Baby Shower Gifts

I have attended a few baby shower's recently and I love doing homemade gifts... The last one I went to I was able to make burp cloths, a tie and a bow tie.  I have posted about of these before expect for the bow tie.  I LOVE the way they all turned out.  The only thing I would have done differently is to to make the bow tie smaller.  But this was the first one I had done, so I just followed the tutorial.  It is great, but its for a little older kids.  I think I would make it smaller so it could fit a baby.  Either way, I think they all turned out great, and then I paired them with some AWESOME infant clothing deals I scored at Target (I LOVE their clearance section).

Reversible Car Seat Canopy

A friend of mine is learning how to sew and wanted to make a car seat canopy.  They look relatively easy, and you can find lots of tutorials online.  I found a few different ones that I liked and were fairly similar- but in the end, I ended up combining two of them.  However, I could not find one that I liked on how to do the straps.  The ones that were reversible just had you put straps on both sides of the fabric, which is what I had my friend do, and I was going to do the same.  But after talking with my mom about it, I decided that I wanted to go ahead and try and do button holes so that you could use the same strap on both sides.  So I sewed the straps down on one side of the fabric and then you can put the straps through the button holes so they are reversed on the other side of the fabric.  I do like how it turned out, however, I am not great at doing button holes (these were my first ones).  So my holes are a little bigger than I would like, but I figure its not that big of a deal.  This is the link to the main one I followed, and this is the link to the other one... which I just used her idea of sewing 2 vertical lines up the canopy to hold it together.   I love the way mine turned out and I love that it can be used for a little boy or girl... especially since we aren't expecting another little one yet.

The Boy Side

This is the side that I just slide the straps through the button holes and attached them.

The Girl side 

 This is the side sewn to the fabric and you can see the holes from the button holes... a little bigger than I would like- but oh well.

** Next step is to re-do the car seat cover its self... I hate the navy blue (but hey, someone gave it to us for free... so I can't complain.)

Fabric Covered Burp Cloths

A few weeks ago a friend of mine told me she wanted to make some of those fabric covered burp cloths, but would love to have them embroidered with her last name.  Well, I was headed home for the weekend, and my mom has an embroidery machine, so I had her collect her fabric and give it to me before I left, and I had my mom embroider them for her  And while she was embroidering those, I decided to make some for a friend who is due with a baby girl in October, and had my mom embroider those for me too.  They turned out great!  There are a lot of different tutorials out there for these, but the one I used (and liked the best after checking out a few different ones) is this one.  I LOVE how these turned out and can't wait til I have another one of my own to make some for myself :)

*Also when making these I tried to keep there fairly gender neutral since this is her first kid, that way they can be used if she ever has a little boy.


**When buying the fabric diapers to use, I couldn't find the Gerber ones pictured in the tutorial.  All of the Gerber ones I found were either really thin or really thick,  so we ended up using the Carter brand ones you can buy at Wal-mart.

Baby Booties

My friend and I were talking one day about cute baby shoes and decided to get online and see if we could find a tutorial on how to make them.  We came across this one and decided to go ahead and try it.  They turned out pretty cute, but I definitely need to work on my sewing skills.  They are a little hard to put together, but they were fun.  I have since made a couple of other pairs trying to adjust the pattern a little bit.  I still however, like the first pair I made the best.  I did find that the pattern runs a little small, but they turned out really cute.  There are other tutorials out there for cute shoe ideas and I hope to try more of them in the future!  We worked together on both of these, but the zebra print ones are mine, and the brown and teal ones are my friends.