sewing for baby

 



McCall's pattern M5083 in cotton
cloth books from various fabric panels (Mary Engelbreit, Avlyn Inc., VIP Cranston)
and soooo many things from Bend-the-Rules Sewing

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We all know I love those sock monkeys on the funky monkey fabrics by Moda. Did you know that in addition to having prints with those funny little monkeys, prints that look like knitted socks (see my post yesterday), and even prints with bandages (for when the monkeys bump their heads!), there is also a panel with the whole "5 little monkeys jumping on the bed" story? Knitbuddy Johanna got the panel for wee one for Christmas and last week I sewed it up into a book for her.

Five funky monkeys jumping on the bed.... momma called the doctor.....

Like the "Little Engine that Could" panel that I used to make a fabric book for Shannon's baby, this one wasn't set up to be made into a book. It required a little extra cutting and rearranging (but only a little as the story is MUCH shorter!). Since I was already doing the extra couple of steps, I decided to make a fun binding for the book's pages with the dotted fabric surrounding the story squares.

This last little monkey on the bed is my favorite, along with the dizzy one on the back cover. Will those funny funky monkeys never learn from their mistakes?

Now wee one has her sock monkey book, but is that enough for me? Oh no. Two weeks ago when I went to NYC and visited Purl Patchwork, the woman working in the store as we came in just happened to be cutting up fat quarters of all their funky monkey fabric to sell as fabric bundles. I didn't need any more encouragement than that! I got a funky monkey fat quarter bundle and have also picked up some fat quarters of the follow-up line called Monkey n' Around, where the sock monkeys return to bounce on pogo sticks and play jacks.

I've already started cutting pieces to make this quilt because it just looks like so much fun. Man I love those sock monkeys!

PS - Attention all sock junkies: a little bird told me that Sunshine Yarns has started a new website and Dani is kicking things off with a ton of new Harry Potter colorways like Gillyweed and my favorite, Weasleys Wizard Wheezes! They look so great! All this fabulous sock yarn and all these cute sock monkeys are making me want to knit socks again....(yes, yes, more on that to come later this week!)

Almost exactly one year ago, two of my best friends threw me an amazing baby shower where all my knitbuddies made baby booties for wee one. This Saturday, I got a little payback when I got to go to one of those friend's own baby shower and bring a gaggle of itty bitty hats from the Knitsmiths.

My offering was the marshmallow bonnet, which I knit in Blue Sky Alpaca's most incredibly soft Handspun Organic Cotton. It's practically like cashmere, but no animal fibers (Shannon's allergic)! I knit this same pattern for wee one over a year ago but it must have happened in some baby-brain haze because I didn't remember anything about how it was constructed! The other hats are (almost) all from the Itty-Bitty Hats book, including a Stars hat from Johanna, a Marley hat from Thea, a pink stripey hat from Colleen, a Bunny Tails hat from Dani, and an Upside-Down Daisy hat from Lisa. Shannon was surprised and happy to be remembered by all her old Boston buddies.

I also did a little sewing for her new baby. Baby's grandmother is an incredible quilter, so I was pretty sure that baby would be all set with beautiful quilts, but when I happened to come across a fabric panel of one of Shannon's favorite children's stories, The Little Engine that Could, I knew I had to make her a little fabric book. The panel wasn't made to be a book - there weren't the right number of blocks and they weren't in proper page groupings for a book - so I had to do some finessing to make it work. Plus, it was all very, very basic blue check and Shannon is having a fabulous little girl, soooo I had to gather up fun and fabulous coordinating fabrics to pretty it up a little.

Despite the myriad difficulties that arose while I was making this (like the final book being too big to fit under the presser foot of my machine!), it was a pleasure to make. Whenever I got frustrated, the happy little train's chant of "I think I can, I think I can, I think I can" helped spur me on to finish it.

Lastly, the big present for Shannon's baby... see if you can recognize it....

Yes, it's an unfinished hemlock ring blanket! I tried my best to get it done in time. I had even started the bind off, but there was no way to get it blocked before the shower, so I wrapped it up as nice as I could for the ceremonial opening and then snuck it back into my bag to take home to finish. More pics of it blocking, etc. to come!

