Busy...page?

I'm sure you have seen blankets, and soft cubes and such with things for babies to play with. My niece had a thing about opening and closing clips so I made a small page with clips down one side, and a few other play things on the other side. Zips are always fun. I made sure to add a little ribbon th the dress zip as it can be hard to grasp the little tab. The 'teeth' are toggles that you have to squeeze to move along the cord. I think she had a bit of fun with it. 

The binding was leftover from my daughters quilt many years ago and was all ready to add on. The yellow background is some material I used for a cushion and nice and sturdy. The buttons are just for decoration.

Baby bibs

My step-brother and his wife are expecting their first baby in February and I am really excited for them. I had made a few things for my step-sister for her little ones and I got the idea to do some embroidered bibs for his bubba. I made sure to do them nice and neutral as the gender will be a surprise. Now I just have to hold on to them for a while so that it doesn't seem like a ridiculously early gift. I'm thinking christmas as we are moving overseas in January and that way I won't loose them in the move.

The back is toweling, the top of the front is white micro-fibre so it is super soft around the neck (it looks cream in the pic), and the bottom is flannelette. I put in 2 domes so it can hopefully last a while. I also like the square shape as it covers more of bubba's tummy and, lets face it, with babies more coverage is always better.

Baby gifts

This cute little guy is for my good friend who just had a little girl. I sewed her initials onto the feet, just as I did with a little green version for her boy when he was born. Thankfully I had knitted him up a while ago, and he has been waiting for the perfect little one to come along.


The other thing which I am going to try and make is something I saw on Pinterest - a hooded car seat blanket. It looks great as it stays in the capsule and the belt is done up under the blanket which is a lot safer. I have picked up some merino for the inside layer and some flannelette for the outside layer. Looks simple enough, just have to do it!

Newborn Presents

A few people have been having babies recently and I enjoy personalising things for the new bubba. I did the fancy rattle cube recently, and teamed it with a baby towel that I embroidered the baby's name on. This is one I did for the latest new bubba:

 This little one also gets a pair of my favourite kids socks from Lamington (they actually stay on little feet!)

Rattle Cube - The Fancy Version

A friend just had a baby girl so it was a great excuse to try something that I had been thinking about recently. This is my way of mixing the cloth book with the rattle cube to make it a bit more interesting. The letters are her initials and the flower on the top has crinkly petals.

The crinkly petals were a bit of a challenge. After trying to sew a petal right sides together then turn right way out (not easy with plastic involved) I ended up drawing around a template onto a piece of felt, then sandwiching my plastic between that and another piece of felt, then sewing inside the lines I had drawn.

After this I cut along the lines and then zig-zaged the edges so that it was tidy and you couldn't see any pen marks.

I trimmed the ends of the petals until they were the length I wanted (I knew they would hang over a bit but I'm happy with that). I then cut a pentagon to fit in the middle so there wasn't a big hole in the middle. I straight stitched then zig-zaged the petals onto the material and once I had put the green centre on that was straight stitched then zig-zaged as well. Those petals aren't going anywhere!

The letters were put on a satin square with Heat 'N Bond then I zig-zaged the edges.

These are the squares ready to be sewn together.

Here's the final cube. I added a loop so it can be attached to things.

I'm actually pretty happy with this and a little sad to give it away, but I'm also excited to be giving it as a pressie for this new precious little bundle.

Bibs

I felt that I needed more bibs and had my nice green microfleece from Greenbeans so I made some.

The first was from a pattern I found on the internet, and of course I can't find it again (sorry!). I really like that it does up at the side which makes it much easier when Alex is lying down or in his car seat. It has microfleece on the front and toweling on the back. Not in the photo is the dome I added to do it up with.

This works really well at catching the food but needed to be a bit bigger so the next one I squared the bottom and widened it a bit. Next time I will make the transition from the neck bit to the square bit a bit less angular. The white bit is microfleece so is nice and soft around his neck. The bottom navy bit is flannelette and again it has toweling on the back. I quite like the look of this one with the contrasting colours.

I have just ordered some more microfleece so will have a think on how I will do the next one.

Soft Baby Book - take 3

I have been having so much fun with these that I thought I'd try one for my nephew. I changed things up a little with different colour pages and couple of different ideas.

Warning: Photo overload :)

The apple has plastic in between 2 pieces of fabric so it crinkles. It's only sewn at the top.

The body of the sheep is microfleece.

Shark with rick-rack waves.

Shapes that can fold down/up/sideways.

Rugby ball that has batting underneath to make it squishy.

Truck with fluffy velcro tipper.

Boat with satin sails.

Face Cloths

I was very excited to find micro-fleece available online through Greenbeans. It arrived really fast and was such a good price. The main reason for my purchase was to make some liners for my new cloth nappies so I got some off-white fleece, but I saw this awesome green as well and just had to get it.

