Quiet book - page 5: Flower Pot

I felt like I was on a roll with the quiet book and whipped up this page really quickly. This page is to practice with buttons, with the flowers able to be unbuttoned.

Easy to do - started by cutting out the flowers and attaching fusing to the back, and again doing a blanket stitch around them to keep them tidy. I then used my handy buttonhole foot to create the buttonholes in the middle of the flowers. I chose buttons that didn't take up too much room as the buttonhole needed to fit on the flower with room to spare.

For the stalks I used some green ribbon which I first hand stitched to the flower, then I sewed the other end to the page after placing them where I wanted them. The flower pot was sewn over all of this.

Final step was to sew on the buttons. I pinned the flower stems down first so that the buttons were in the right place and....voila!

Soft Baby Book

This is something from the 'Celebrate the Boy' crafts and is from thimblythings blog. There is a tutorial to follow along. It is a cute wee fabric book that looks like much less work than the quiet book I'm doing for Chloe, primarily as it has no 'working' parts. I decided to make this for a friends boy who is about 9 months old as I thought it would be good for his age.

On hunting through my craft caddy I found some Heat 'n Bond I had bought a while back. I can't believe I haven't used it yet as it is the best thing ever, and perfect for this book. Shame I can't remember where or when I got it.

I chose to change some of the pictures to suit my friends boy. He is into lions so my lovely husband designed one for me. I changed the ladybird to a shark to be a bit more boy-ish, and the car to a truck. I also changed the sippy cup to an apple as I'm not sure he would recognise the cup.

Here is the lion in progress:

With the Heat 'n Bond attached to the fabric (it doesn't work on felt by the way).

And the pages with the fabric attached ready to be sewn:

I sewed around most of the pieces just to make sure they didn't come off in little hands.

Then, following the tutorial, I sewed it all together into a little book. Hope he has fun with it. Of course I forgot to take pics of the finished product before I gave it to him, but I'm sure I'll make another one sometime.

Merino swaddle

I finally finished the merino swaddle that I had cut out before I made the dress for Chloe. Happy with the result.

It took a little while to turn the edges and get them all the same, but as it is just going to be wrapped around baby I'm not too worried if it's a perfect square.

I started with it being 1m x 1m and then folded the edges twice. I did a straight stitch around the whole thing, about 1/4" from the top fold, to keep it all in place.

Then I changed to the contrasting thread and did a fancy stitch along each edge to catch that top fold and keep it flat.

Even though this will be a summer baby, I have a feeling I will be using this as a blanket a lot.

Edited to add some more pics of the process while I was making a second one.