My Two Sons (the fabric story)

I should warn you up front that this is a personal post.  I am sure everyone who sews has a lot of stories about fabrics they love, but this is not one of the lighthearted ones.  I have never been known for being overly reserved and I have found a lot of support in the stories others have shared about their losses, so I have decided to share mine.

I got pregnant the second time when Danielle was 10 months old.  We had planned on waiting at least a year but got too excited.  My husband is an only child and really wanted to carry on the family name, so he was hoping for a boy.  The pregnancy was very different from my first so I had thought he might get his wish.

I had a friend who was expecting a little boy, and I was excited to make something cute and boyish (since I only had my daughter and nieces to sew for).  I spent a few hours in the fabric store picking out fabrics for a quilt.  It was going to be in blues and browns and use this stripe as a border print:

The rest of the fabrics were cotton, but this flannel
coordinated so well I decided to use it.

I was feeling pretty good about the choices, but fell head over heels in love when I found this piggy flannel for the back:

Isn't it adorable?

I was so in love with the combination of all the fabrics by this point that I decided to wait and see if we were having a boy, so I could use them for him instead.  (Don't worry, I made other baby things for my friend :) )  We weren't going to be able to find out the gender (assuming we could see it on the ultrasound) until 20 weeks, and I am not a patient person, so I scheduled a 3D ultrasound when I was 17.5 weeks pregnant.  Long story short, we found out that day that our baby's heart had stopped beating.  It was very surreal, and obviously devastating.

Because I was so far along, I had to be induced.  I went to the hospital the day after we found out we lost our baby--it was the 4th of July, two summers ago.  I kept referring to our baby as "he", though we didn't know for sure that we had a lost a boy until he was delivered.  There are just some things a mama knows. 

I don't know that I have ever wanted anything more than I wanted a little boy after we lost our first son.  I fell to my knees and prayed to God--with my whole heart--to have a little boy.  I knew before our next pregnancy was confirmed that we would be having a little boy, and that's how we came to have our Samuel.

Meanwhile, I had a few yards of little boy fabric that I couldn't bear to give away or sell.  It may sound silly to be attached to it, but that's how it was.  I plan to make a memorial quilt for the baby we lost but it won't take very much fabric at all, since he was so small.  I decided that I needed to make Samuel a shopping cart cover out of the fabric--those little piggies were just begging to be something more useful than a pair of pants he would grow out of in weeks.

It turned out I was just a little short of what I needed to make the cart cover.  I scoured the Internet to find some more pig flannel (Hancock's was out of stock), and stumbled across a picture of it on this blog.  I emailed Rochelle to ask if she had any scraps leftover and she was kind enough to send me the 3 yards she had!  I also was short on the striped fabric, but found some on a fabric site online.  I must have been in a hurry, because I didn't realize I bought the plain cotton version instead of the flannel.  It all worked out though and the shopping cart cover has finally been finished.  In the time this project has taken (from being ready to use the fabric to tracking down extra to getting the cart cover finished), I've worked through my attachment to the fabric.  I plan to use the remaining yardage & scraps to make items to donate for babies.