Burp Cloth Tutorial

My friend needed a little gift for a baby shower. The mom-to-be is having TRIPLETS!! Yowzas! Their names are Addison, Lillian, and Dylan. So cute! So I made a couple burp cloths for her. While I was at it, I figured I would take some pics and make a little tutorial for you!

I used some cute material and tried out using hand towels for the backing.



I usually use chenille (or faux cheapy chenille!) for burp cloths so I wanted to see what using terry cloth would be like. Well, let me just say I wasn't too impressed! I got some cheaper towels at Walmart and they were suprisingly too fluffy. I personally like the burp cloths a little flatter so they fit in my diaper bag, but maybe I am just weird!

So, back to the instructions!

Cut the 'pattern' ends of the hand towel so that you just have the terry cloth piece left over.






Then cut the terry cloth piece in half. (yes, I realize I didn't cut this in half! But I had extras so I was able to scrap the smaller piece!)



Cut your cute material pieces to size.



If you want to put an initial (or a full name), iron fusing material onto the back of your material. I used Heat and Bond. Then use a stencil (I print letters off my computer!) to trace the letter BACKWARDS on the Heat and Bond. Cut out the letters, peel off the backing, and then iron to your burp cloth. I ironed the letter on a couple inches above the edge.





I knew my material might start to pull and gather up as I sewed around the letters, so I also ironed on some light interfacing behind the letter. This help give a little backing and heft to the material.



Setting my stitch length short, I used a wide zig zag to sew around the edges of the letter.




Now pin cute material to a piece of terry cloth with right sides together. Sew around the edges, leaving an opening to turn the burp cloth inside out.



After trimming material as needed and clipping corners, turn burp cloth inside out, iron, pin opening, and top stitch around.

Here is the final product!






Pretty easy and a great way to give a special personalized gift. I think this is a wonderful project even for a beginner sewer. If I can do it, anyone can!

Here are all the burp cloths all done. I only added initials to three and left three plain.





This one is my favorite pattern! I have tons of this material left over and already have an idea for a project. So check back to see what I have in store for ya!





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Halloween Shirt #2

Well, Halloween is this weekend and I never bought John a Halloween shirt! I made this one but he has only worn it once or twice. Is it just me or is it hard to match a grey shirt with shorts? (...assuming you are like me and don't have black shorts for your kid right now!) It is too hot to wear jeans, and quite frankly it is hot to wear long sleeves past 10 am!

So, I decided he need something a little snazzier for Friday when we are going to Brad's work where they have a HUGE Halloween celebration. The office is just short of shut down for most of the day as they put on skits, play games, and entertain. It is so fun! So, I had a black shirt from Walmart (still long sleeves, but oh well!) and I made a Halloween version of the 4th of July shirt.



If you kind of squint so that the white lines don't look so wavy, it is a pretty cute little shirt! I can't wait for John to wear it Friday and it is perfect because it will match Matthew's outfit which is also a black shirt.

So, which shirt do we like better? The graphic...



...or the argyle?



I can't decide which to put him in at the Halloween party on Sunday before he dons the pirate costume! I need your advice!


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{EASY} Fabric Roads

John John loves playing with his cars, trucks, and trains. It is so interesting how he just gravitates towards them even though he has tons of other toys to play with. He is all boy for sure!

So, I made a set of these fabric roads from old jeans in my fabric stash.


I saw someone post about making fabric roads for her son and I liked the idea of fabric roads for a couple reasons:

1. John wouldn't have to snap pieces together as he would have to if we had a 'real' set of roads or railroad tracks.
2. It is pretty easy to store compared to having a huge box of bulky pieces.
3. It is portable- we could take one or two pieces with us if we need to entertain him somewhere like a restaraunt or at a doctor's office.

So, I figured I could make the roads pretty easily myself without having to sew anything. Using a pair of old jeans (my mom gave me a ton of my dads old jeans so I have quite the stash of denim!), I cut out some roads that were about 6 inches wide. I didn't hem the edges because I was being lazy, but you could zig zag stitch along all the edges to help keep the fraying at a minimum. I guess I could have also used Fray Check on the edges but so far the fraying hasn't been too annoying. I used yellow paint to quickly make the stripes in the middle of the streets. Aaaaannnnnnddddd, that is it!

