the great monaluna photo shoot

So, Dave and I decided that we should do some promotional photos for Monaluna over the weekend. It was supposed to be sunny for once, and I’ve been needing a few nice shots of the teal Monaco collection. I figured I had just enough time on Saturday to whip up that simple baby quilt that I’ve been wanting to sew for months, and maybe a couple other items, tidy things up a bit, and then we’d take some photos with Anabelle and the quilt on Sunday. Well.

Saturday went mostly as planned, except that “tidying things up a bit” led to a major overhaul of my studio storage, and before I knew it I had dragged everything out of the closet and was sorting through boxes of sewing and art supplies, reorganizing scraps by color and painting baby food jars with chalkboard paint to hold safety pins (more on that later). I didn’t end up starting the quilt until late, and was up til the wee hours finishing it up.

Sunday morning I was a little bleary, but we got up and started setting up for our little shoot. Anabelle was hanging out on the new quilt, ready for her close up in her orange pants and white merino wool sweater, which coordinated perfectly with the fabrics. Dave had just gotten the camera set up and I was arranging the nursery bedding when there was an uncomfortable cry from the baby. A quick check revealed there had been a major, er, explosion, which required a complete wardrobe redo, as well as a bath, and some emergency quilt cleaning. Yeah, I learned that using babies as cute props is unpredictable at best. While Dave was changing the baby and I was cleaning the quilt, the cat decided she needed to be at the center of all this commotion, so when we finally got back to take our photo, we had to unseat Sadie from her spot nestled in the crib among the baby blankets. She was not happy. We did finally manage to get a couple photos, and I will never again underestimate the labor involved in all of those blissful happy baby photos.