I have turned the green into some face cloths for after meal times. My brother made some for me when Chloe was born and they have been so well used that they are a bit past it now. These ones have the green micro-fleece on one side and flannelette on the other as the fleece doesn't hold water very well (but cleans food off the face wonderfully).

Jacket

I started this quite a while ago and have finally gotten around to finishing it, it's a good thing I made it a couple of sizes bigger. I picked up 2 different lengths of merino from Designer Textiles, one was a bit of a heavier weight so will be nice and warm for winter.

I used Burda pattern #9636. I have to say that this was not the easiest pattern to follow and that it is lucky that I have made a few things using patterns before as there were a couple of times where you just needed to know what they were trying to say. The other good thing is that my machine can sew through quite a few layers as it got pretty thick at the shoulders when sewing the hood and the 2 layers of jacket together.

Quite happy with the result and I hope it will get lots of use. I'd even be happy to pass this on to someone else to use once we are done with it.

Soft Baby Book - take 2

I knew I'd make another soft baby book eventually. This is for a boy in my coffee group to play with on a long car trip....at least that's the plan.

I used most of the same templates as last time though I wanted this one to be a bit more interactive. I swapped the lion for a fluffy sheep and the shapes for a page with ribbons. The truck's tray is a fluffy piece of velcro, the apple has a piece of plastic underneath so it crinkles and the shark has some rick-rack water around it. I also added a loop at the top so it could be hooked on/attached to something to keep it from getting lost. It was whipped up in 2 nights so it's nowhere near perfect but I hope it is useful.

Front page

The ribbons are attached at one end. Fluffy truck :)

Shark and fluffy sheep.

Ball is nothing special. Crinkly apple.

Back page - water is polar-fleece, red sail is satin.

Bandana Bib

Turns out that Alex is quite a dribbler. Rather than try and constantly wipe his chin to keep his clothes dry I thought I'd make a bandana bib to see if that works better.

I found this pattern on Mad Quilter's blog which was great. I shortened it a little bit but afterwards realised that the pattern length would be fine.

I used toweling for the back and flannelette for the front. It works quite well so may have to make another.

Merino Pants

With the arrival of our little boy, Alex, I haven't had much time to do ,well, anything. He has started going to bed at the same time as Chloe so I thought I'd use my evenings to do some sewing. First up were these merino pants as the weather has suddenly got cold and Alex doesn't have any warm clothes. I have a bit of merino left over from making the blanket so I grabbed a pair of cotton pants that are a bit big for him yet and traced around them. They have a nice wide leg, but not too wide, and a bum insert to help fit over a nappy.

I sewed the elastic into the waistband at each seam to stop it twisting, and to keep it even around the pants.

Front and back views

Back view showing insert

They ended up a bit long, which is fine cause they cover his feet too...and it's not like he's going to trip over them. Much easier than trying to keep a blanket on his little kicking legs.

Our little Alex (3mths)

Now to make a black pair as I think these will be used a lot.

Embroidered Baby Outfit

This idea came from my sister who asked me to embroider a onsie for her son. I liked the finished product so much that I wanted to make one for our new one on the way.

I had a good look around to find a onsie that was plain white, and was happy when I found this one. The crossover means that the top bit can be embroidered but that the back of it wouldn't aggravate bubs skin. The one I used was from Cotton On Kids. If you can't find one like this then it's just a matter of covering the back of the embroidery with some soft fusing.

It took a while to get it all positioned, especially with the domes getting in the way, but worth spending the time to get it right. If I did it again I would probably make the lettering a bit smaller as the onsie is so small to start with.

Hopefully this can be worn by other babies from the family, and hopefully my baby is small enough to fit into it! (edited to add: He wasn't!)

Baby Booties - blue

Just got finished with the other style of baby booties from the Spotlight pattern. Definitely not as easy as the ballet style ones, but still kinda cute. One thing I would say is that keep your cast off at the top loose, otherwise it may be a bit tight around baby's ankle. At least it was good practice at joining yarn, though joining it to 3 stitches (the middle bit at the top the strap goes through) was not easy.

Baby booties

I got my latest Spotlight mailer and fell in love with these baby booties. I liked the idea that one of the styles had ribbon around the ankle so you could do them up as tight as necessary.

I started with the ballet style ones in pink:

They were quite easy to do, and not too fiddly.

I have one blue one made in the button style and will post a pic of that one when done. The button ones are trickier as you have to rejoin the wool at a couple of places at the end and I haven't gotten that perfected yet. I also found the part of the pattern where you have to cast on extra stitches for the ankle pieces a bit difficult to decipher, though what I ended up doing worked.

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.

Beanie

I was given a pattern for a baby beanie which I wanted to knit for baby #2 to wear at the hospital. The trouble was that I didn't know what size to start with out of the 6 options, so I thought I'd start small and go from there. The blue means nothing, just that I had a lot of blue wool. Second go (the cream one) is a much better size. Both are very cute though.

The blue hat is the smallest size on the pattern. The green hat next to it is the one my daughter wore home from the hospital.

This is the second try. It is the same size as the green hat above.