Stashtacular - oh yes please!

I've been following Jenna's blog, Sew Happy Geek for a little while now and when she posted earlier today about Stashtacular, a month long event she and some fellow bloggers are hosting I was immediately sucked in. The idea of not buying new fabric for a month is appealing in itself - I've got plenty to work my way through without resorting to buying more - a whole chest full in fact. But the chance to send off a bundle of fabric from my stash to be given out to other crafters and to receive a random collection of new fabric back in return really gets me excited.

I've already gone through some of my stash to build a collection to send off. I have several piles still to sort through though, so it's likely to get bigger. I am very much looking forward to this!

Bandana Bib Tutorial

I've been getting quite behind with posting this last week. Firstly it was half term so there was no play group for Midi and my folks who would normally take her for a day or two are dealing with a lot themselves right now, so I had her all to myself all week - as well as Mini. We had a lot of fun, but other things like my crafting and blogging had to take a back seat. Then there was also the minor issue of my Dad's exhibition (he's a glass sculptor). It had been planned for some time but due to his ill-health he's not able to do it all himself right now so my sister and I took on some of the setting up. That was fun too, but had the same effect on my 'me' time.

Anyway, I'm rambling. In the midst of all this Mini has entered into that wonderfully soggy, dribbly stage of pre-teething. We've got a huge stash of regular bibs left over from Midi's younger years but they seem huge and not at all flattering, and I was quickly getting tired of changing Mini's top multiple times a day. I've been seeing bandana style bibs around for a while and thought they'd be perfect, so had a bash at making a few. Here's how the latest one turned out:

I went through a few design tweaks to get to that particular one. It resulted in several perfectly useable bibs but the one above is the end product. There will be plenty more made to this pattern over the coming weeks I'm sure!

I used an old t-shirt, some thin flannel, a few pieces of velcro and a bit of fabric paint for the stencil robot on the final one. That is all. These aren't hard. Here's how I went about it:

I cut two squares, one out of an old t-shirt and the other out of flannel. This was to make two bibs. The sides of each square are approx 13" long and this was to fit a slightly large four month old baby. Probably 3-6 month size or thereabouts.

I placed the two squares on top of each other, neatly aligned, and folded them into quarters along the diagonal.

 I then cut a slightly curved line along the edge of the first fold. This cut resulted in four almost triangular piece, two out of each type of fabric:

I then placed two of the pieces together and stitched around the edge of them leaving a small gap for turning them right side out afterwards. There isn't really a right or wrong side with the fabrics I used but if you try this and there is with yours then make sure they're right sides together when you sew.

I turned them right side out and then top stitched all the way round 3/8" from the edge to close the hole. Sorry, I forgot to photograph this bit. Adding a bit of velcro to the top two corners (one on the inside, the other on the outside so that they neatly meet) finished them off:

And in use:

However, I wasn't entirely happy with them. The triangular tips made it a little fiddly to attach the velcro and the pieces had to be quite small so when the bib was worn there wasn't a great amount of contact between the two pieces. Although it wears fine I'm sure that Mini could easily yank it off if he was of a mind to which kind of defeats the object of wearing one in the first place. So I tried again, tweaking the design a bit.

This time I just cut one piece from each fabric. To give you an idea of size in case you wanted to give this a go the two straight edges are 13" then all I did was flatten off the corners before cutting the gentle curve to go round the neck. Before sewing I used the bin bag/freezer paper technique to stencil on a little robot design to add cuteness value, then followed the same steps as above. The big benefit of the new pattern was that I could use one of the velcro ends as the opening/turning hole which gave a neater finish. That'll be the way to do it then!

 

And before I sign off for now, a little teaser for what I'll be writing up shortly. Last week, while doing a mad dash round the shops to get wine and plastic beakers for Dad's exhibition opening I spotted this pack of three rather funky coordinating tea towels at the bank-breaking cost of £4:

I grabbed them not knowing exactly what I would do with them but certain that they had great potential. I very quickly decided a new summer dress for Midi was where they were headed, but then I wished I'd picked up two packs because I couldn't quite see how to make a dress to fit a 3-4 year old with matching front and back. It was then that I realised I'd just set myself a challenge. With no opportunity to go back to the shop but the chance to spend an evening sewing I had to figure out a solution. And here it is:

I'm rather proud of this one - my own design no less. A tutorial for this rather funky little 'three tea towel dress' is in the making so watch this space!

Taggie toy free pattern

A couple of weeks ago I posted about the taggie toy I'd made for Mini. It's received quite a bit of positive feedback both online and in real life - so much so I've had requests from friends to make them for their babies. In response, I've knocked out a quick pattern for it for my own reference and once I'd done that I realised it would only be a little bit more work on my part to add some instructions and make it into a little downloadable.

So if there's a baby in your life that you think might appreciate one of these little monkeys then you can download the pattern and basic instructions below. The instructions are very basic. There is no tutorial, just a quick write-up so basic sewing skills would be handy. I may add a tutorial in the future if I get enough requests but it really isn't that hard.

And of course the little fellow can be modified in any way you wish. Change the fabrics (I used fleece for the body and felt for the features but old t-shirts, muslin or cotton prints would all work), add or reduce the number of tags, or what they're made of (I used shoelaces but any kind of ribbon/tape would do), play about with the features... the possibilities are endless! If you do make your own taggie toy from this pattern, or even loosely based on it then I'd love to hear about it!

You can download the pattern as a pdf here.