A gift for a new baby

Our mothers' group welcomed its 16th baby last week! We have 11 two year olds and now five babies 10 months and younger.

Little Arabella was the first girl after a string of boys, in fact until she was born all of the 'second' babies have been boys.

We usually give the new babies a cot linen set or sleeping bag made by one of the very talented mums in our group. But as she is heavily pregnant with her own 'baby #2', I put my hand up to make Arabella's gift.

I decided on a little dress - the O+S birthday party dress. Yes, I have made it before (three times, in fact) but I think it is just so beautiful and a bit special. I'm also so familiar with the construction now that it is very fast to make up, I didn't need to refer to the directions. I also made a pair of matching bloomers using Lotta Jansdotter's pattern, and some matching button snap clips. The dress and bloomers are both in size 6-12 months.

As I mentioned above, this is the fourth time I've made this dress so I decided to do a few things differently to relieve the boredom.

First of all, I used French seams rather than overlocking. I only learnt how to make French seams on my last project, so these and still a bit of a novelty to me and I love them! Seriously, they look so neat and I really like that I'm able to finish the seams as I sew. The pattern is pretty well suited to this method of finishing, although I did have to improvise a little when attaching the top facing, which calls for the seams to be opened out.

The second thing I did differently was to use a different/coordinating fabric for the facings. I really love this look and to be honest it never would have occurred to me to do it when I first started sewing last year. The fabric is from Lila Tueller's Soiree range. I used Meadow Paisley in Aqua for the dress and Leaf Confetti in Sun for the facings and bloomers. Both were fabrics I already had in my stash. I was worried they'd be a little busy but think they look pretty good.

Finally, I sewed the pleats in this time round (using a narrow line of stitching at the inner edge of each pleat) and really love the result, it's so crisp and will be much easier to iron. I have no idea why I haven't done this in the past, but will certainly do it from now on.


The finished gift: dress, bloomers and matching snap clips.


The bloomers match the dress's facings.


I secured the pleats with an edgestitch on the inside of each pleat. Really love the crisp finish.


The inside of the dress. My overlocker may gather dust now that I have discovered the beauty of French seams. It makes the dress look so neat and professional.

Sweet and simple bloomers

I have Spring and Summer babies, so they spent many of their early days in nothing but a nappy and a singlet (in fact that's all my son is wearing right now). A couple of friends have recently had babies so I decided to make them some cotton bloomers to cover their nappies and keep them cool.

The pattern is from Lotta Jansdotter's book Simple Sewing for Baby. The projects in this book are sweet and very basic, so suited to a beginner. More experienced sewers would be able to whip up most projects in an afternoon or less.

The bloomers turned out well, although I think next time I will adjust the pattern slightly to widen the crotch.

I used Sandi Henderson's Ginger Blossom fabric for the girls' bloomers. The orange boys' bloomers are from a scrap I found in my cupboard (!) and the blue fabric is from Amy Butler's Belle collection. It also happens to be one of my all time favourite fabrics.

I'll use any excuse to make button clips, so I made a couple of pairs to match the girly bloomers.


Just love, love, love that blue fabric. I have metres of it!


Bloomers and matching clips using fabric from Sandi Henderson's Ginger Blossom collection.


Taking them for a test drive! Bloomers by me, cute tush by my son.

Hairclip holder

I reckon my little girl have somewhere in the region of 150 hairclips and ties... It's excessive, I know, but I just can't help myself, especially now that I have started making button clips (and anyway, she loses them so often that I can kind of justify it).

Anyway, I have been thinking about making her a hairclip holder for a while now, to keep things organised and pretty up her room a bit. I still haven't gotten around to making my daughter one but I did whip up one for my friend's daughter's first birthday this weekend.

The design and construction was very simple. I trimmed a scrap of fabric from Sandi Henderson's Farmer's Market collection (just love the colourful stripes) into a plaque with rounded corners. I then found a font that I liked (I think it's called Harrington) and sketched it directly from the computer screen onto some aqua polka dot fabric. After ironing on some vliesofix I cut out the letters and fused them to the fabric plaque. I finished it off by back-stitching around it using fine silver embroidery thread.





The plaque is backed with the same aqua polka dot fabric and has a medium fusible fleece inside to give it a bit of structure (otherwise the weight of the clips would cause it to sag). It's finished with a topstitch around the edges.

I used pale pink grosgrain ribbon to attach the clips to and sewed a button and buttonhole at the bottom to attach the hair elastics.





Of course I made a dozen or so button clips and ties too!

Now I just need to make one for my little girl.

More booties and accessories

Thought I would blog some of the other booties I have made - this is such a quick pattern to stitch that I usually make a pair for every new baby. I also have lots of fun choosing the fabric to use.





This pair was made using the Very Hungry Caterpillar fabric based on Eric Carle's book. I adore this fabric and bought a heap of it, as it you can turn it into a nice unisex baby gift. I cut out and blanket-stitched the fruit pieces onto a plain white Bonds top to match the booties.

The next pair of booties were made using vintage Japanese kimono silk, so they're truly a one off. They were for a little girl so i also made a pair of matching covered button clips. Cute!