Little Red Riding Bonnet

Making baby clothes is so much fun!  The projects don't require much fabric so your scraps are perfect...plus they don't take nearly as long to make as adult clothes.  Sometimes I can whip up something over the course of just two or three good baby naps.  The downside is that babies outgrow clothes so darn quickly...and sewing sleeves for a tiny shirt can get pretty finicky.

Here's a new red bonnet that I just finished for little Delia who will be twelve months old by the time this post is published.  :D My fingers are crossed that the little bonnet will fit.  It certainly does on Adam who is three months younger which sort of concerns me.  I actually Googled "head circumference for babies" and one site said that growth slows down after the first six months.  By one year the average circumference is about 18".  Hm....I think Adam's head is already at 18.5" :O  But then again it's hard to take a head measurement for a squirmy baby so it could have just as easily been 16.5" with all of his bouncing and hand waving.

Here's another shot of the hat with the inner lining in focus.  I used this fabric for Lily's dress last year and Grace's flat cap earlier this summer.  See what I mean about scraps coming in handy?  It works so well with this red wool that came from an old skirt belonging to Mike's grandmother.

I had some leftover black piping lying around which was just long enough for a floral detail on the side of the bonnet.  I have a thing for using piping or binding to create floral detailing.  I've used binding in this manner for several past projects including my green wool skirt and ribbon shirt.  The first time was on my Boxing Day shirt.  It can be a bit time consuming but really worth the effort.

Well I was just about to post some cute photos of Adam with this bonnet on but Mike vetoed it because he said the hat makes Adam look like a little girl.  He was just trying it on for Delia! No big deal, right?  Oh well.  I can save the photos for Adam's wedding slideshow to be presented some day far into the future ;)  I don't know which of the two will be more horrified.

Blue Owl Wrap: Part Two - Baby Carrier Blanket

It's day six of my cold and my voice is as hoarse as ever.  Not much relief on the coughing yet either.  No time for sulking though...it was back to work on the Blue Owl Wrap!  Today I added the finishing touches to make this stroller blanket compatible with my Beco Butterfly baby carrier.

This morning I created some simple tabs with snap buttons using the same fabric from the bottom edge.  These simply allow me to attach the blanket to the shoulder straps of my carrier.

Then I added a second drawstring horizontally across the blanket, just above where the shoulder zippers begin.  This was pretty easy to do since the blanket is already made with two layers (the minky and fleece) so I just sewed a track through both layers of fabric, cut a short slot into the minky layer, and threaded the shoelace.  No problem.  The drawstring wasn't absolutely necessary but it helps to keep the blanket snug around Adam.  Here's how it looks from the inside.

And finally the Velcro tabs were already there from yesterday so I just had to 'reconfigure' the bottom for baby carrying.

Honestly, the trickiest part of today was just getting a photo of the finished product with Adam in the carrier!  That guy sure is squirmy :D

Blue Owl Wrap: Part One - The Stroller Blanket

How did a month go by since my last post?  I totally dropped the ball on doing anything with those wine grapes from our backyard that I mentioned last time.  "Challenge accepted!" I had exclaimed?  More like challenge forgotten!

Ugh, and now the fall weather has set in and I've got a nasty nasty cold.  It's terrible...the kind with body aches and a burning fire in your chest, a wet and angry cough, fire in your eyes.  How did I catch such a nasty thing from this smiling little baby??  

Something has been going around, that's for sure. My brother and sister-in-law were under the weather a few weeks ago. Then their daughter Gracie had a runny nose.   It's not surprising Adam had it next after a few play-dates with several shared toys.  Then, on Friday the 13th of course, in this miserable game of Pass the Cooties the hot potato landed in my lap with extra dressing.  My only hope is that this mega-cold can't be passed back to Adam or Gracie.  Sick babies are no fun at all.

Fortunately with the noticeably cooler weather Adam can now make use of his new Blue Owl Wrap.  I started it about a week ago thinking there was plenty of time before he'd need it (remember that two-day heat spell of 35+ degC weather?!) but no, we've already taken it along with us on strolls.  

For some time now I had been wanting to make a convertible baby blanket that would be useful for both the stroller and my Beco baby carrier but I took a while thinking about the design.  I know there are some pretty good multi-functional baby blankets out there online but this was too good of a project idea to pass up.  I actually have a bit more work to do (just missing some snaps to attach to my baby carrier) but I can write about the stroller blanket part this time.  

First I started with an owl blanket I happened to see at Toys R Us.  Yes, I was gonna order the raw materials online and start from scratch...but then I came across this cutie and heck, it meant I could start the project ASAP without waiting for delivery!

I made three slots in the blanket to install zippers and accommodate the 5-point harness on the stroller.  It's pretty awkward putting in a zipper where there isn't already a seam!  The ends turned out kind of wonky so the fabric doesn't lie flat.  Oh well.  The two longer vertical zippers (beige) open up to allow for shoulder straps and the short horizontal zipper (white) is for the centre buckle.  

These slots definitely made up most of the work on this project.  Once I cut into the fabric it was clear that the fluffy soft underside would need binding along the edges in order to prevent some serious fraying.  It looked like I had been shearing sheep by the time I'd finished!

Next I basted in the zippers.  Then the real challenge was using the machine to sew the zippers into the top minky layer without going through the second fuzzy layer.  It gets tricky when you have the minky layer on top and you're just feeling around underneath to make sure the sewing foot is always within the hole you've just added binding to.

Zipper basted in place

Finally I hand-stitched the bindings to the back sides of the zippers so that the two layers of the blanket were re-attached.  

Yay for zippers! Once those were installed I played around with some design ideas. I wanted to extend the blanket to leave more room for a baby who's growing up too fast for my comfort :(  That's where the cream-coloured flannel came in.  I added a fleece layer in between for warmth and sewed some diagonal lines to give it a quilt-like feel.  Then I got some white shoelace and my good ol' Peekaboo Partridge cotton to finish the bottom edge.

One more zipper to go!  I put in a 26" plastic zipper to close up the front of the blanket and then sewed in a few velcro tabs to complete the project.  I'll explain in my next post why I chose to make the bottom of the blanket this way.  It would have been far simpler to just sew close the entire bottom portion and ensure Adam's little toes never poke out into the cold but this design decision was made with the baby carrier blanket in mind. 

Velcro tabs to help bottom edge stay closed

Today Adam and I took the stroller out again with the blanket.  We were outside for over an hour and he was still toasty by the time we got back to the house :)