A Test Bib

I'm making a batch of baby bibs as gifts for several friends with new or imminent babies.  I traced the pattern off of a set of handmade bibs we received from my friend Evelyn when my older child was born.  They were easily the most useful handmade baby gift we got, so I want to pass them along!

Each bib uses almost 3 yards of double-fold bias tape.  In the original set, Evelyn used handmade flannel bias tape - I can't imagine making and pressing that kind of quantity, so these babies are getting storebought poly/cotton binding.  

Santa's Little Mask Workshop

 

I made a lot of cloth masks in December!  My kids' daycare started having the kids (age 2 & up) and staff wear masks in mid-November, so I wanted to make my 2-year-old some fun masks that he would enjoy wearing - we'd been having him wear a mask on the (very rare) occasions that we visited with friends outdoors, but not for school - it didn't seem reasonable to try to get him to be the only person at the daycare to wear a mask.  

I bought two Moda "Safety First" mask panels, each of which had 10 kid-sized and 8 adult-sized mask fronts.  I made up the Christmas panel first, and I'm now in the process of making up the non-holiday ones.  I tried out several different construction methods for both the kid and adult masks, before settling on our favorite style.

For the non-holiday masks, I'll: 

• put the front and linings right sides together (I'm making the kids masks double-layered for ease of breathing but triple-layering the adult ones) and stitch the top and bottom with a scant quarter inch seam allowance
• turn right-sides out, press, and topstitch the top and bottom edges
• press in the pleats as directed in the panel instructions (basically a box pleat, most of the adult masks are done this way in the second picture above)
• for the kids' masks, bind the side edges with double-fold bias binding and thread about 18" of very soft lingerie elastic through.  Tie a knot and use a lighter to singe the very ends of the elastic
• for the adult masks, I'm cutting the two layers of lining 6x7" (for a 6x9" outer layer) so that after pleating I can fold the outer layer back and tuck the raw edge under to make a casing on each side.  Then I thread a continuous 1-yard length of 3/8" grosgrain ribbon through the casings.

We prefer masks that fasten around the back of the head instead of the ones with ear loops (although we do have a few ear loop ones that a family member sewed for us, and we like those for quick errands because they're easier to put on and take off).  For adults, the ribbon ties are adjustable to get a better seal around the face, and for both adults and kids it's nice to not have the ear loops putting pressure on our ears.  

Knitting this Fall

With a baby, a toddler, a full-time job, and a pandemic going on, I didn't get much knitting done this summer and fall.  But I did get a little bit done.  The baby needed a hat, and I wanted to knit it for him, so my mom was gracious enough to watch the kids while I sat in her family room and knitted almost half a hat one day in October (even though we don't live in our house, she's the 5th member of our household for pandemic purposes).  I used about half a skein of the same Malabrigo Rios I used for his newborn frog sweater, which no longer fits.  The pattern is Tin Can Knits' Beloved hat/bonnet. I made the toddler size for my then 7-month-old, and it fits him perfectly.  

The other knitting project I finished was a pair of socks for a friend.  Her younger son has Down syndrome, and World Down Syndrome Day is celebrated on 3/21 by wearing crazy socks.  When I saw this pattern from one of my favorite knitting bloggers, I knew I had to make these for my friend!  The yarn is KnitPicks Felici and Stroll sock.  Blue and yellow are the Down syndrome awareness colors.  I started these socks in early March and had the wild idea that I'd finish them in time for World Down Syndrome Day 2020, but I didn't manage it.  Instead, I managed to finish them in October and did a front porch drop-off at my friend's house.  She was delighted with them, and pointed out that I finished them in plenty of time for World Down Syndrome Day 2021!

Here's a photo of the index card I used to keep track of the pattern.  It was fun and fairly easy to knit!