With one pair of jeans I was able to make two long roads, two shorter roads, two curved roads, and a four way intersection piece.



So as John was playing with his cars and these fun new roads, I was thinking to myself I could make a little bag or something to store the pieces all nice and neat. Then I realized I already had a nice pocket ready to be used!



Perfect and cute!

And even after I made John his new 'toy', look where he was still playing with his cars. :)





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Big Brother design

As you may know, John is going to be a BIG BROTHER! Baby Matthew is coming next week so I really wanted to make John his very own Big Brother shirt. Nothing like waiting until the last minute, I created this design on microsoft two nights ago. I think it is really cute and was thinking I could make a freezer paper stencil with it and paint it onto a shirt. Easy peasy.



So, John and I took a trip to Walmart this morning and they had NO PLAIN SHIRTS! What?!?! (and sidenote: I get SO frustrated everytime I shop for John because the selection of boy clothes is miniscule compared to the girl clothes. Ummm...boys have to look cute too!)

So, for the time being, John may not have his own shirt. If I can drag myself to search for a plain shirt this week then John will be all cutesy. (my stomach reached full capacity a couple weeks ago and shopping for a plain shirt doesn't sound like something I want to do right now!)

BUT, I wanted to post this in case anyone wants to make one for their own kiddo...or friend, relative, stranger... {I am pretty sure you can click on the picture and save it. If that doesn't work and you want the file, just email me! :) }

If you make one, I would love to see it!

The Nursey is {almost} DONE!!

Woohoo!!! Baby Matthew's room is DONE! If he was born tonight, the room is ready for him. Not so sure about mommy and daddy, but the room is ready! Here is the big reveal!

Let's reach back into our memories and remember what the room looked like before...



...and think back to all the hard work Brad did on the walls and the craftiness I did on recovering a bumper and night light shade.

And now, walking in the room, this is what you see:



LOVE IT!



After seeing some cute painted oars in a Pottery Barn catalog (I think!), my dad got some oars at Academy and painted and distressed them for me. Aren't they super cute?!



I love how the bumper turned out and how the crib looks. I know the ribbons look weird right now- I didn't feel like re-tying them for the pictures. My mother-in-law took the bedskirt (which is from John's old crib) and added a stripe of the plaid material across the bottom. Unfortunately, you can't see it right now since the mattress is raised so high. But I promise she did a fabulous job on it!



I found the cute sail boat mobile from Target. I had originally thought I would make my own sail boats and attach them to John's old mobile. I quickly realized it would be WAY easier to buy it instead!



I love this chair from John's room (so glad we decided on a blue chair and not boring beige!) and I love it being next to the sunny window. My mom found the anchor pillow on sale at Restoration Hardware and once I made my own pillow form and stuffed it, it is perfect in the room. I found the little fish table at Kohl's on sale and once I used a coupon it was about $8! Can't pass that up!






Another great find was this boat-shaped shelf from Craigslist. I love that it was already navy and even though it is a little scratched up, it looks perfectly distressed for the room. I am not thrilled that it is yellow on the inside, but repainting it wasn't priority so I am leaving it for now. It is perfect for the little pails for storage! (The shelves are not totally done either- I am not in love with how it is set up but I will probably wait until the baby gets here to know how I really want everything to be accessed.)







So, there is a huge blank spot on the wall above the dresser. I am ordering a wooden sign from Go Jump In The Lake on Etsy (you can see it in the link!) so once I get it, my dad is framing it with reclaimed baseboards and we will hang it up over the changing table. It is going to say 'Lake Matthew' so I am so excited about it! It is really simple and will be perfect for the room. I can't wait to get it!



My mom and dad found this cute mirror made from an old port hole. It even opens so I really want to put a picture behind it or paint a 'M' on the wall so there is a little surprise when you open it. haha! :)





Last but not least, here is the night light that I recovered. Love how it turned out too!



And there we have it...an {almost} finished nursery just in time for Matthew's arrival!

