I love babies and I love all the gear that goes with them. But I'm a matchy person. I like everything to match. I never have sets of things because I am blessed with hand me downs and I love shopping at thrift stores too. But I have a friend who is pregnant and I decided to go all out for her shower. I made all of this in just a few days and it was all pretty simple with the help of Pinterest and all the amazing craft bloggers and their wonderful tutorials.
First off was the diaper bag. I knew it would take me the longest so I tackled it first. I followed this tutorial pretty much to the letter. She provides the pattern and very detailed step by step instructions. Except I used velcro where she used a magnetic snap and I made my own bias tape. This was my first experience with Interfacing, Luckily I had some on hand that I purchased on clearance knowing that someday I would use it. It definitely helped make this bag more sturdy.
Then I made a bib. I used this post for inspiration for the burb cloths and the bib but it wasn't too hard to figure out. I wanted to embroider his name onto something and the bib was my best option. The size of my burp clothes depended on how many I could get out of a ripped towel. I think they ended up 10" x 14.5".
I decided that working with terrycloth is really annoying... but oh how nice it feels.
I made a baby quilt... pretty strait forward, I didn't need a tutorial for that one. She had mentioned to me that they already had some Winnie the Pooh stuff so I figured it would be a good opportunity to use up the piece of fabric I had on hand. It wasn't very big though so I added a border to make it a little bigger.
I started making these tag toys a couple years ago before I knew about Pinterest. I have only come across one of the tutorials that I had read at the time. It gives you the basic idea. I will probably do my own tutorial down the road though. The unique feature of a tag toy is its crinkly layer of plastic that keeps babies interest in it. And the ribbon tags provide a place to attach those baby chain links providing endless possibilities of what to do with it.
This Changing Pad was something I decided to add last minute, idea from here. I didn't add the strap like she did but that would be a nice feature. However I did add a crinkly plastic layer like my tag toys. See I've been collecting not only wipes bags but toilet paper bags and the bags that diapers come in so I have some a lot of large pieces and this was perfect to use one of those up. Plus if your changing a dirty diaper it will prevent it from going through to the batting layer and come clean in the wash easier. For the tag toy and this pad I used scraps from the other things I made. And yes I put the Winnie the Pooh characters facing opposite directions on purpose since it will usually be used long ways.
Last sewing project was the nursing cover. I followed these instructions except I couldn't get any boning. I was able to avoid the store for the most part during this week of sewing by having everything else on hand and I didn't want to break that streak. My mom is a fellow hoarder of useful trash and had mentioned she had some plastic ribbon (you know that stuff that comes around your packages sometimes that you have to cut off in order to open the box?) that would work but she couldn't find it. Also 'D' rings seemed like it would be a bit annoying too mess with when you have a hungry infant in your arms so I used 2 plastic clips connected by 18 inches of elastic. I took a 2 inch wide strip of fabric and made a tube to cover the elastic before I attached the second clip to the end. I really liked Our Seven Dwarfs idea for the terrycloth in the bottom corners though. That was a must feature for me. Even though terrycloth is extremely annoying to work with it makes a great spit rag and in this case a great weight for windy parks. I am definitely making one of these for myself next time around.
I mentioned that I had avoided the store but I was talking about my sewing projects and the craft store. I also wanted to make a Diaper Cake. I know that for a diaper cake the 'frosting' is what makes it cute. But I didn't have the means to go all out. I had asked my friend who is good with coupons if she could pick up some diapers and whatever else she could come up with and I would babysit for her to work off the cost. She got me a box of diapers the bottles of soap and lotion, diaper cream and a thermometer. I sent my husband to the dollar store to see if he could find any baby socks or little toys and he couldn't find those so he picked up a few random baby items. Then on the last night before the shower we were out and about and we stoped at a bigger dollar store since it was right there. I was really on a mission for just one thing, A big cellophane bag to put it in but ended up picking up some socks,wipes, a bath book and blue ribbon.
None of it really looked good on the cake but I stuck it all in the diaper back anyways. By putting the Teddy Bear on the top I avoided opening the second package of Diapers so I just sent that on the side. The bottom layer is wrapped in a blue flannel remnant that I had picked up from Walmart at some point. I had my MIL surge it for me and it is larger than a receiving blanket, which means it will last longer than simply receiving the baby. I did buy cake boards for this. I was a little annoyed that they only sold them in packages by size instead of a mix of sizes. But I covered them in the different blue fabrics that I was using and hot glued a can top to the bottom so that she can hang these blue circles on the wall above the changing table or something. (I was really annoyed that I didn't get a picture of just those before assembling the cake but oh well.)
Now the cake was a new challenge for me. I always make my own cakes but they never look professional at all. This one still didn't but it was my first real experience working with fondant (which I bought on clearance because I didn't want to spend time figuring out a new recipe). The frosting was supposed to be white but my butter flavoring was a little very yellow. But hey it still worked. The cake is 12" rounds, 2 layers of chocolate and 1 layer of white in the middle. I cut the block of fondant into cubes and used my fingers to smooth the corners of the building blocks for the middle. It was very crooked but it stayed pretty well. I used circle cookie cutters to cut out all the circles (that took awhile to go around the edge twice, but it really helped it look better). The shapes on the back of it you can't really see but all I did was shove the fondant into a candy mold and then as carefully as I could I pulled it out. The letters are written with an edible marker that I had bought for my daughters party a couple months ago. I spelled Ezekiel around the bottom blocks and the top 3 blocks had 'cat', 'dog' and 'pig' on the other sides.
And here are the lucky parents that get to enjoy all my creations. The favorite of the father to be was the embroidered name on the bib and I'm glad I didn't skip that step.
I had a lot of fun making all this and I loved how I had most of it on hand already because of my ginormous stash of fabric and other craft supplies. I was really happy when I found the big piece of that blue because it allowed me to match everything together.
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