Baby blankets and bedrest

You have probably been wondering where I went and why I haven't been posting sewing tutorials. Well, the truth is I am almost 29 weeks pregnant and have been on bed-rest since 23 weeks, two of which were in the hospital. All this due to a weak cervix that needed to be stitched up with a cerclage. So far the procedure has held nicely, but you just can't know, and that is why I am on bed-rest pretty much til the end. I must say, it is not easy.  I mean, the two weeks in the hospital were pretty awful (although thanks to my amazing husband and family, it was much easier than it could have been). But being home, and staring at all of my beautiful new fabric, and not being able to sew - well, torture! My mom is spending the summer with us, which is just amazing, she has completely taken over the whole household, and she and my husband take care of littleheart. 

Anyway, I won't complain. Fist of all, things could be much worse, and second of all, it is a limited time and for a good cause.

Being me though, I couldn't go completely without being crafty, so I did think of a few projects I could do laying down.

4th of July

We don't celebrate the 4th of July here, but my nephew in the States does, so I made him this little holiday outfit for the occasion. I just took a simple T-shirt and soft knit pants pattern, and added a pocket in the front of the shirt, and two pockets in the back of the pants. I used a blue and white stripe knit as my main fabric, made all the edges red and used a fun blue and white stars knit fabric for the pockets. It is a little hard to get pictures of my nephew these days, but I think you see the outfit on these.

 

 

I hope you all had a Happy 4th of July! Stay well.

 

 





Stuffed animal storage floor cushion

Do your kids have tons of stuffed animals and you don't know what to do with them? Well, mine does, and she is not even three yet! She actually never really plays with them (yet?) and they are just laying around all over the place. I was searching the internet for some storage ideas, and came across this fun idea here - A big pillow that you can store all the stuffed animals in, but also use as a sitting pillow. How fun!

Ruffle Flap Top

A few months ago I saw a girl on the playground wearing a shirt similar to this one. I thought the idea of the ruffly sides was really cute. Unfortunately, since I did not know the child I could not just walk up to her and take a closer look, or even take a picture, so I made this from my memory. I actually really don't remember what the shirt looked like, but I think this one turned out kind of cute :)

Anyway, it is really easy to make, you just need to alter a normal shirt pattern a bit. I will briefly talk you through it, but I don't have to explain much, if you know how to make a regular t-shirt...

Soft baby hats for premies

My dear cousins just had a baby girl, 2 months early. Thankfully she is doing well, but she is pretty tiny. I remember when my nephew was born early, my sister was saying that all the hats were way too big, so I decided to make a couple of hats for my baby cousin.

These are really easy, most important you use very soft fabric. You want to line the hat, so no seams are touching the baby’s head directly. If you are making these for a newborn preemie, remember to wash your fabric with special baby detergent, before you make the hats.

I have included my pattern here. I was inspired by this wonderful tutorial for baby hats. I made the pattern smaller for preemies and sewed it up a bit different to have the whole thing lined…

I hope you can help some little tiny premies with some of these cute, soft hats!

Crossover Ruffle Sundress

Well, it has definitely been a while, lots has been going on, and I just needed to take a little time-out from writing tutorials (not sewing). But I did get a lot done over the last month, and the weather is finally warm (even hot!), so we are getting a lot of use out of what I have made. 

Littleheart is definitely in a dress/skirt ONLY phase (which means all of he pretty shorts are just put away in the closet). I try to keep up with her phases, not easy, since they change so fast. But I have made her a few new sundresses (luckily some of the ones from last year still fit) and have a few ideas for some more.

Anyway, this crossover ruffle sundress was inspired by a dress I saw online (I really don't remember where). Want to make one? Read on!

I am still here...

Wow, my last post seems like such a long time ago! I don't know where the time went! I do actually have a few tutorials lined up, the only thing I need to do is scan my patterns, and I just have not had time to do it. But I promise, I will get around to it soon...

I have been sewing, not tons, but quite a bit. I made some more summer outfits for Littleheart. The problem is, she is very peculiar about what she wears lately. For a while, it was dresses only, so I made a bunch of dresses, and now it is skirts. At least it is easy to sew up a few circle skirts at a time, and she seems satisfied with them. She is so into skirts, she wears them to sleep over her pajamas!

I also made a few very practical maternity skirts for some friends. It is a great pattern that fits everybody, and I will try and write up a tutorial for it.

I really need to get started on some more baby presents, there are just so many babies due this year around here, I am not sure how I will keep up!

So, you see, my lists are huge! And I really need to get some new material. So hopefully there will be some fun tutorials coming your way this spring and summer...

Anyway, here is a cute outfit I made, that didn't make the tutorial list. Littleheart calls it her "Copohots" outfit (polka-dots).

Giraffe Baby Rattle

I have seen a lot of these soft rattles around lately, and thought I should try and figure out how to make them, since they make a perfect little baby presents, and boy are there a lot of babies due this summer!

I think it turned out kinda cute, although he has a bump in his nose, I guess I didn't sew straight there. Maybe he looks more like a reindeer than a giraffe. But baby won't notice :)

Anyway, this one is for a friend that just had a baby boy, hope the baby will enjoy it!

Bias tape dress up cape and Superhero costume

Like I mentioned here, we celebrated Purim last week and I made my friend's son a costume. He loves this Israeli Superhero called Mr Tomato and we were looking at the costume you can buy which is very expensive, and made out of that cheap, scratchy costume material. I told her I could make it for him and was happy to take on the challenge.

This is the original costume she was going to buy:

We discussed it and decided that the pants with the tomato shirt, the cape and the mask would be plenty. He could wear his boots with it and it would look great.

So I went to work and this is what came out of it: