do the entire thing from scratch).

This is the perfect pregnant girl quilt pattern, because there IS no pattern. I wanted the overall look to be scrappy and cluttered looking – there’s something comforting in the craziness and unpredictability. Plus, since there’s no pattern, there wasn’t a lot of that obligatory getting up and down off the floor to lay out my pattern over and over as I sew. The only time I laid it out was at the very beginning to figure out how many patches I needed, and at the very end to pin on the border.

9patch2 I love this picture because you can see my new view as Wrenn girl grows.9patch1And there’s the final version. It still needs to be quilted, but since it’s for me, it’s going to have to wait until after sweet Wrenn’s quilt is finished. Which I have 11 weeks left to complete (assuming she’s on time). Oh my word, where has the time gone?

Stay tuned for more on her quilt – and her nursery – this week. And pics of our first baby shower. And baby bump pics. It’s going to be a busy week.