Pretty, Pretty Projects

Reading the craft blogs is dangerous.  So many cute ideas!  Such creative projects!  But so little time (when I should really be doing "real" work, the kind that I am nominally paid for ...)

But sometimes the craft blog world is clearly just in my brain in a remarkable way.  Just yesterday I posted about making baby toys, and mentioned that I'd like to try balls, perhaps.  And lo and behold, I run across a stuffed ball tutorial.  With a jingle bell, no less.

And yesterday I was thinking about getting little Krauselet's furniture set up (we have a dresser for its little clothes, and a changing table.  We also have a co-sleeper bassinet ready in the wings, but I don't think we'll put that up until Krauselet actually arrives; it is going to crowd the bedroom pretty tightly). 

And in my thinking and mental furniture-arranging, I was considering how nice it would be to put up a mobile above the changing table (and above the dresser, too, which is the secondary changing table).  And then this morning Sew, Mama, Sew obliges me with not one, but two, mobile tutorial projects!

Not too many days, too, since I found tutorials for diaper changing pads and cool stuffed dolls, and I've also been thinking about our baby wraps, too. 

I have the fabric for the wrap(s) - J's mom kindly purchased it for us, but because she was paying I felt I had to acquiesce on color and weight.  So instead of a fun, funky purple/blue/green/cream cotton print that I loved and would have cut on the bias to make it a smidge stretchy, I ended up with a  white, cotton/lycra, slightly stretchy, lightweight twillish/canvas-y kind of fabric.  Nothing wrong with white, I suppose, except that it shows every stain ever made by baby or baby-wearer.  And despite MIL's assertions that it is the easiest to care for because you can just drop it in the bleach if necessary, it's not that simple around here.  I categorically do not use Chlorox or any similarly toxic substance, not even on my own clothes and certainly not on the Krauselet's.  It's sunshine, hydrogen peroxide, and gradually-dingy whites for us.  But plain white is a little, well, um, boring, and after all this wrap thing is more like a garment for me or for J than something for the baby.

So I've been thinking about how to spice it up.  The best idea I have so far is to make some really wide bias tape out of some fat quarters that I love (have I mentioned how much I love bias tape?  I really, really love it) and bind the wrap that way, thus preserving the stretchiness of the fabric (which is a nice benefit) and preventing the bulk of a traditional hem.  I'm also considering either appliqué or a crazy-patch block sewed to the center front of the wrap, which would have, in my mind, two benefits.  For 1) it would make it easier to hide baby stains (or mommy stains) on the front of the carrier, which is the most visible section.  And 2) it would be easier to find the center front of the carrier, which is useful for tying it on properly.  We also have enough fabric to make two wraps out of the white fabric, so I could personalize each one - one for me, and one for J, if I felt so inclined.

And of course I still want to finish all the nest-feathering projects and the personal-gratification projects, too.  Still in progress: living room curtains, and finishing a few UFOs of various varieties.  Still on the drawing board: cushions for the dining room, a curtain for the dining room picture window, and cushions for my rocking chair and the window seat in the living room.  On the horizon: making nursing-friendly tops, making baby presents galore, and making myself a wrap dress (which probably won't be a maternity dress anymore, but still will be awesomely cute).  Still a pipe dream: recovering the couch, and making a crazy quilt.  That last one is going to happen, even if I'm 95 years old before it does.

As we're preparing for the Krauselet's arrival, I've been thinking a lot about toys lately.  Specifically, I've been thinking about creative, open-ended toys, the kind that you can use to do all sorts of things.  You know, blocks, dolls, play kitchens, sandboxes, etc.  Things made from stuff besides plastic.  Things a kid can use over and over for more than a week or two.

So when Steve and Stephanie's son Henry was born on January 28th (and I still don't know how they managed to get to the hospital in the middle of the night, during the snow storm ...) I naturally wanted to make him a gift that would be creative and open-ended, at least potentially.  I also didn't want to make something like a quilt or blanket or pillow or clothing, because if Steve and Steph are anything like us, they probably have lots of those already, especially since Henry's their third baby.  (Ok, let's be honest: I'm sure they also have tons of toys.)