 

Owl Baby Quilt

This is an old project.  I made two baby quilts last summer from the same easy pattern, from  book called 3-Fabric Quilts.  This one was for my cousin's baby, born August 2019, and the other was for a colleague's baby, born September 2019.  I can't find a photograph of the other one, but I was happy with how both of them turned out.

They were very easy and quick to make.  I think the most time-consuming part was thread-basting them.  I would definitely use this pattern or something similar again!

Newborn Sweater

I made this tiny sweater for a friend's baby daughter, who was born in October.  I had every intention of knitting it quickly, but in the end finished it just before Christmas and finally managed to mail it out today. 

It's the smallest size of Baby Tea Leaves, knit in Ella Rae Lace Merino DK.

Handmade Christmas 2019

 This year I was much more ambitious with handmade Christmas gifts than I was last year!  I made three different types of handmade gifts, all in multiples.  The first was eight pairs of tea towels with two of my grandmother's recipes on them, in her handwriting.  This gift was a long time in the making - when we visited my grandma LAST Christmas, I asked her for her cornbread and pecan crescent cookie recipes.  Then I photographed them, uploaded them to Spoonflower, and followed the Spoonflower tutorial for making family recipe tea towels.  We gave them to all of the households on my mom's side of the family, and I think they were a hit - since we live far away, I didn't get to see anyone but my mom open them.

 My one disappointment was that the Spoonflower fabric didn't seem to be printed on the straight grain.  This is the first time I've ordered from Spoonflower, and I don't know if that's typical or if it was some sort of user error on my part, but it was a bit frustrating that I had to fudge so much when I was cutting the panels apart.  In the end, I don't think it was very noticeable in the finish product, though.  Once I had cut the panels apart, I used spray starch to help get crisp folds on the hem (I just folded half an inch under, and then another half inch under on all four sides, and cut little squares out of the corners to reduce bulk).  I took some twill tape I found in my sewing desk and slipped it into one corner of each towel for a hanging loop.

I also made four little kid aprons for my son, my niece and nephew, and my cousin's daughter.  I used a free pattern available from Sew Liberated, which I originally saw on the Sweet Alchemy blog.  My son loves to help in the kitchen (he particularly loves baking bread), so I knew I wanted to make him an apron for Christmas.  I know my niece (6) and nephew (4) also like to help in the kitchen, so I decided to make them for all the little kids we give gifts to (our 18-month-old, our niece and nephew, and my cousin's 6-year-old).  My SIL loves Tula Pink fabric, so I decided this cute cut that I had in my stash was perfect for this application.  I didn't have enough to make the fronts and backs of all four aprons, so I used a different fabric for the linings - blue stars for the boys, and a grey/pink floral print I had in my stash for the girls.  Having different linings also helps distinguish my niece and nephew's aprons, since they're slightly different sizes.  

The pattern is intended for kids age 3-6, so I made the 4-year-old's apron exactly according to the pattern.  I made the two 6-year-old aprons the same width, but lengthened them by 2" at the bottom.  For my 18-month-old, I folded the top edge of the pattern down by 1" and took half an inch out of the center of the apron by hanging the pattern piece 1/4" over the fold when I cut it out.  I haven't seen any of the other kids in their aprons yet, but my son really loves wearing his when he helps in the kitchen - he reminds us to put it on him if we forget!

The last gifts I made this Christmas were two Open Wide zippered pouches, using a tutorial from Noodlehead.  I made the medium size, and used fabric I bought on our vacation in Hawaii just before Christmas.  These were for my husband's aunt and a friend of my mother's who spent Christmas with us.  They turned out really well and were easy to sew!  They also turned out larger than I expected - almost big enough to carry around a sock-knitting project in.  Here's a picture with a 12.5" ruler for scale.

