New baby onesies - paw prints!

Somebody at work is having a baby, so I thought that baby onesies would be a great gift, of course.  So I did one with the baby's initial, but then I thought, we're a vet clinic.  Paw prints!  And my new obsession was born....

These are for baby Jay - each one is a different size.

And since it was a great idea, I made one for my nephew, too!  Along with his initial....

I'm thinking these would be great for a vet-related fundraiser item, too....Must ponder this....

New baby gifts

So I'm (as usual) catching up on blogging, in some cases long after the gifts have gone out.  That's okay, right? ;)  Two babies were born earlier in the summer, and these are baby gifts that I made for both.  The first was born to a friend who, along with her husband, practices martial arts.  So naturally I wanted to use that as a focus. First, I used scraps leftover from their wedding pillowcases to make a set of burp cloths.  Then, I pulled out the ninjabread appliques again.  This time, I used one on each onesie.  Add in a onesie with the baby's first initial, and the end!

This picture was taken before finishing each gift completely.  I had made a bunch of burp cloths and showed one of each print, plus the nursing pads I'd finished.

And a closer look at the nursing pads.  I'm now out of the microfleece that I had bought for this ages ago, so the next ones will use Cuddle Dry Microfleece that I bought through a coop.  I'm also now out of PUL, I think, so I'll have to buy some more.  These don't take much, but they turn out really nicely, especially with the lace overlay.  I've had great feedback from some of the people who have received these, so I'll continue to gift them.

This is from a book panel that I bought and stashed probably at least ten years ago.  The new mom loved Care Bears, so I was saving it for her first child.  I'm kind of impressed that I remembered and dug it out! :)

And then a baby sling!  This baby's gender wasn't known ahead of time, so I wanted to make something that could be gender neutral.  I purchased an olive linen blend from JAF and went to work.

I went with the black print for bias binding - both because I thought it'd be fun to have the music print, and because my remaining nylon sling rings were black.  I do think this really sets off the olive, so it was a good choice.  And I have a bunch of the bias tape remaining for future projects.

I sent this along with a print out of instructions and helpful websites for babywearing....I hope that she uses it and likes it.  My sister-in-law told me (much later) that she had LOVED her sling and used it almost daily.

Little bits....

Before Christmas, my husband was attending a white elephant gift exchange as part of a work get-together.  He ultimately decided to take a bottle of homebrew as the gift, but he thought it looked kind of lame, since he'd forgotten to buy a bag to put it in.  I asked how long he had before he had to leave, then brought him a couple of Christmas fabrics from the stash.  He chose this one, and I whipped up a quick lined bottle bag, which we then topped off with a red ribbon tie.  He told me later that the bottle of beer was the hit of the party, and that everyone was surprised and impressed to learn that his wife made the bag, let alone so fast!  (This is why we sew....and keep a stash!)

Thing 2's teacher is due any day with her second child and second girl.  The room moms decided to throw a baby shower for teacher and kids, and so of course I had to contribute some dinosaur appliqued onesies!  But I also thought it would be fun for the older sister to get to "match" her new baby, so I did matching appliques for the little girl.  Unfortunately, WM is down to very few long-sleeved no design shirts, so I ended up with two shirts of the same color - but one is a turtleneck and one a crew neck.

While I had the Jeep fabric out, I also appliqued two onesies with Jeeps, to go in with my sister and brother-in-law's Christmas box.  These are for their first baby.  I hope to be the first one to give them Jeep baby stuff. :)

Appliqued stuff out the wazoo!

So there are always babies being born in my world - some nearby, some farther away.  And with one classmate, one coworker, and two people from my past all having new babies, it was time for another marathon onesie session!  (Yes, some of these are just because I was getting a little onesie applique happy....)  

In the left column, there are four onesies going to the new baby of the child of a family we used to attend Bible study with.  (I still can't believe she's old enough to be married with a baby!  I must be aging...)  The baby's late uncle was apparently very interested in getting a motorcycle, so I made sure to have two motorcycle appliques in the lot.

The column second from left is for a classmate's new baby girl.  Her daddy is a pig farmer, which inspired the pig applique.  I think it's super cute!  I also really like the black dino - it has multi-colored hearts all over. :)

Then the other 3 columns were not specifically intended for anyone - though I did scoop three boyish ones out of the mix to send as a gift to someone for whom I used to babysit.  This is his second baby - again, I feel as though I'm aging!  (But I was only a teenager then, and I figure I'm probably less than ten years his senior, so it's not so bad.)  I'll be keeping the motorcycles, foxes, and pigs in the mixture in the future!

The onesies on the left are for my coworker's baby.  His intended name begins with a "B," and his room is decorated in a fox theme.  And then I just had to throw in a dinosaur.  I mean, come on!  Every little boy needs a dinosaur!

And after all the recent Star Wars love for my niece, I realized that she has surely grown out of the original dinosaur onesies I sent her.  So she needed a new "grown up" dinosaur shirt. :)  I thought that the tonal purple dinosaur would go well with a lime green shirt - the combo seemed very summery to me.

So the red dinosaur applique has been kicking around for about a year now - basically ever since I made Thing 2 his dinosaur shirt.  I had cut this applique out at the same time as the orange one, then decided to go with the orange.  So I finally decided that this red one needed a shirt.  The little girl who inspired the whole dino appliques in the first place is now a year-ish, so I figured that she could use a new dino shirt.  Since the applique was so big, I went with an 18 month size - she can always grow into it!  

And then I just loved the pig applique so much that I wanted to make a bigger version.  A friend from my grad school days still does research with pigs, and her little girl is turning two later this summer.  So I thought this would be perfect for her.  It turned out really cute, and I'm already trying to come up with other things to use it on!

