Simple curtains - the nursery is complete!

I love the blackout blinds on German windows - they are excellent for baby daytime naps and I'm sure they prevent early morning wake ups when the sun rises:

With this in mind, I decided that full curtains with linings were not really necessary for the nursery- much better to save the extra material for matching bedware ;-) (Plus the fact that my bump is now defying gravity, rendering any kind of fabric cutting and machine operation extremely difficult!) 

I love this material! I wanted to find something baby-like, dreamy and pretty that complimented the border and this was an absolute steal at 4 Euros per meter from Tedox:

So I made simple sheet curtains, with matching ties:

So here's a look at the finished nursery. Your room is waiting, it's time to come out and meet us Miss C.:

Thrifty gift sewing!

In this day and age, living on one income for a few years requires some serious budgeting. With all of the little people birthdays that crop up once you have children, you need to find ways to give nice gifts without spending a fortune on them. 

As the birthday of one of T.'s little friends was approaching, his mum asked me if I could sew a cover for his medical booklet to stop it from getting damaged/wet. A. told me that she liked patchwork and blue floral prints. I thought this was a great idea and an excuse for me to create something unique and personalised so this is what I came up with:

I don't know if you get something similar back in old England, but I do love the medical examination and injection books that are given to parents from day one here. Such a handy way to remember which injections your baby has already had and a great reminder not to miss the developmental check-ups.  Indeed, T.'s medical book has a list of check-up dates until 2016! Now is that German efficiency at it's best or what!?

Here's the said medical check-up and injection books in a cover I made:  

 
Creating a patchwork cover is a great way to make use of your scrap stash too. I love the Robert Kaufmann animal print at the top, my most expensive fabric to date and sadly all used up now:

I also made a notebook cover for another little boy:

 I'm currently working on a purple, personalised notebook cover to thank the lovely older lady who goes along to my pre-natal appointments with me to keep Toby entertained.

I'm absolutely huuuuuuuuge now at nearly 37 weeks and sewing (or doing anything productive really!) is getting very uncomfortable although I have finished the nursery curtains and am currently working on a little something for Christmas...... watch this space!

Baby girl quilts and the return of my sewjo!

For a few weeks I thought I was seriously losing my sewjo; I'm definately not someone who finds pregnancy easy physically and DEFINATELY NOT emotionally and when you're this big, it's hard to bend down to cut fabric, let alone sit at a sewing machine:

Luckily I managed to scrape together some energy and time to make a baby quilt for the bestie who's just had a baby:

 I'm really in to mixing pink with purple and lilac at the moment:

In fact, I loved this mix of fabrics and colour so much that I had to make an almost identical one for Miss C.'s nursery:

The nursery is coming along nicely at the moment:

 I just need to find the energy within my whale-like body to lay out and cut the material for the curtains.

The giving birth nerves are starting to kick-in now. Do I read through the birth report that I wrote last time but never read back to myself in preparation? Or are my memories of giving birth best kept as blurry for now?