The Crombies: Waiting for Baby

I'm still at home, waiting for Elizabeth to give us some signs (of labor) that she's ready to make her debut!

It's been a weird day for me, because last night and early this morning, I was having contractions anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour and a half apart. Haven't had any since about 12:30pm today, though. We did call into Triage at the Pavillion just to make sure I was still good to be at home, and they said absolutely, and that I'm doing just fine. They did tell me to try to drink 20oz. more water today than I normally do, so I'm working on that. (It's pretty hot out, so that makes perfect sense). I'm trying to drink about 2-3 of my Eddie Bauer water bottles full (that's 32oz. each).

This morning I woke up earlier than I wanted to, but I slept soundly all the way through the night, so I felt like that's good! I had a really hard contraction around 7:45 this morning when I was just getting up, but other than that it's just been a little bit uncomfortable today. At Robert's request to pamper myself a little bit, I made an appointment to get a pedicure at 11am this morning (we called last night to schedule that). But when this morning rolled around, I wasn't so sure I should go do it. I was having more signs that labor was imminent, and I almost canceled the appointment. Instead, Robert decided that he would go and drive me himself. I'm so glad I did it, because it really did help me relax, and it felt amazing!

After the pedicure, I suggested we take the TrailBlazer through the car wash, so that Robert didn't have to deal with it. (He'd already mowed the front yard last night, and had more yard work planned for today). He happily agreed, so we did that, and then he took me to get a vegetarian gyro for lunch (the only thing that sounded good).

We got home and had been planning on going to Robert's parents' house to watch the Kentucky Derby. But I was feeling funny. I drank a bunch of water and tried to shake it off, but I decided I needed to be at home this afternoon. I went outside where Robert was weeding the front flower beds, and asked if he instead wanted to invite his parents and sister over here, or if he wanted to just go by himself. He thought about it, and decided he was staying with me regardless, but in the end our plans ended up changing completely and we all just stayed at our houses. Just too much gardening and such going on with all of us today.

So, while the Derby was on, I made time for a project that I'd been putting off - Elizabeth's lampshade!

I actually made two different covers, but the first one was nothing short of epic failure. No joke. It looked terrible, and I knew it wouldn't work as soon as I started pinning it on the lampshade. Sigh.

Here's what I did:

1) Cut pattern.

After seeing how awful the first attempt went, I tried to figure out a simple way to cut a pattern. (Yes; me - the one who rarely uses patterns!) It was necessary. So, I just asked Robert for a paper grocery bag, and cut out the bottom and the length of one side so that it would lay flat. Then, I took the actual lampshade, and laid it on the paper bag with the seam down and marked on both ends of the lampshade onto the paper where the seam was. From there, I just rolled the lampshade starting at my marks from where the seam was, following first along the top and then along the bottom with my pencil until I got to the seam again.

2) Use pattern to cut fabric (leave 1/2" to 1"
along edges).

Then, I laid out the pattern on my fabric (I didn't pin it down, because I knew I needed to leave some room along the edges), and traced it with my pencil on the underside of the fabric. Using that as my guide, I cut around the lines I had traced with my pencil, being careful to leave about 1/2" to 1" extra room for ironing down and sewing the seams. Then I ironed the long edges down.

3) Pin fabric and ribbon to lampshade.

The next step was the trickiest. I pinned the fabric down to the lampshade to make sure that my seams were measured correctly before I sewed them down. Good thing I did this, because I found that even after careful measurement and planning, there were still some parts that had to be straightened out. Here's my disclaimer on this next part: Don't try this at home. I realized that I'd never get "perfect" seams ironed for the lampshade if I tried to do it flat again. So, having the fabric pinned down to the lampshade, I adjusted the seam (where it was ironed) along the top and the bottom to fit the lampshade exactly, with no extra fabric. Once I did that, I ironed it down, right against the shade. (Again, probably not the best way to do it). Leaving the fabric pinned, I picked out, measured and cut some cute ribbon from my craft area in my office, and cut a top and bottom border for the lampshade. I pinned that down also. Once I had it all pinned, I carefully took it off and ironed the seams of the fabric (long sides first). I used a 1/4" seam, but you could go longer if you wanted to.

This is what it looked like all pinned down.

4) Glue fabric to lampshade along side seam.

Next in my process was the fastest part: gluing! I just used my hot glue gun, and started with the top of the seam on the lampshade cover, and worked my way down to the bottom. I used sporadic dots of glue about 3/4" apart all along the seam to make sure that it wouldn't pucker or get pulled up.

5) Glue top & bottom seams to lampshade.

I used pretty much the same process for the top and bottom seams. The key here is to glue each side as you go. So, I found that 3-4 dots of glue about 1" apart along the top followed by 3-4 dots of glue about 1" apart on the bottom kept the fabric laying nice and flat, and it made it easy to keep straight and taught along the edges of the lampshade, too.

6) Glue ribbon to lampshade.

From there, I let my glue dry for a few minutes before I started attaching the ribbon. I used much bigger dots to glue the ribbon down to the fabric on the lampshade using the same process as step 5.

7) Finished lampshade!

Ta-da! Looks great, I think! I had a thought that I should have glued some pink buttons along the ribbon, but I couldn't find any, and I wanted to keep it simple, too.