Handmade Christmas 2018

I didn't make very many Christmas gifts in 2018 - I had a 7-month-old, I'd been back at work for a rather overwhelming fall semester, and we were flying cross-country to visit family for the holiday.  In the end, I made two gifts, both from kits I bought from Connecting Threads.  The first one was a Santa Claus apron for my husband, who cooks and bakes a lot (since our son was born in May 2018, he's made dinner almost every night and baked bread and desserts at least two or three times a week, as I've struggled to keep my weight up while breastfeeding).  He also gets really into the Christmas spirit, so when I saw the kit for the apron I really wanted to make it for him.  The kit was really well done and pretty easy to sew up - you can't quite see it in the picture above, but the apron has two large patch pockets on the front, so it's quite functional!

The other gift I made in 2018 was an advent calendar for my son.  This kit is for a quilted advent calendar with small pockets, which are topstitched onto the quilted background so they are almost invisible.  This is really adorable, and hopefully he will enjoy it as he gets older.  This year, we put little dove chocolates in the pockets, and he really enjoyed eating them when we remembered to let him (and he learned to say "please" for his chocolate!).  For next year, we need to figure out a location and method for hanging the advent calendar where we can see it and where toddler hands and dog mouths can't reach it easily.

Rainbow Baby Quilt

 One of my friends from high school had a baby boy in July, and I made a quilt for him.  I used a pattern out of a book I borrowed from my mom.  It was reasonably fast and easy to make, and I used a lot of scraps - I did buy new fabric for the background and backing, but all of the colored fabrics were leftover from previous projects. 

The backing is a nice thick cloud-print flannel.  It should be very cosy this winter!

I tried a new basting technique with this quilt.  I thread-basted it instead of using basting spray, which has been my go-to basting method for many years.  The thread-basting was very time-consuming, but it held the layers together nicely and I really appreciate not having to buy basting spray or deal with its fumes.  I was satisfied, and after I finished this quilt I bought some curved needles to make thread-basting easier in the future.

I quilted the quilt using the suggestion in the book with the pattern.  I used my walking foot to quilt a curved "echo" around each colored diamond.  It was relatively fast and came out looking really nice.  It's not a very dense quilting pattern, which made the finished quilt nice and soft.  

All in all, I'm really happy with how this quilt turned out.  The only thing I'm not thrilled with is my failure to heat-set the ink I used to write the label on the binding - it smeared in the wash.  But I've learned my lesson and I won't make that mistake again!

Swoon Baby Quilt

Another in the 2018-2019 baby quilt series.  This is a 24" square swoon block with some borders added.  It's backed with a nice cozy cloud-print flannel that I bought at my local quilt shop.  

This is for a baby girl born to some of our friends at the beginning of February.  Her mom is an ecologist, which is why I picked the trees as the main focus print.  It's actually supposed to be a Christmas print, but it works for any time of year!  The background has a shimmery metallic print, and the binding is a text print with a berry recipe on it - the parents are into canning, so I thought they would enjoy that.

I was careful to arrange all of the pieces so that the trees pointed upwards.  I quilted the swoon block in the ditch, and then did a square spiral in the borders.  The quilting was easy, and I think pretty effective.

We delivered this quilt in person during spring break in March.  The recipient is so sweet and adorable!

There are 3 more baby quilts to come this summer, not including my baby's toddler bed quilt (we were gifted several beautiful hand-made quilts and blankets, so I decided to enlarge the baby quilt I had planned to make.  The top is finished but I still need to piece the backing before I can baste and quilt it).  I'm a little burned out on baby quilts right now, so I'm taking a break during Me-Made-May to sew some apparel.

Another baby quilt

This is a baby quilt I made for some college friends of my husband's last summer.  Their baby was born the same week as mine, and I worked on the quilt off and on through the summer (often with my baby asleep in the bouncer chair next to my sewing desk).

I got the idea for the pattern from a quilt in a blog post I read last spring, but I didn't love the way the pinwheels were arranged in that quilt.  Instead, I chose 5 blocks from an old modern half-square triangle quiltalong, and made them 8" square.  I found this awesome paper airplane print for the back, and some typewriter keys for the binding (the mother is an archivist, so I thought she would get a kick out of those prints).