Baby gifts

Two people I know just had their first babies, so it was time to pull out some onesies for embellishment!  The onesies in the left column are all long-sleeved 0-3 m size, and the others are all short-sleeved 3-6 m.  The blue shirt in the bottom is a 24m, for my niece.  I had some fun with these!  The red and green dinosaurs are for one friend's baby boy, and all the girl onesies are for the other friend's new baby girl.

I also made a baby sling for the baby girl.  Her mother's favorite color is blue, so I found a sky-blue linen look fabric at JAF and made a single layer sling, edging the sides with homemade bias tape from a tonal turquoise butterfly print.  I think it turned out super cute!  I hope that she likes it!  The sling rings were passed on by a member of my online sewing group, so this is my first time using real sling rings, as opposed to steel ones from the hardware store.

More dinosaur appliques!

An online friend had seen my previous dinosaur applique projects, and she commissioned me to make some dino onesies and matching burp cloths for a new mom in our sewing group.  She provided the cloth diapers and the fabrics, and I did the work.  I love her fabric choices!  These are the burp cloths with dino prints onesies with batiks that go with them.

And then a closer view of the dinosaurs.  I love how they look with these batiks!  I didn't really fussy cut them - not easy to do when you're working from the back of the fabric.  But some of these are adorable with how they turned out!

And then, since I've been having so much fun with these dinos, I volunteered to make two sets to send off as door prizes in a clinic celebration in honor of World Breastfeeding Day.  These fabrics are all scraps from my stash.  I think they made great dinosaurs!

Appliqued onesies are quickly going to become my baby gift of choice....

More applique

So when I made the previous dinosaur-appliqued onesies, I thought to myself that my niece really needed a set, too!  So I got a set of 18 month Child of Mine onesies and enlarged my dino appliques a bit.  I really like how these turned out!  There's just something about dinosaur shapes in girl colors that is unexpected and really fun, I think.

And then I decided that my niece also needed some girly Star Wars shirts (since my brother is, in fact, the world's biggest Star Wars fanatic).  So I got 18 (white) and 24 (pink) month Garanimals shirts (WM) and appliqued a Tie fighter and an X-wing fighter on them, using leftovers of the dress fabrics. I think these turned out pretty awesome, too!  :)

A baby dress!

My sister-in-law sent me a link to a baby/toddler dress probably a year ago and asked if I thought I could make something like that.  I said, sure, probably, let me look for some patterns I can Franken-pattern together to get it.  Then a few months later, I saw The Ava Knot Dress pattern by Pink Poodle Bows.  It was almost exactly like the dress she had wanted!  So I downloaded the pattern, but since I am multi-fabric-matching-impaired, I gave her the yardage requirements and told her to buy the fabric she wanted and send it to me.  Here is the result:

Not anything I would ever have put together, but it was what my SIL wanted, and she is thrilled.  When I made this, my niece was about 16 months old, and I used the 18 month size.  The feedback I got is that it fits her perfectly right now, but the bodice will likely be too small in the fall.  So next dress will be 24 month size, I think.

This was a fairly quick sew.  There are no pattern "pieces" - just cutting measurements.  (There is a template to cut the armholes out of the bodice pieces.)  Everything fit together perfectly, and the instructions were easy to read and follow.  I did get confused on one spot, but that's only because I misread the directions.  I emailed the designer for clarification and was surprised to get an email back within an hour!

Like I said, my SIL was thrilled with the dress, so I will definitely make more.  (The next version is one that I bought fabric for, so it will be more sedate.)  I've told her already that I'm happy to make whatever she wants - but she needs to get the fabric, because this multi-fabric-matching is not my style. :)

A baby gift!

Oh, this one was so much fun!  A former student and her husband were expecting a baby, and I'm told they wanted a dinosaur-themed nursery.  Unfortunately for them, it was apparently impossible to find girly dinosaur baby stuff.  And this, my friends, is why we sew!

Enter the stash....The dinosaurs on blue flannel in the background was a Black Friday purchase from a few years ago.  If I remember right, it was long enough ago that I intended it for toddler bedding.  Oops!  Well, now part of it became a crib sheet.  The dino flannel to the left was a thrift store find, and now it's a pack-n-play sheet (I stalked the baby registry to verify that they had or intended to purchase both a crib and a pack-n-play.)  Then the onesies were the really fun part. :)

People always give new parents newborn or 0-3 month clothing, so I figured that something a little bigger was a better plan.  I bought a three pack of plain white, short-sleeved onesies (Child of Mine brand - I think that's Carter's brand for Wal-Mart) in 3-6 month size.  Then I searched the internet for uncomplicated pictures of dinosaurs.  If I remember correctly, my google search was "free dinosaur stencil" - and I found these, which had been used for freezer paper stenciling on an art smock.  Awesome!  The blue and purple mottled prints were leftovers from the Christmas stockings I made for my sister-in-law and niece, and the pink is a fat quarter I found at JAF.

After printing out the patterns in several different sizes (this was totally not methodical - more trial and error), I traced the shapes onto the paper side of Heat-n-Bond Lite and then fused the adhesive to the fabric.  (Make sure to fuse it to the WRONG side of the fabric - I wasn't thinking and screwed up my first applique.)  Next, I cut out the shapes and then fused them to the onesies.  I wasn't sure whether I could get away without stitching them in place, but after consulting my online sewing group, I decided it would be better to stitch them down.  I didn't want to do satin-stitching on these, so instead I simply stitched a line around the shape, just inside the edges.  I also applied Fray-Check to the raw edges, just in case....I think these are hilariously cute, and I'm definitely going to make more in the future!