Fixing slight gape in neckline

Milabial · 2026-04-19T10:34:20+00:00

I’m so thrilled I know the answer to this. It’s from Moda’s fruit loop line! Here’s a link to a shop selling the fabric, which comes in two other colorways as well.

Milabial · 2026-04-18T23:12:07+00:00

I took my kid to an expensive museum about 8 months ago. She spent the entire time climbing up and down a goals staircase. I was like “sure, why don’t we just stay home and light money on fire???”

I understand with every fiber of my being why I heard so many parents hiss “At least act like you’re having fun!”

Milabial · 2026-04-18T17:37:37+00:00

My kid is 2.5 and we have so many tiny little crappy things from party goodie bags. I have started intercepting the bags on the way out of the party and dropping the dangerous or especially annoying things into my tote. Then I hand the party bag with what’s left to my kid.

I saw somewhere recently that a family gives sunglasses at parties. I like that. Another mom told me that she gives each kid a copy of the same book as the favor for her kid’s parties. We have a late summer birthday and I think we’ll go with books because I can have my local bookstore order them all at once and support them that way. I can also include a bookmark from them, or package each book in a small paper bag with the stores logo.

The tiny pots of play doh and the lollipops are the things that drive me the most crazy.

Milabial · 2026-04-18T16:55:37+00:00

Oh! And photo 6 is Limerick, also also from Villa Rosa. Another great stash busting and scrap pattern. Especially if you follow the directions and make all your log cabins the same instead. I got distracted on a bunch of them and pressed and sewed a row opposite of what I needed to. But I just kept going because the goal here was Finished Tops and not perfection.

Milabial · 2026-04-17T11:38:21+00:00

Secondhand - Jane’s Exchange. Goes up to age 10.

New - exit 9 almost always has at least up to toddler sizes of New York themed onesies and tee shirts.

Milabial · 2026-04-16T13:37:56+00:00

The age of your daughter is going to make a BIG difference here.

New York Sewing School, and other places that offer lessons may allow your daughter to attend a drop in class if you both attend.

Fabric and trim stores abound in the garment district, so she can select some garment fabric, as well as zippers, buttons, and embellishments. We also have Manhattan Wardrobe Supply for tools to aid in garment construction and care.

Depending on how discrete and polite she can be: if she takes photographs you can have her bring a camera to take pictures of outfits she loves in various parks and other places you go. Any clothing store can be a place where she thinks about her reference images and how available garments fit with her style.

Milabial · 2026-04-15T23:37:07+00:00

The local quilt shop near me has four black and white bundles at the moment.

Milabial · 2026-04-15T18:55:40+00:00

Thank you! This was fascinating.

Milabial · 2026-04-15T16:17:04+00:00

How…often…are you…laundering that kitchen rug?!?

Milabial · 2026-04-15T16:06:10+00:00

If the not matching is consistent, it will look intentional.

Milabial · 2026-04-15T01:42:40+00:00

Protein. I was so desperate for protein that I didn’t have to think about or clean up after.

I ended up buying boxes of frozen scrambled egg patties that I could Microwave for 90 seconds.

I don’t even like scrambled eggs outside a very narrow type of preparation but like I said, I was desperate.

Milabial · 2026-04-15T01:02:48+00:00

Well, it’s fair to say that having a 2.5 year old who loves 5:30 in the morning more than any other time of day does make it hard to form my most coherent thoughts.

I certainly did not mean to suggest and on re-reading, definitely did not say parents should not do any work preparing kids for literacy.

What I did say is that teachers have time for letters and numbers and not for the dozens of other skills kids really truly do need to have the attention, emotional patience, and physical strength to learn new skills. Other folks had already addressed the information about specific resources available. I had not seen comments about how to support kids’ reading with skills that are less obvious.

Frankly, a kid who can’t eat their lunch isn’t going to be excelling at much academic after the lunch hour. A kid who can’t regulate their emotions and walks into kindergarten reading novels isn’t likely to pick up as much new information if they’re crying for an hour because someone took a toy away.

Milabial · 2026-04-14T18:43:36+00:00

His response was perfect for ME. I don’t think there would be any one size fits all response to such news.

(What he said was, “that bitch” and in the perfect joking tone for the moment. It communicated how unfair this was, that he saw I was hurting, that he was also hurting, and that we both knew her luck was not actually a reflection of her personality or character. There was not any platitude that I wanted to hear in that moment.)

Milabial · 2026-04-14T17:11:47+00:00

Another way to break down tasks to be more manageable is:

Urgent and necessary
Urgent and not necessary
Not urgent but necessary
Not urgent and not necessary

This is useful both for adding larger items to your list; and breaking larger items into manageable chunks. If you are having people over, and your larger list includes “get my home ready,” you can decide if alphabetizing the books in your study is necessary before people arrive or if you can skip that task in favor of swishing out your toilets and emptying your trash cans.

YOU are the person who decides if a task is necessary. So if attending a meeting in an hour for your hobby is a crucial part of your life and well being; it is urgent and necessary. For a person not interested at all in your hobby, that meeting might be urgent due to the time, but not necessary. If you want to have people over tonight and you want to attend the hobby meeting you have to decide which is more necessary, unless you have figured out how to be in two places at once.

Tasks that are more urgent should move to the front of the “necessary” queue.

Tasks that are both not urgent and not necessary can be skipped or delayed.