Then I quilted the HST blocks in the ditch and filled in each of the large bars with a different FMQ design.

I'm pretty happy with how it turned out!

Changing pad liners

When my husband and I were putting together our baby registry, one thing we added (and then received) was a set of changing pad liners, with the idea that when the baby pees during a diaper change, you only have to wash the liner and not the whole changing pad cover. It's a great idea, but we found that the commercial liners didn't wash well at all.

I replaced them with a set of 5 homemade liners.  They have PUL backing (the same material that cloth diaper covers/exteriors are made from) and a cotton flannel face.  I cut the two layers into 12.5"x26" rectangles (this makes them a little bigger than the commercial ones, which is nice), and then traced around a small plate to round the corners.  I used wonder clips to clip the two layers together, right sides out, and serged around the edge. 

I made two sets of 5 liners: one set for us, and another set for some friends who have a baby the same age.  The white PUL that JoAnn sells is 64" wide, so a yard and a half of it was enough for both sets.  The ones pictured here are made with flannel I had in my stash, and I bought some more flannel to complete our set. 

These were quick and easy, and we use them a ton!  I'm getting ready to make two more sets for two families in our friend-circles who are expecting babies this month.  I think 1.5 yards of extra-wide PUL and 2.75 yards of 44" wide flannel is the right amount to buy to make two sets of 5 changing pad liners.

Dinosaur baby quilt with scientific integrity

One of my best friends from college has a baby exactly 12 weeks older than mine.  While we were pregnant, I offered to make a quilt for her baby, and asked if she and her husband had any theme or color requests.  They asked for a dinosaur quilt with blues, greens, and yellows, but no purple. 

I immediately started searching the internet, and found these amazing paper-pieced dinosaur blocks.  Robert helped me choose three of the blocks, and I just bought those three patterns individually rather than the whole bundle.  All three of these dinosaurs - the pteranodon, velociraptor, and triceratops - are from the cretaceous era.  Since my friend is a scientist, we didn't want to send her baby a quilt that mixed dinosaurs from different eras (hence the scientific integrity).

I used some scraps from my stash and supplemented with some fabric from my local quilt shop.  It turns out the owner of the shop really likes dinosaur novelty fabric, so she had a great selection for me to choose from, and was very excited to hear about the dinosaur baby quilt!

The quilt is large for a baby quilt - if I'm remembering right, it finished at about 42" x 52".  The patchwork squares are 3" finished, and I had half a yard of the dino fossil fabric in the horizontal stripes.  I quilted a diagonal grid in the patchwork and dinosaur sections and parallel horizontal lines in the fossil stripes.  By the time I was done with the piecing, I wanted to quilt in a way that would be relatively easy and not detract from the dinos. 

I'm thrilled with how this quilt turned out, and my friend and her husband were, too! 

Two Newborn Sweaters

When I made last year's Christmas sweaters for my niece and nephew, I bought three balls of worsted weight yarn for each of them, and each sweater used two full balls plus just a bit of the third.  When I finished, I had a good brainstorm about what would be a good use for about 200 yards of superwash worsted weight yarn in each of pink and yellow, and I hit on newborn sweaters!  I picked out a free pattern on Ravelry that would be good for any gender - Olive You Too.

I made two almost exactly the same, and finished them in February.  The pink one is for a friend's daughter and I made it exactly as written in the pattern. 

The yellow one is for my baby (who is expected to be a boy), and the only thing I changed was the buttonhole placement and number of buttons - I thought the buttons grouped at the top were a little bit on the girly side.  If you're paying attention to the photos, you'll notice that I also crossed the cables the other way on the yellow one - that started out as an accident, and when I noticed half-way through the sweater I decided to make it a design feature rather than ripping out to start over.

This project was very successful!  It used almost all of the leftover yarn (and the buttons were from my button jar), and my friend's daughter looks adorable in her sweater.  I'm excited for my baby to wear his!

