Baby Gear Bonanza!!

Baby will be here in a few short weeks and I finally got around to packing our bags to avoid last minute running around. The tough part was choosing what would be our "coming home" outfit (since I've spent most of 2009 making baby stuff), so it's almost embarrassing how much time I've been thinking about this. I'd loved this bird fabric and used every last shred of it so nothing would be wasted. I'm pretty impressed how much stuff I was able to get out of just 1 yard! I'd also made a baby kimono from it a while back, but it ended up way too big for a newborn despite the shoes being just right.


So I used the last bit of fabric to make this newborn dress. The design is a pattern created by my lovely friend Rae of Made By Rae. Her free Itty Bitty Dress Tutorial is just great. I love how simple it is to make and how practical in design! I didn't have enough of the birds to make the entire dress though, so I used some lime green organic bamboo velour for the top part. I also used organic velour to line the shoes & the backs of the bib and burp cloth. It makes everything cuddly soft & adds some organic, which makes the "green" in me happy.


I call this pocket diaper "the watermelon". The outer is raspberry PUL fabric with a lime green organic bamboo velour inner. I used the outline of a newborn diaper cover pattern, but modified it to be a pocket style diaper and added cross over velcro tabs, so it would have a wider range of fit. I didn't top stitch it so the colorful inner would peek out at the edges and because they are less likely to leak or wick then (stitches are holes, so the more you have in the PUL, the more room for moisture to seep out).


I also made a few tiny baby barrettes after some inspiration from a super tutorial by Heather at Make and Takes. I'd been trying to figure out the best way to make some & for cheap. I cannot believe how much most shops want for the same thing. $4.00 & up for 2 baby hair accessories that will eventually get lost in a few months? No thanks. Cheapo me got some mini clips from the Target (12 for $2.19) as well as some cute grosgrain ribbon for scrapbooking (6 pack of prints in their $1 section). I made the polka dot bows from 1.5" pieces of ribbon and stitched them onto the barrettes. I made the bigger pink one from some felt scrap cut in a longer strip overlapped and cinched with matching embroidery floss. The silky pink one was just very thin ribbon tied in a bow and then stitched onto the fuzzy half of some velcro. I then added a stitch to the velcro halves so they would stay together.


Now I'm just waiting these last few weeks for baby to make an appearance! On the plus side, now there's free time for all the non-baby related projects I've got backed up....