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.

Woven platter tutorial

You may remember that a week or two back I made a woven platter out of ash twigs from the garden:

It's a great little platter. It's about 8" across and obviously not much use for anything soggy but we've used ours for serving bread rolls and fairy cakes, and it looks lovely on our dresser the rest of the time. When I made it I wasn't so sure about having used string to wrap the outer ring, or at least only using it partially. I do quite like consistency so once it was done I wished I'd either wrapped it all the way round or used a longer stick initially so it could be secure enough just by twisting it around itself multiple times.

I've had quite a bit of positive feedback from people who have seen it, so given that I haven't seen a tutorial on how to make something like this before I thought it might be a good one to try as my first one. :)

To start, you need a good bundle of sticks. We recently took down a section of old mixed hedge so I had several felled trees to pick over. You're looking for sticks that are relatively uniform in size and have some flexibility to them - they will need to bend! I used mostly ash, but hazel or willow would be good choices too. They also need to be as straight as possible, but some curve is OK.

Then, take your longest, most flexible stick. Having already taken the best ones for my first dish I had less to choose from this time but I did find a nice rod of hazel that was just under 5' long. Work the wood in your hands, curving it round. When you've curved it enough to make a full circle start wrapping the thinner end of the stick around the thicker end and keep wrapping until you're out of stick, twisting it around itself. As long as you have enough length to get  over half way round your circle it should be secure enough to remain in shape on its own. You can experiment with the size of your circle too, to get more or less extra twists. My circle was about 9" across.

Next, go through the rest of your sticks and cut them down into lengths a couple of inches more than the diameter of your circle. You don't need to be too precise here, but better to go too long than too short. If you have the choice, cut each stick so that your lengths are as straight as possible.

Now pick out two of the thicker, sturdier sticks. These will be your anchor sticks. Lie one of them on top of your circle across its centre. Take your second stick and lie it on top of your first and at 90 degrees to it, then carefully post each end of the stick underneath the ring. You may need to fiddle a little with this. I found that it was easiest to do one side leaving just enough stick at the other side to touch but not cross the ring. Then I pushed the stick underneath the ring and threaded it through a little way to secure it. I had to do a little evening up afterwards, but once you have both sticks in position the pressure they exert on each other and the outer ring should keep them in place well enough.

Now have a look at your structure. This is the point when you decide which direction you're going to weave in. It doesn't actually matter which way you choose but both times I've done this I've found that one way has felt instinctively right. That might just be me though. Once you've decided, take another stick and thread it into your ring so that it crosses the outer ring and the perpendicular anchor stick the opposite way to the first - so if the one you thread it next to went over the outer ring, under the anchor stick and then over the outer ring this next stick needs to go under the outer ring, over the anchor stick and under the ring again. Once you've done a few you'll start to see it take shape.

 

I found that I got so far and then all the sticks I had left to thread were too curved to give any resistance once put in place - they'd just have fallen right out again - so I had to take a break to go and hunt for more sticks. It took some wading through nettles to the felled trees that had been piled there but I got some in the end. This was a lesson, or two. One - get lots of sticks to start with and two, don't bother with any that have anything more than a very slight curve to them. The un-threaded ones above were all too curved for me to use and get them to stay in place.

Assuming you have enough suitable sticks, keep going until you can't fit any more in. Then your creation should look something like this:

Then take a pair of secateurs and trim all the ends off, leaving about a quarter inch overlap to ensure they stay in place even if there is some slight movement to their positioning. I really enjoy this part - your creation immediately transforms from a strange bundle of woven sticks into quite a sophisticated-looking platter!

Now you can sit back and admire your handiwork. And eat cake off it, should you feel so inclined.


Having made this one for the tutorial, I wasn't as pleased with it as I had been my original one. I think it was a combination of having chosen not to wrap the ring, resulting in an outer edge that was a little uneven by the time I'd woven all the sticks through it, and having a less uniform bunch of sticks to work with. If you compare the two platters, the first looks neater due to all the sticks being much more similar in size:

I like them both though. I think next time I'll try wrapping all the way round, but I might have to wait until next winter when the next lot of felling is done. I'm all out of ash sticks...

Linked up in the very lovely Not Just a House Wife's blog in Show Me What Ya Got #24. Why not pop over and check out the other great ideas there?