Babies, babies…gator babies

You know you have a baby shower coming up. What is your favorite baby shower gift to give? Are you the one who likes to give the practical pack of t-shirts, onesies, receiving blankets, diapers and staple layette items in white or yellow? Or are you the one who likes to give exactly what the new parents requested on their gift registry, never wavering? Or are you the giver who likes to come up with something unique? I have been in all three boats, but lately my go-to gift is –well, you know if you’ve read other blog posts here–the reversible receiving blanket from youcanmakethis.com and sometimes coordinating burp cloths.

“I think you should give gator presents,” says my DH in a commanding sort of tone of voice. After all, we live in a college town and of course, the majority of new parents we know are college students, here today, and out into the world tomorrow, cherishing their memories of swamp life. Others who are not going to UF but who just live here, are (for the most part) not opposed to getting gator gear too. We think that gator memorabilia just makes everyday life seem more like a big ol’ tailgate party. But better to keep it in the vicinity, I guess. When I traveled to Nashville during last football season, my daughter-in-law said she spotted several Tennesseans mean-mugging my gator purse in public places. You wouldn’t want your innocent infant to be the victim of some other SEC team’s mean-mugging, so keep it in the vicinity, please.

burp cloth

Click on the photo to see it in its entirety.

I like that for a burp cloth, you can use just a smidgen remnant of licensed collegiate fabric, and then simply embellish it with plain text. This one is in the Kids font that came with my Husqvarna Viking. The cloth diaper is a prefolded one I got in a big package from K-Mart. You can also find birdseye and gauze diaper fabric at JoAnn’s Fabric in the back of the store, and make your own. And you can get very creative with synonyms for “burp.” I think Tiffany’s babies are going to get some that say “I spew chunks of orange and blue!”

Two inches of flannel

This remnant project is easy as can be, so I hope you don’t think it’s a rip-off! My aim is to use up remnants, fabric and notions that otherwise might go to the trash and fill up a landfill.

The main not-remnant project was a receiving blanket for a special baby. I found the pattern on www.YouCanMakeThis.com , a wonderful site, and it was free for the downloading at that moment, with great, easy-to-understand pics and instructions. It shows you how to make a blanket with either piped, rick-rack or ribbon edging. This has been my go-to baby shower gift for so many new parents in the past couple of years. To see some others like this, but boyish, and read a little homily about baby barf, you could search up my previous post “Baby Boys.”

baby blanket and burp cloths

For the matching burp-cloths, I used a remnant of the brown and pink cotton flannel hounds tooth check fabric. For some reason unknown to me, the fabric manufacturers seem to make cotton flannel in different widths, so I had a couple of inches left over from the checked fabric. What are we supposed to do with a 2″ by 1 yard strip of fabric? Anyway, as you can see, I cut off some of the strips to fit the width of two prefolded cotton diapers (wash everything first, especially the diapers because they draw up a lot.) I also had just about enough jumbo rick-rack left from two packages that edged the blanket, to edge the printed flannel strips for burp cloths. Turn under the edges of the flannel strip then slip the rick-rack underneath so that half of it is visible, then sew it very close to the edge, and again 1/4″ away to catch the other end of the rick-rack beneath the flannel. Final touch, I machine-embroidered the baby’s name in the center of the burp cloth right above the decorative flannel strip. And I added an embroidered motif to the blankie that is special to the loving grandma Baby is named after!

Not rocket science, but a cute little personalized baby present!

Baby boys

More baby boys! This design is becoming my signature baby gift. I know it isn’t new but I love this pattern and how terrific it turns out in flannel with piping edges!

And the patterns for blanket and burpies were FREE for the downloading on youcanmakethis.com.

The burpies are made of flannel blanket fabric, backed with prefolded, padded  gauze diapers cut to fit. I know these must be appreciated by moms of projectile-vomiting baby boys such as my boys were, and their boys.  Jonah, the newest grandson, would be smiling like an angel, cooing like a dove, then spewing the contents of his stomach like a sailor three sheets to the wind. 🙂 Oh well, even celebrity babies hurl prettily. I was channel surfing a few weeks ago and saw a Kardashian baby barf all over his mama and aunt, from a king-size bed in a Miami hotel room. Throw-up: the stuff of great reality TV.  Suffice it to say that Jonah’s mama REALLY likes cloth diapers for burp cloths, and a jaunty print on the other side makes a utilitarian cloth soaked in sour partially-digested formula seem a little nicer than a rag, before it embarks on its journey to the laundry hamper.

Another set, not a remnant redo…

I wish you could see and feel how soft this cotton flannel is, and imagine how it would be so comforting next to a neonate’s tender skin (neonate: that’s what my old Human Growth & Development professor called a newborn). I love fleece, and it does a great job of keeping one warm, but cotton flannel is so mmmm! And lightweight for the weather here in Florida.

Remnant Baby set

 

Finished receiving blanket

 

The .9 yard remnant was trimmed to a square, and backed with the same sized square of a pink/white dot flannel, with a jumbo rickrack edging. The pattern for this was FREE and downloaded from http://www.youcanmakethis.com

I bought some flannel last month when it was on sale at JoAnn’s. Rickrack and piping and other trims rarely go on sale, so I save up the %-off coupons for items like that. I was lucky enough to find an unused package of pink jumbo rickrack in my sewing desk, which either came with the desk when I inherited it from my gran, or I bought somewhere; check out the package—–> it was 59 cents! The back of the package said 1974!

 

cutting out the diaper backing

 

Next came the matching burp cloths: I used the pink fabric and backed it with a prefolded cloth diaper, using the FREE pattern for Oh, Baby! Burpies on http://www.youcanmakethis.com. The cloth diapers were on sale at KMart, Buy One, Get One 50% off, so I paid about 75 cents per diaper.

I embroidered the burpies with a strawberry motif to go with the flannel print, which came with my embroidery machine software (NOT FREE but convenient!)

This is a pic of the final remnant redo project (you can click on it to center it):