Introducing the new mei tai!

My friend Em K and her daughter spent a week with us here in January, while Em ran a half marathon.  While she was visiting, she noticed that the mei tai she’d made me before Abbie was born was one of her “older models”.  She said she wanted to make me a new one and asked what I would like.  I really didn’t give her much direction besides saying I liked green and purple.  So she took that and ran with it.  It’s a good thing I was sitting in the car when I opened it because I probably would have fallen over if I hadn’t been.  I don’t know what I was expecting, but it sure as heck wasn’t what I got.  The thing is beautiful!  It’s seriously a work of art!

This picture shows the purple the best.  It’s a beautiful, deep purple.  In the other pictures the flash made it darker, but this first picture is closer to the actual color.  I LOVE it! She used a really neat animal print on the main part of the mei tai.  I wasn’t sure I’d like the animal print on a mei tai (I’d seen other ones she made), but I love it and it’s perfect.

The back of the MT is lined with this vibrant green dupioni silk.   

This one also has a hood on it, which the old one didn’t.  And she appliquéd things she cut out from the main print she used.  This thing really is a work of art.  I wore it in  Barnes and Nobles (where we bought an Italian translation book) and I got my first compliment on it.  The lady said it was amazing and beautiful.  And I got lots of glances from people who didn’t want to stare but you could tell they wanted to look.  Haha!

Here’s a picture of the first one Em made me and the new one.  The old one didn’t have a hood and all the straps were shorter than they are on the new one (which made me feel sort of fat when I didn’t have much excess strap after I tied them).  This one also has more padding – she added it to the waistband and I think more on the shoulder straps too.  She also made the body of this MT bigger, which will be good as Abbie gets older.  And I just noticed today that she put a little pocket with a velcro closure on it at the end of one of the straps.  How perfect is that?!

I am just so excited about this new mei tai.  I wish I had half the skills that Em does with a sewing machine.  I think it would be fabulous to be able to make things like this for friends – something beautiful, but also highly useful.  But, I’m a VERY beginner sewer and half the time my stupid machine doesn’t work, which then frustrates me and I give up.  I would LOVE to learn to make quilts though.  How hard can it be to sew blocks of fabric together?  Maybe I could learn to do that in Italy (if we go to Italy).  Em has definitely inspired me to at least try to do something with my sewing machine.

Thank you Em.  I absolutely love it.  I know we’ll get lots of use out of it while in Europe.   I owe you big time!