All Those "Extra" Hours!

I finally quit.
I had been spending my days in a very discernible holding pattern: Pump, feed Clara, clean up her spit up, pump, prepare Clara's next feed, repeat until Clara's bath and bed time.
And after a discussion with both speech therapy and occupational therapy, we all agreed that Clara will probably never nurse and that while she might learn to eat from a bottle, the odds were against us. I go back work in a few weeks and we need a feeding process that won't take all of Todd's waking hours and cause grundles of frustration. We'll be pushing to get in to GI to explore moving to a g tube.
So I have made my peace with this, stopped pumping, and stopped stressing about it. Fat Tony and the NG tube (great band name?) will take over from here. And bam, just like that, I have recovered about 4 hours of my day.
So how to fill that time? Until I return to work, crafting! Today, I made this bodysuit for Clara, we are going to a friend's tonight and she needed something fancy to wear with her sweat shorts.

 Instructions, for those who are so inclined:

Put cardboard or paper or something between the front and back to avoid paint bleeding through. I taped the bodysuit to a note card to keep it all in place.

Step 1-Cardboard to protect
the back of the bodysuit.
 
Then I used a Sharpie marker to roughly draw the necklaces. I had first bent the bodysuit and card in half to give myself an idea of the middle, just to create the "low point" of the necklace. Then I free-handed the dots, nothing fancy. 

Step 2-Rough outline of
necklace

 

 

 

 

 

Use the end of a marker or any other round, flat object to create the beads in the necklace. I wanted to have two different sizes, but you can keep them uniform or branch out with even more sizes, mix up the beads within the necklace, whatever. Dip the end of the marker in to a bowl of fabric paint and stamp the bodysuit to create the beads. I recommend re-dipping for each bead to keep them uniform in 'volume' of paint.

Step 3-paint beads on to
bodysuit

Then I created a little felt flower to attach to one side. I cut a small circle for the base, just larger than a quarter, and a larger one about as round as a coffee mug.

Step 4-felt circles for
the flower

I cut the larger circle in to a swirl, free hand again. I wanted it to look a little rustic and not perfectly round.

Step 5-Swirl!

Take the center of the swirl and glue it to the small circle. Then, just start wrapping and gluing the swirl in to a circle, kind of like a rose.

Step 6-Glue the swirl to the
small circle to create
the flower

Sew the flower to the body suit, and voila, fancy bodysuit! Excluding drying time for the paint, it took maybe 20 minutes.
Now, how to fill the rest of my free time?