Cute Baby Ribbon Balls

I had saved instructions for a soft ball several months ago and put it on my list of 'things to do'. I finally tried to make them this weekend and think they turned out really cute!



I used the pattern found here. I just modified to insert folded ribbon in between each section of material. I used the biggest size and they are pretty small...perfect for younger babies so they can hold them easily. I love the girl version because the fleece material really helped to give it a nice round shape when I stuffed it. The boy version was a little lumpy, but still cute.

The best part was as I was stuffing the balls, John immediately came over and wanted to play with the balls before I could finish sewing up the opening. He LOVED them! So these are kid tested and kid approved! :)

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Car Roll-up Caddy

I have made a couple crayon rolls before and they were easy enough. So I wanted to see if I could modify that design to make a little roll-up caddy for little toy cars. I knew I wanted to make the top 'flap' long enough to sew on a road for the boys to drive the cars on, so after some thinking, here is how it turned out...




Want to make one yourself? Well, here an amazingly long tutorial to show how I did it. (this might be hard to explain so bear with me!!)

Supplies you need: coordinating fabric, material for your road (I used an old black t-shirt, but you could use felt), ribbon, marking pen and fusible stuff like Wonder Under or Pellon. If you are anything like me, you will also need a seem ripper. :)

1. Cut your coordinating material. I used 4 small matchbox cars, so I decided to make one piece 7x6 inches and the long piece for the road was 7x34 inches. {However, if I did this again, I would make the pieces 8x6 and 8x34 because it ended up being too narrow for the cars}.



2. Fold each piece in half, wrong sides together, so that they are now 7x3 and 7x17. Iron to make a nice crease at the fold.



3. Time to make the road. To do this, I used an old black t-shirt, cut out the curve, and followed the instructions that came with my Wonder Under to fuse and iron onto the long piece of material. Then I unfolded the material and sewed around the edges of the road. (If you don't unfold the material, then you will see the stiching of the road on the final product which will look UGLY!!).





Then I repeated the process with yellow material to make the stripes on the road. I did a quick zig zag stick down the middle of each stripe after ironing onto the road just to make sure the stripes don't start peeling off.





4. Take your shorter piece of material and sew along the folded edge. This will just make a nice, neat edge on the pocket.



5. Keeping the longer piece of material unfolded, pin the shorter piece to the bottom of the longer piece, lining up the edges. Sew around the three sides of the shorter material, leaving the top open for the cars to slide in.



6. Here is the tricky part. Well, if you are smarter than me, it may not be tricky. You need to mark off where you want to sew to make individual pouches. I took my space and divided it into four sections, since I was going to put 4 cars into the pouches. Using my marking pen, I marked where I wanted to sew those lines. It ended up being around every 1.5 inches. Like I said before, it ended up being too narrow so you will have to play with your measurements depending on the width of your material and how big the items are that you are putting into each pouch.



Once your material is marked, sew vertical lines without going past the edge or your shorter material. This will create the individual pouches.

7. Pin two pieces of ribbon to the center of the edge of your material.




8. Take your super long piece of material and fold it over so that the right sides of the material are togther. Kind of like making a sandwich around the pockets you just made. Make sure the ribbon is tucked in nice and neat.



9. Pin around the edges, leaving a hole to turn the caddy right side out.

10. Sew around the edges, starting here (sewing towards the left in the picture)...



and ending here...



11. Turn right side out, iron, and then pin the opening. Top stitch around the entire caddy, making sure to close the hole as you sew.

12. At this point, now that the entire project was done, I realized my cars wouldn't fit into the individual pouches. I had to walk away a minute because I was about to be upset that this hour long project was wasted. Then I just decided to improvise and I ripped out the stitching on the pouches to make two big pouches instead of four little ones. The cars then fit perfectly and my quick thinking saved the day! yeah!!




So this project wasn't terribly difficult and turned out cute. I would say it took about an hour or so, which isn't that long considering I had to think about how to make it without directions. Hope the directions make sense for anyone who is wanting to make one. Let me know if you have questions or if I need some major edits to my directions!