I have been busy sewing lots of Christmas presents recently. I have made four things for our new baby. Considering the baby will be born right at Christmas I know he won’t be interested, but I wanted him to have presents under the tree like the other kids. All of the fabrics used to make these items were ones I already had. I have been enjoying the money saving and creative aspects of sewing toys for the baby.
This first picture is of a tag blankie and a tag ball. I had found the patterns at this site http://www.newconceptions.com/patpdf/TagToyspdf.pdf. I didn’t make the blankie exactly the same. I used my 12 1/2″ quilt square to cut out the pieces for the blankie, so it is slightly smaller. I also embroidered the baby’s name in the center. The blankie and ball were pretty easy to make.
The picture above is of a fabric baby grab ball. I found the pattern on this site http://sewing.about.com/od/babyshowergiftsewing/ss/babyball.htm. I used the pattern for the smaller size. I did put a jingle bell in 3 of the sections which resulted in a muted jingle. I didn’t want it to be really noisy, so it worked well. The pattern was pretty easy to follow. The project was somewhat time consuming because there was quite a bit of hand stitching to put it all together.
These 2 pictures are of a cloth color/texture book I made for the baby. The idea seemed simple enough, but I did have some trouble sewing it all together. What I did was cut out 16 pieces of fabric using my 6 1/2″ quilt square. I sewed 2 pieces , right sides together, and then turned them. I used fabrics such as fleece, fake fur, denim, satin, and cotton. I wanted to sew all of the pages together, but the stack was too thick. I then sewed every 2 pages together to make the stack more manageable Then, I had to sew a piece of fabric on the edge of each section. I was able to sew those pieces together. It looked alright, but I decided to make a band of the outer fabric to go around the middle. I also embroidered the baby’s name on the front of the book. It may not be perfect, but I think he will enjoy the colors and textures. If I make another one I will have to come up with a better method.