The Beast is Done!

I'm so excited. The quilt I started for my son when I was pregnant is finally finished! It's his early first birthday present. I did block out his name for safety, but you get the gist...his full name is above the birth date.

Since we are moving at the end of the week (yikes!) the hubby wanted something to hold his iPad in the car so that the baby could watch cartoons on the road. Here's what I came up with:

To make this, I just modified the Kindle Fire Cover to fit the iPad, and added a strap with velcro and a strap with a hook. You basically just make the case for the iPad with the corner tabs to hold it. When you lay out your pieces, make a 3.5" strap that will go in the center of one long edge. Also make 2 8" straps, one for the center of each short edge. Place them all, between the two rectangular pieces of fabric (along with your corner pieces) raw edges matched, and sew around. Leave a space for turning on the edge without a strap. Turn right side out and top stitch around the entire thing, skipping the corners where your corner pieces are. Then add a clip/hook to the short strap and velcro to the 2 long straps. That way it hooks onto the mirror!

You can see the strap that goes around the back of the
mirror (velcros in place) and the hook that attaches to the D-ring on the mirror

Side view to see how it sits in relation to the car seat.

The Situation Necessitates...

That I take a break for a while. I'll probably still post tutorials that I find and want to try, or things that I've done, but who knows. I have been promising myself that I would finish my son's birth quilt. I started it when I was about 7 months pregnant, and he's now 11 months old and it's still not *quite* finished. I keep getting distracted by other crafts, and I really want to have it done by the time he's born, he's 6 months old, Christmas, the New Year, his first birthday.

So I need to focus on that. Not to mention, we're moving later this month. Not across the street moving either. It's more like across the country moving. Then we're going to go visit family who haven't seen the baby since he was 5 months old...he'll be 1 by the time we get there. I have no idea when we'll get our household goods (with the military it can sometimes take a month before you get them) or even when we'll get a house.

On top of all of that, I have a dear friend who is having a baby soon, so I need to crank out her baby gift. And I'm hoping to go back to work after the move (if I can find anything).

Once we're all moved in, there is another problem. The closest town to the military installation where we will be living is 45 minutes away, and the closest craft store is an hour away. So I'll have to have a detailed list and a good budget in order to make the trip. That means that, no matter how large my list of crafts that I want to do is, I probably won't be doing as many as I am here.

It makes me sad to say that I have to slow down, but with the baby getting bigger and more active, and our lives changing significantly, it has to happen. I will still be selling what I can on the Etsy site, and I am DETERMINED to keep this blog alive, I just can't keep up the pace that I have had going.

See you all after our lives have settled down a bit, and I will post pictures of the quilt as soon as I have it done...it's been over a year in the making!