Best wishes to Shannon for the last couple of months of her pregnancy. Thanks for giving me a reason to make these wonderful projects and the opportunity to pay you back for my own awesome baby shower. We can't wait to see Cheezit in her little hats!

This one starts with some sewing. As a Christmas present for the boys' newest little cousin (another baby L born in August!), I wanted to make a little cuddly blankie with minkee, a super soft chenille-y fabric that makes me wish I were a baby again just so I could have a minkee lovey. I saw a few cute patterns on an episode of Simply Quilts that made me think, yeah, I can do this, and went off to JoAnn's armed with a 50% off coupon to see what I could find (is there any other way to go to JoAnn's?!). I found this kit to make a cuddle quilt with a cute flannel print, some satin and lace and minkee.

I wasn't really planning on doing patchwork and using a bunch of different fabrics, but I simply couldn't resist those funny floating bunnies! I watched the Simply Quilts episode again, spent an eternity cutting those squares to size (aaaaack, cutting those satin squares was like trying to cut water!), and took a close look at several of original patterns from the designer on Simply Quilts to decide how to turn the JoAnn's kit (oh, only $9.99 with my coupon!) into exactly what I wanted. I really wanted to put the minkee on the back instead of using it as a border so ended up having just enough minkee to make the quilt 18" x 24". Perfect size for a lovey: not to big for a little one to drag around and still not too small to keep little one warm in the stroller on a chilly day.

So glad that this was not my first quilting project! It sure was helpful having a little practice when it came time to sew those squares together. And my walking foot, looooooove my walking foot! Anyhoo, the minkee lovey came out great and I gotta wrap it up or I'm going to rub it raw, it feels so good!

Sooooo (this is where we get back to the afghan) after all this sewing, when I finally decided that the manos afghan needed one more color, I naturally thought, pink!

Manos color #24 joining the pile

I'm at 52 squares (and one Christmas gift!) and counting....

Ha! The solution to the knitted-hats-are-only-for-cuddling problem: the adorable woodland elf hat from Bend-the-Rules Sewing.

Made of wool felt (Amy Karol even recommends making this with an old sweater that you've felted!), this hat was super easy to sew up. The felted wool won't ravel, so turning up the edge all around is totally stress free (Amy says no pins!), and the flower is just traced onto felt, stitched right onto the hat along the traced line and trimmed. Couldn't be simpler! My seams didn't quite meet up at the tippy tippy top, so my version isn't as pointy as the book version, but it still came out cute, cute, cute. Like the other Bend the Rules projects, it's pretty much foolproof.

If you make it, don't worry if it doesn't look like much after you first sew it together. Once the edge is turned up and the flower and ties are added, it's fabulous!

Gotta go....

Wee one has a new stuffed friend - it's turtle buddy from Amy Karol's Bend-the-Rules Sewing. This pattern looked so cute and I just happened to have a fat quarter of this Kaffe Fassett print that seemed perfect for a turtle. Two hours later and it's a turtle!

I love his funny little turtle butt. But man oh man, was it hard to turn that tiny tail piece right side out! Oddly enough, the entire pattern was both more and less difficult than I was expecting. Amy has bent the rules alright, so anyone with sewing experience, be sure to follow her rules. Don't go tracing your pattern pieces and then cutting them all out before reading the pattern like I almost did! Karol uses this clever technique of sewing two layers together along the pattern outline, which goes faster and makes things much less fiddly but it means that the pattern pieces don't actually contain any seam allowances. But not all the pieces are done like this: the body pieces are cut out and sewn together normally with a 1/4" seam allowance. So naturally I got all confused and was never quite sure I was doing things correctly. And then I had all these questions, like how much should I stuff the pieces, and how far in should I sew the basting line, and where exactly should I position the legs and tail and head, and how big of a stuff/turning hole should I leave open in the bottom? There are are lots of helpful drawings in the pattern, but not a lot of specific details. Again this may only be a problem for folks like me with enough sewing experience to expect these sorts of instructions, but not enough experience to know that you don't really need them. After making the thing, I can see that if you just use your best judgment on all those things, it's gonna look adorable!

