To start with the most important news: I have my husband back and we have a house to move into next week!!! It is so good to be a family again. SO, so so good. There is a light at the end of the tunnel of chaos that has been this summer. YIPPEEE!!

And, drum roll please, I have completed 3 Big Zig quilts for my boys.

I started on Saturday, August 29th and worked non-stop (except for Sundays) until they were done on Tuesday, September 9th. Whew!

Details of Jonah’s (front/back):

Logan’s (front/back):

Ian’s (front/back):

I didn’t have my book (it’s packed in storage somewhere in Denver), so I was probably reinventing the wheel with a lot of it. I even remembered that on triangles a squared plus b squared equals c squared, but in the end I didn’t need all that fancy geometry because I just ended up cutting squares the size I wanted the long side of each triangle and cutting them diagonally into 4 triangles. That way when I was piecing the long strips of triangles together I was working safely with the straight grain and not the crazy stretchy bias. Getting my triangles overlapped just right so that my seam allowances were lined up was tricky at first. I ended up tearing apart the dark green zig zag a few times, but by the time I was on quilt 3 I was a pro. Just marking the quilting lines took a whole day, and then I just used my mom’s regular sewing machine, with a walking foot, to do the quilting. That took about a day each. A long day each. Go, stop, pivot. Go, stop, pivot. Over and over. And over and over.

But they’re done!! The boys love them and I got them out of my mind and into reality!

Now it’s time for a road trip, a stop at Ikea, some supervising of the movers, arranging furniture, unpacking boxes, meeting neighbors and getting on with this move already!!

It is essential for my sanity to be creating something. That has made this nomadic summer a bit hard, but as soon as we got here to my parents house and I had access to a sewing machine I got to work on this:

My little brother and his girlfriend had a little baby girl right before we got here, so naturally she needed a blankie from her Aunt Jess.

I have fallen in love with Kaffe Fasset’s shot cottons— the warp and weft threads are different colors, so the fabric is almost solid with the perfect amount of subtle texture.

The other cool thing is that another brother’s mother in-law (you got that?) has a long arm quilting machine. Driving that thing over my quilt was like magic. I love how it turned out.

(For real baby quilt inspiration you should really check out my friend April’s quilts.)

I haven’t been totally idle on the creating front until now, though. While we were in Alabama I discovered that I was growing little fingers and toes and eyelashes in my tummy.

And since I didn’t pack any maternity clothes for our summer of travel, the first thing I had to make was a new skirt to fit over my tummy. I wear it nearly every day. I used Amy’s tutorial here with a few minor adjustments.

This pregnancy is the main reason I just haven’t been able to wrap my head around blogging. I just didn’t know what to say. I could have just not said anything about it, but the nausea and sleepiness were a hard fog for me not to mention. I mean, 5 kids! That’s a lot of kids. And, I’ve had miscarriages between Jonah and Logan and then between Logan and Ian, so I was sure that this pregnancy wouldn’t stick– just make me a tired, crazy, emotional wreck while my husband was thousands of miles away. But, now the bump there is undeniable and I can feel the flutter of little elbows and feet every now and then. I did have scare a couple of weeks ago, made a trip to the ER, and tried to hold myself together as I layed on the bed for an ultrasound, positive I would see just a bunch of lifeless globby stuff with maybe a recognizable limb or head, like I’ve seen on previous ER visits, but to my surprise there was a crystal clear spine, little ribs, and a beating heart right in the middle of them. There was a sweet, perfectly shaped little head, fingers and toes, and, of course, obvious little boy parts.

So it’s real. I’m going to be the mother to 1 girl and 4 boys come February.

And I can be excited about it now.