Have you ever seen something at a store or online and thought "I could make that myself for way cheaper!" yes, indeed this is a problem I have ALL. THE. TIME. Seriously, as soon as I start saying "ooh that's cute, but I bet I could make that myself...." There comes a look of sheer terror over my husband's face. I can't really blame him though, he has good reasons.
Point and case:
Four years ago I was pregnant for the first time. Among the aisles and aisles of gadgets and blankets and cutesy decor at the baby shops I didn't really know what I needed, so I sort of just copied my sister (who was also pregnant with her first just 2 months further along than me). She got a cute baby crib set, so I set out in search for one...not really paying attention to the fact I currently had no baby crib and wasn't planning on getting one immediately due to our living space constraints. No problem I thought, this would just give me more time to finish the set since I only started it a couple months before I was due.
Well now my son is 3 3/4 years old and the crib set sits unfinished. Sigh. This isn't to say that I haven't spent countless hours working on it (I stopped counting once I got above 100 hours) but it is still so far from being finished. Part of that is my own forgetfulness and laziness, part is unknowingly picking a design that was way more of a time commitment than I planned, and partly was just too many other pressing matters (like moving across country 6 times, and ridiculous morning sickness) rising to the top of my priority list causing this to be put on the back burner.
But without further ado I will show you the crib set I was trying to imitate:
Looking back I wish I'd chosen something different. Maybe it's just because I've been staring at the same unfinished pieces for 4 years now but I honestly don't love it like I used to (although I was never crazy about the bland faces an each monkey). But I refuse to throw in the towel. I've invested far too much time into this, and I have no better options at this point. And it's relatively gender neutral right? (i'm having a girl this time, so it better be)
The bulk of the work was finished about 3 years ago when I was able to finally find a cute monkey face to use as a template (thanks to a place mat I found at Target). Then I just had to trace and cut each piece and applique them onto each square. After, I did a tight zigzag stitch around each component of the face, and a spiral in the ear.
Then I got hung up on how to fill in the faces. For a good year. I knew the best option would be to embroider the eyes, nose and mouth but unfortunately by this point I had no longer had access to an embroidery machine let alone have any idea as to how to do custom designs.
So finally I gave in and decided to hand embroider all the faces. All 24 of them. First I drew the outline of the face onto the fabric (with a pencil, bad choice), then I very slowly stitched the outline on the machine (I tried doing it by hand and the results were less than pretty). Now I am currently filling in each monkey face by hand stitching each one. I've done about half of them.
Unfortunately the most tedious and difficult ones I left to the end (all the really tiny faces). And I'm due with baby #2 in about 4 weeks. ACK! At least this time I actually have a crib for my baby.
So anyways, this explains the extreme lack of posts over the past year. Hopefully that'll be changing soon as I get closer to finishing this beast, the nursery and get my body back to myself (you know, as much as you can have it to yourself with a new baby). Once it's closer to getting finished I'll post some updated pictures.
