a new list

I started feeling my morning sickness fade early last week (Woohoo!), a few days out from the Olive Tree Market. I was SO thankful! And so, in the waiting room for my antenatal appointment, I started to write an excited list of what I wanted to get done before the big day. I have so many ideas of things I could make for great Christmas gifts. And most of the things I have for sale aren't in that easy "hand over your money" price bracket. And ladies wrap skirts! They sold so well in my shop earlier in the year. And people have been asking if make cushions. And kids bags! They'd make great little gifts and my kids love them...

"Jodi Godfrey?"

I put my pen down, slowed down my brain and went into my appointment. I answered all the usual questions and waited while the poor older midwife sloooowly typed everything into the computer. I looked at the breastfeeding posters on the walls that I recognised from the '90s when my mum was a midwife in the town where I grew up. I felt slightly uncomfortable with her calling me "Lovey." Then she pointed me over to the bed so she could find the baby's heartbeat. It was the day before our little one we lost earlier in the year would have been due. I stopped breathing so I could listen. After a few movements of the device, she found it, fast and strong, and moved away far too quickly.
We talked for a few moments longer and then she let me go.

I felt silly but the first thing to cross my mind when I heard that heartbeat was, "Oh, that's right! I'm having a baby!" Like it had only taken me 3 days without nausea to forget.

 On the bus ride home, I took out my list again. And I decided I needed to change the question from, "What would sell well?" to, "If you have only 6 months of sewing time before the 'wonderful chaos' descends, what would you like to make?" And as much as I'd love to be (or felt like I should be) one of those women so committed to their business, that the first answer they think of is kids' bags and pillows, my answers were very different.

I want to finish the quilt for our bed.
I want to make gifts for friends in our community who will graduate and leave at the end of the year.
I want to make some things for baby.
I want (Tim) to make new sofas (yes, you heard right!).
I want to replace the soft furnishings (curtains and bedding) we were given when we moved in, to make do, with colours that are really me.
And I really, really want to finish my Penny Sampler (which will also fulfil the goal of learning to paper-piece).

So instead of heading home and pulling out my novelty fabric, I went for my box set aside for my favourite Anna Maria Horner prints, which I'd started cutting into strips for these log cabins for our bed. I had this little hope that I could finish the quilt top to display at the market stall, but you know me. That was a tad unrealistic. Tim did however, give me that whole Friday, the day our baby had been due, to hide in the sewing room and play with colour. And I had time to think, to be thankful for this new heart inside me, for this new energy I'd been feeling, and of course, to be sad as well.

And then when I didn't meet my goal, I came up with the idea of displaying all my works in progress on this sheet behind my stall. And I think it looked even better than what I originally had in mind! And even though I still didn't have affordable knick knacks to sell, I did have wonderful conversations with lots of people about my quilts and blocks. It feels like getting a chance to have a little exhibition once a month in the sunshine!

So what about you? If you had six months left to sew, what would you make?