Isn't it cute how the wonky seam line gives him a funny little frown?! It's so cool making things from this book and seeing how they come together. My favorite part was after the top and bottom were stitched together (right sides together, of course) with the head and all the legs all tucked inside, you turn the whole thing right-side out by pulling all the limbs through the turning hole - it was just so turtley!

Semptember was national sewing month. No wonder I've gone crazy sewing things - it's in the air! I started a little early with the two dresses I made for wee one in August, but then in September, there were the three sock monsters and now a total of four cloth books.

I made three more this weekend, including two Winnie-the-Pooh books and a Mary Engelbreit baby animal book. The cutting goes so much quicker now that I've got myself a fancy rotary cutter and mat.

And why did I buy myself a fancy rotary cutter and mat, you ask. Well, in the madness that is national sewing month, I signed up for a beginning quilting class.

Oooh, I just want to eat all these yummy fabrics up!! It's been so funny to go to the fabric store and listen to the ladies there talk about their stash and how they have to store fabric in the dishwasher just to get it out of the way or how they can't let their husbands see how much stash they have. Sounds familiar, doesn't it? They may not be knitters, but I think I'm going to get along just fine with them. Hee, hee.

Who knew you could buy fabric to make cloth baby books? Well, I didn't know. Johanna, who is preternaturally crafty, told me about these fabric panels you can buy to make cut & sew baby books. So cool! She even shared her brilliant idea of sewing in some crinkly paper with the batting so the book is a crinkle book. She's genius like that.

We found this book panel about Colors at our local Fabric Place. It was such a fun little project. Just cut, slap some batting between the pages and stitch them closed. About as basic as you can get. But I'm just so tickled that I've made wee one a book. A book! This is brilliant. I mean, think of it this way: how many sweaters does she really need? how many little dresses can she possibly wear? But books, you can never have too many books! And she loves books.

This is new for me. The boys thought books were only for eating. So let's see, she likes books and I liked making the book. That adds up to lots more of these planned for wee one. Up next, this Winnie the Pooh book I found at JoAnn's.

And since I have all this new experience at stitching sock creature stuff-holes and cloth book turning-holes closed, I thought I'd see what I could do with one of wee one's little toys.

she's got scissors, run away!

It's the cutest baby Totor softie, but what always disappointed me about him is that he didn't jingle or rattle or anything. So I opened up his wee bottom, stuffed in a little bell, stitched him back up and now he does.

And then, I made some baby food. Phew! Turns out, I make a lot of stuff in a day. What are you making today?

Wee one's blue polka dots dress is done and ooh, is sewing these little dresses ever addictive!

No pics yet of wee one in her new dress since she's sleeping right now and it's about 65 degrees today in Boston. (We get wee one's summer clothes back, I sew her two new dresses and suddenly it's fall here!)

But the sewing will go on. We've just packed up wee one's baby basinette and put my sewing table in its place. I've got a new little stash of pretty, girly fabrics and an awesome new book full of fun projects that I can actually make!

Have you seen Amy Karol's new book, Bend-the-Rules Sewing? It is so cool!

The projects are simple but beautiful and super cute. There's this little apron pinafore and this little baby jacket, which I'll definitely be making. And then a ton of other sweet little projects for me to make like pillows and purses and the instructions are so clear. There's even a simple quilt pattern perfect for a beginner like me who has no idea what she's doing. It's just the sewing book I'd been looking for - love it!

As Friday ended with still no sign of any of wee one's little clothes, I figured this weekend was the perfect time to start sewing those dresses I was planning to make for her. I would be exaggerating if I said that it took no time, but I did manage to finish dress number one in a few hours of stolen time on Saturday.

The only difficult part was the curved hem. Anyone have any tips for making that lie neater without doing anything too technical? Of course, once it's on baby, who's paying attention to the hem anyway! B helped wee one model her new outfit for us.

Even easier to sew than the dress itself, were the cutie patootie matching panties!

The blue polka dot dress is also already underway. I love the subtle pink flower pattern on this fabric the most though. So sweet and feminine.

Thanks to Johanna for the perfect fabric and perfect pattern (McCalls M5083)!

Get bee-u-tiful little fabrics from purl patchwork and quilter's way.

Get the perfect pattern (in this case, perfect means embarrassingly simple).

Start cutting.