Something New

Like I said in my last blog, I might just make some more things for the baby.  I wanted to do something new and I found this really cute whale print flannel material.  I thought I might just make a receiving blanket, but then I found this pattern that I had that I had forgotten about.  I made one years ago before I started blogging, but had forgotten.  It is a hooded wrap.  It can be lined or not, it can have legs for easy car seat buckling or not, and it is all one piece.  I chose to line it and put the legs in.  I never did either with the first one that I made. This really looks nice and should be very convenient and useful.  I didn't want to buy any more material, so I searched my stash and was able to come up with only one piece of fleece that was big enough to use as the liner.  It is gray and not what I would have chosen, but it will do.  It is soft.  I also had a problem when I got to the binding around the edge.  I wanted to use a blue that would match the blue whales, but all I had in extra wide double folded bias tape that would be enough to go around the whole wrap was yellow.  There are little gold stars in the print, so I figured it matched well enough.  It also makes it brighter.  Yellow would be no problem if the baby was a girl, but it is a boy.  I guess a boy can have something yellow, too.  After all, yellow is supposed to be a color that promotes intelligence.  That's what I have heard anyway,  and besides, I often dressed my boys in yellow snow suits.  When my babies were born, we didn't know ahead of time what the gender would be, so we often got yellow and green given to us as presents. I actually had a snow suit of each yellow and green. I think the yellow one was a little larger which I used for TW and the green one for Marty.  They were just a year apart, so I needed two just a little different in size. Marty also used the yellow one when he grew into it. Here is my newest creation.

This is the wrap snapped shut.

This shows what it looks like opened up. This way you can see how it is really just one big wrap with the legs stitched in the middle.  Because the hood has darts and the legs are sewn in, the legs and hood had to be sewn separately for the liner and the cover, but the ribbed front of the hood and the edge were sewn as one big piece with the liner legs just stuffed into the cover legs. It has snaps to hold the cover shut tight when the baby is snuggled inside. The wrap is intended for babies from newborn to six months.

In this shot, you can see how one side is folded over and snapped and then the other corner is folded over and snapped on the other side. I really think the designer of the wrap is very clever.

I have some other things that I am working on for the baby.  I have a pair of bibbed overalls and a blue and red striped, stretch knit shirt cut out and ready to sew.  I also am going to make an alphabet book.  I cut out the pages in felt and stenciled the letters and pictures onto the pages.  I will embroider the book.  It was supposed to be appliqued, but I already did a lot of that with the play mat, so I wanted to do something different.  It will take awhile to do, but I think it will be nice when it is finished.  It is going to be super thick because of the felt, but I couldn't find a material I really liked to do it any other way.