So given that I didn't want to make bibs or blankets, and I didn't want to buy something, what's a girl to do?  Go to the internet, of course.  Eventually I stumbled upon this fantastic idea: stuffed blocks.  There are lots of variations on this, some of which I will eventually try.  But that tutorial on Flickr is what I used, and I really like the way they ended up.


Following in the recent stash-busting pattern, I used stashed fabrics: 5 different cottons and the never-ending scraps of yellow twill left over from the button stoles.  The cottons were left over from another baby quilt (Lydia's, made in December of 2007) or various other recent projects, including the tote bags.

On the yellow twill, I machine embroidered H-E-N-R-Y using navy blue thread and a zig-zag stitch.  I just free-hand drew the letters using a pencil - I still haven't figured out the best method for marking fabrics, but pencil works pretty well for most of the time, especially if I don't change my mind later.

I cut out the blocks 4" square, using my rotary cutter, ruler, and mat that thesporkinator  bought me for Christmas.  I <3 the rotary cutter.  It makes things that are square so much more fun and simple to cut. 

Each block has one of the embroidered letters on yellow twill, and one square each of the yellow multi-colored dots, the blue gingham, the green gingham, the teal squares, and the red-orange calico.  I just sewed them together in random order, and by happy accident they turned out to be totally un-matching.  Then turning, stuffing, and hand-sewing the openings closed followed.  Voila!  Soft blocks for the baby.

The most difficult part of the project was marking all the sewing/stop lines (it's important not to sew all the way to the end of the fabric, or you don't end up with a cube!) and next time I do this I will probably just put pins at my stop lines instead of doing all the marking.

I say "next time", because I am totally going to make lots more cubes.  I might even branch out into balls, though that much geometry seems a bit out of my league right now.  These are (I hope) a great baby gift, and they involve way less time and energy and money investment than a quilt.  And we have LOTS of friends having babies just now, including 2 to whom I owe presents already, because they are already born.  (I don't know why, but I don't like to make baby gifts until babies arrive.  I can start them, but I don't like to finish before the kid makes its appearance into the world.  Not sure of the reason: superstition, or a desire to personalize for each child, or a bit of both?)

Anyway, next time I will probably skip the turning part of things - I think it would be fun to leave the seam allowances on the outside and just pink them, so that Baby has something easier to grasp onto.  (Plus, raw edges are cute!) 
I might experiment with using more solid foam rather than poly-fill, so that the blocks are more substantial (after I get the dining room chair cushions made and have some leftover foam to play with). 
I might add a jingle bell or something in the centers. 
And I will definitely be sure all the fabrics are pre-washed ... the red calico shrunk a bit in the dryer (oops) so Henry's blocks are now slightly rounded.  (If I get around to it I might unpick them and take out a bit of the stuffing so they lay flat again.  Then again, I might not.)
I also might transform this into a hand-sewing on the couch kind of project, depending on how many I decide to make.

I think I will probably go through my scrap boxes pretty soon - which are pretty much overflowing - and cut a bunch of squares so that I can make blocks when the mood strikes me, without too much preparation.  This is a pretty quick, fun project, and it would be even quicker and more fun if I already have the pieces cut.

Total time: to read the pattern, pick fabrics, cut out, and sew & stuff 5 blocks was about 2.5 hours.  A lot of that was getting the embroidery finished and looking okay.  The cubes themselves sewed up pretty fast, maybe 15-20 minutes each.
Total cost: minimal, as I used small pieces of stashed fabrics.  Perhaps a total of $2 for fabric and stuffing?  Even purpose buying fabric would probably not cost more than $1/cube.
Total fabric use: a 3" finished cube (which is what these are) needs a 12 x 8 inch piece of fabric (to get 6 4-inch blocks).  That means that it is infinitely possible to get 5 blocks out of 3/8 of a yard of standard-issue, 44" wide cotton fabric.  [One fat quarter could do nearly two blocks of this size.]  (Let me tell you, figuring out that fabric usage with a preggo brain was a Herculean task).  So let's say I used 3/8 of a yard of cotton for these five blocks, spread over scraps of 6 different fabrics.