Pattern:  Olive You Too by Taiga Hilliard Designs
Size: 0-3 months
Yarn: Yalley Yarns Superwash Worsted, about 200 yards per sweater
Needles: 4mm
Started/Completed: January 2018/February 2018
Modifications: None for the pink sweater.  For the yellow sweater, I crossed all of the cables the other way and made five buttonholes evenly spaced along the button band instead of four buttons all near the top.

Handmade Christmas 2017

Wow, this post is late!  I didn't plan to make very many Christmas gifts, but somehow I ended up making a bunch anyway.  This quilt was for my Grandma, and it was a team effort with my mom.  We had given Grandma the fabric and pattern for Christmas two or three years ago, but we came to the conclusion that she was never going to sew it, so we decided to do it for her.  It was relatively quick (two weekends), and fun to do together!  It came out great, and Grandma loves it.

I've done Christmas sweaters for my niece and nephew every year so far (although last year I made a flannel shirt for my nephew instead of a sweater), and I kind of thought last year was going to be the last year - they're getting big, and the sweaters are getting to be more of a production.  But then I hit on the idea of a ballet wrap sweater for my dance-obsessed niece, and I couldn't not do one more year.

I used free patterns and used worsted weight superwash wool from Valley Yarns (the Webs house brand).  They were fun to knit, and apparently were a hit with the kids.

Earlier in the Fall, I knit a pair of socks for Robert for Christmas.  He loves them, but has dubbed them "the betrayal socks," because I knit them right in front of him without telling him they were for him.  He assumed they were for me, and was surprised that I was knitting myself socks in a blue tweedy yarn.  He tells me that he resisted the urge to ask if he could have them - he did it so well that I hesitated a bit to wrap them up for Christmas, because I wasn't sure if he liked them!

And lastly, I made a few Christmas-y kitchen things for us.  I took two fat quarters of Christmas-y fabric I bought for this purpose in Fall 2016 and finally made a set of four holiday napkins for our dining table.  I also knitted three Christmas dishcloths.  One of them made its way into my mom's stocking, and we kept the other two for ourselves.

Swan Lake dress

My niece turned four in September, and I made her a Swan Lake dress.  She is really into dance and ballet right now.  It's a flutter sleeve Geranium in size 4T (if I remember correctly), with some length and width adjustments to the skirt in order to take full advantage of the border print fabric. 

I used some digitally printed fabric from Hawthorne Threads, and to be honest I didn't love it.  It was pretty stiff, and the ink was very dense on the surface of the fabric.  I don't think I would use this fabric for quilting, and it would definitely not be appropriate for any application that needs to drape.  But the prints were adorable.  I hope it will hold up okay with frequent washing. 

Little Polo Shirts

My nephew and grandcousin (first cousin once removed) have birthdays two weeks apart, and they turned two at the beginning of the summer.  By luck, we were visiting my family in Europe for my grandcousin's birthday, and we were able to attend his birthday party.

I made two identical little polo shirts for little boy second birthday gifts.  They're size 2T Oliver + S Parachute Polos.  They went together pretty smoothly and I was happy with how they turned out, but I don't quite like this pattern as much as I like the Sketchbook Shirt.  Part of it was that I fought with my machine hemming the knits.  I ended up using a twin needle on the sleeve hems and a triple stretch stitch on the shirt hems, and wasn't 100% happy with either one.

I also think the inside of the side vent could be a little cleaner.

I did like how the inside of the collar and plackets looked, though.

Tiny Roller Skate Dress

I made this tiny Oliver + S Roller Skate dress for my cousin's baby.  It's the 6-12 month size, since I didn't make it until she was almost six months old.  It was pretty easy to sew, didn't take too much fabric, and turned out pretty cute.  I would definitely make it again, maybe with pockets if it was for an older child.  Next time, to save even more fabric and make it lighter for summer, I might try using bias binding for the elastic casing and to finish the sleeve/armhole edges.