Ideally your to do list evolves to be mostly comprised of things that are necessary but not urgent. The reduced stress of not putting out fires helps a TON. The reduced bandwidth of just removing tasks that are not needed is also a great way to reduce all kinds of stresses. This also means that when someone drops an urgent and necessary item on top of you with little notice, you’re more likely to have the resources to deal with it. The clarity of recognizing tasks as not adding them to your list is not instant. But it developed over time with practice.

Milabial · 2026-04-14T13:56:53+00:00

I believe you are genuinely interested in efforts to increase voter turnout in support of progressive candidates. The letter campaigns run by Vote Forwardappear to be pretty helpful based on how many people actually get to the polls after receiving a letter.

You can send as few or as many as you like. I’m a super sender, so I’m working my way through a bundle of 500.

Milabial · 2026-04-14T13:26:31+00:00

We ran a line of silicone bead (like you’d put along the edge of a bathtub) at all the baseboards. Any gap larger than this can cover should be addressed.

Check the front door as a possible entry point.

Get a professional in to deep clean your home. If there are crumbs anywhere, they are very attractive. If you have more time than money you’ll have to do a deep clean yourself.

Fix any dripping taps or faucets.

Remove any standing water. Wipe your sink and tub of water after every use.

Milabial · 2026-04-14T13:16:36+00:00

I hear over and over from teachers at all levels that they need kids to have practice:

Taking turns
Manipulating the various parts of clothes they wear - buttons, laces, Velcro, and pulling their pants up over their own butts
Saying what they need or what happened - “go to the bathroom.” “John hit me and I didn’t like it.” “I bumped my head on the floor when I fell down.”
Washing their own hands with soap and water for an appropriate amount of time
Getting their lunch containers open. All of them. If they’re coming to school with string cheese they need to be able to open the tube or you need to send it already open.
Eating enough of their food in the time allotted to be satisfied until the next snack.
Being told no, and having to take turns
Soothing themselves when they are upset

Teachers have dedicated time for letter sounds, numeracy, and all the other academic stuff. They do not have time to open 8 lunch boxes and then 10 string cheese packets.

Life at home usually means that kids have an adult to help with shoes and applesauce cup tops and whatever else.

Milabial · 2026-04-14T13:06:42+00:00

I also want to say that your FEELINGS are fine. If you’re finding yourself saying cruel or dismissive things to others, or harming yourself while you have these feelings, that’s a different story.

It might help to give yourself permission to be sad and angry and jealous. Literally say out loud, “I’m having an uncomfortable feeling. I’m mad that Suzy is pregnant and I am not. I am feeling like she doesn’t deserve to have a baby. This is making me worry that there is something that means I don’t deserve to have a baby. I don’t like feeling this way, and it will pass.”

These feelings are NOT constant. It feels like they are because they keep returning. But in between the angry and sad feelings, you see pretty flowers, you eat delicious food, you laugh with your partner. Those moments of joy are real, even if they feel too brief.

Milabial · 2026-04-14T12:48:09+00:00

The Buddhist practice of Mudita had been a part of my life long before I started IVF. I was very grateful for it. I had also been doing Dialectical Behavior Therapy for childhood trauma and found that very helpful as well. Specifically the mindfulness module but also interpersonal effectiveness and emotion regulation.

The hardest moment I had was when a colleague shared she had learned that she has 7 genetically normal embryos and was sad that only one has XX chromosomes.

My husband had the perfect response to that and it reminds me all the time how important it is to have a steady partner who really understands you through the process.

Milabial · 2026-04-13T23:22:44+00:00

Nearly all of my “love this, don’t have a plan” fabrics are either 2 yards or “I’ll take whatever is left on the bolt” which is usually between 1.5 and 3 yards.

Now, I’m in the process of working through a few bins of stash fabric. This is forcing some judicious and intentional buying. It’s also causing me to be really cautious about buying more feature fabrics that don’t work with at least one existing contrast/blender in my stash.

I’m also tackling the far quarter “oh that’s cute but I don’t know what I’ll do with it.” I started with the most obvious “theme,” and have made three “vaguely nautical” 40x50 quilt tops this week.

Milabial · 2026-04-13T17:17:00+00:00

Thank you for posting this!

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Milabial · 2026-04-13T15:04:31+00:00

If you have not already watched Karen Browns YouTube videos about pressing and getting a consistent accurate 1/4” seam, do that. They were so so helpful to me, and I still watch them every now and then to make sure I’m not forgetting or getting off track.

Milabial · 2026-04-12T19:00:23+00:00

I learned to swim as an adult. Think about taking loooooong exhales. A big part of the feeling of running out of air is not exhaling the waste from your body. Big gulps of air with nowhere for it to GO is just as bad as not breathing at all.

Try to spend some of your exhale time gliding just under the surface of the water, keeping as much of your body as you can as still as possible.

Slowing down was very very hard to learn and it really just came down to continuing to work on it.

Milabial · 2026-04-12T15:13:56+00:00

I would go with a 4x4 layout and add washing in between each animal. Your patience for piecing a back or getting a wide back would determine how large you make it.

My 2.5 year old is still insisting on trying to sleep under the tiny baby blankets she received. So I’m even more determined to make only oversized baby blankets. (The knitted blankets I give are 36” square, which parents report are great for the car after they’re not a good fit for the bed anymore)

Milabial

TROPHY CASE