sewing for baby - 5 easy nursery projects

If you've been following the blog recently, you'll notice this knitter has been bitten by the sewing bug. I thought I would pull together one post in which I gather all of the easy, cute projects I've made recently.

Here are the reasons why sewing for the nursery has been so rewarding:

1. Cute nursery items are expensive! And you need a lot of them (ie. multiple crib sheets, changing pad covers, etc.) Though I've spent some $ on cute fabrics, I've saved us quite a bit and some of my fabrics have been from thrifted items, even more savings!

2. I'm picky about designs, patterns, fabrics, colors. Most of the affordable nursery items just aren't gonna cut it for this mom who makes her living as a graphic designer (and who repainted the living room of our rental house the first week we moved in because I couldn't stand the color :)

3. Sewing allows me to sit for a bit, get up and iron or cut, and sit back down. Knitting requires sitting for long periods which has not been comfortable in these last few weeks (I'll be 36 weeks on Sunday!)

Thanks to the plethora of great tutorials out there, via Pinterest of course, I have managed to find wonderful instructions to guide me through making many of these useful projects. Trust me, I am not an expert seamstress in any way, but just powering through some of these things (and not being too particular that every detail is perfect) has allowed me to create so many custom nursery items in just a few weeks.

For these first projects, many of my fabrics came from Hawthorne Threads. Such lovely fabrics!

Boppy Cover

Tutorial here

Wet Bag

Tutorial here
Combined it with this GREAT zipper pouch tutorial 

Changing Pad Cover

Tutorial here

Crib Sheet (for mine I used a thrifted twin sized sheet)

Tutorial here
And I zig zagged the corners as suggested here

Simple Zipper Pouch (I used the leftover squares from my changing pad for this bag! I plan to use this for my phone and other small things inside the diaper bag)

Tutorial here (same one as above)

And here are a couple of things I've made, not using online tutorials:

Swaddle Blanket (Found this AMAZING vintage fabric remnant at the thrift store)

For this project I just pieced together the remnants to create an (almost) 42" square. I was a little shy, but mostly plan to use this as a light blanket and to wrap our Baby Bird in for her newborn pictures. 

Kimono Tops (I used vintage pillow cases for these)

This pattern is from Weekend Sewing by Heather Ross. Beware, there are errors in early editions. Also, the instructions are a little tricky when it comes to sewing on the ties and the binding.

There you have it! Whew. I didn't realize I had made so many things in the last few weeks. I hope you'll try some! These are all quick projects and would be SUCH nice baby shower gifts, if you don't have a little one of your own. Happy Sewing ♥

the nursery

nursery, a photo by elletrain on Flickr.

Baby Bird's room is coming right along :) I love the light in this room. It is such a nice place to sit and wait for her to arrive. I've had such fun putting everything together, making things, and setting up her place. We can't wait to meet her! Not long now...

Here is a close up of the mitered crosses blanket I recently finished.

seriously good cucpcakes

We had a lovely Easter yesterday. The day ended with me making these cupcakes. Oh. My. Yumminess. They are good. And grain-free! They are made with coconut flour, which, honestly, I don't usually love baking with. But the creator of the recipe has really worked with this to perfect it. I changed the frosting recipe (see below) and only made 1/2 of the original cupcake amount (we do NOT need 20 of these lying around). Please try them!! You will not be disappointed. Mmmmm.

The changes to the frosting were as follows (for 10-11 cupcakes): 

1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips

1/2 oz. of the same unsweetened chocolate (from the cupcake recipe - I used Ghirardelli)

1/4 c. butter

I melted the above together in a small saucepan over low heat, stirring constantly. Refrigerated this for a while and then stirred to warm up a bit before frosting the cooled cupcakes. Best part? I then topped with fine sea salt. Thanks Alton Brown :) Enjoy!