Onesie Fiesta!

Here are the latest onesies on the block. The first two are converted Christmas items from Old Navy's sale bin; the third is embellished with leftover Martha Nagley fabric (see the veggie romper in previous post); the last is a fabric scrap of some boisterous rooster fabric that caught my eye at JoAnn's (usually I hate that place but I have to admit this fabric really jumped out at me). The remaining roosters will be made into at least one more baby garment...

Veggie Romper

I bought this fun Martha Nagley (i.e. Rowan) fabric at Portsmouth Fabric Company and followed an easy baby pattern (Simplicity 3808) to make this romper in size 1-3 months. While the fabric is a bit thin to withstand heavy wear, it was just too cute to pass up! The pocket and facing are Fassett shot cotton. I hope the tiny star buttons will be functional. Clearly, they are adorable!

Swaddling Blankets

This trio of flannel blankets was inspired by Hannah's, and informed by some directions in Last-Minute Patchwork Gifts. I bought a Clover tapemaker which I found useful after some experimentation. My tips for this tool: stitch the tape in two steps, first by seaming it open, then by seaming it shut. In between these steps, trim your first seam to reduce the tape's bulk! I could not get good results by just wedging the blanket edge into the folded tape, personally.

Onesie

The Reprodepot blog inspired me to start appliquéing oneses. After a very confusing trip to Carter's and Target, where I discovered that nearly all baby clothes are pink or blue and *already* have tacky and/or sexist decorations on their fronts, I found a few acceptable options to bring home - sadly, most of these are yellow. I made this one by cutting out the elephant with a stencil from my animal paper chains book (an old favorite for card-making), adhering it with Steam-a-Seam 2 (which I'd read about on some other baby craft blog), and then stitching around the edges with zigzag stitch (challenging but doable - the key is to stay on the appliqué at ALL times). This is a very fun, satisfying way to use up fabric scraps (for example, those I generated in my recent quilt-making fit). I can't wait to attack the Christmas onesies we got at Old Navy and turn them in secular, year-round garments!

Pull raglan

I knit this basic raglan pullover (#1 for petit loup) from La Droguerie's book Les bébés toute l'année. It is a treasure trove of adorable French baby goodness! The yarn is leftover wool that I bought more than ten years ago in northern France. I have a beautiful cabled turtleneck for myself out of it already, and since there's still some left, I'll have to make a hat and booties to finish it off completely. The sweater turned out rather somber so I added the owl appliqué to make it cheerier. Then I knit a matching hat with pompon and a pair of booties. The booties have quite a strange shape, rather like platform booties!

Sweetheart Pullover

This sweater (#2 for petit loup) was a recycling experiment, to see if I could combine leftover blue-grey-purple yarns into one colorway, and my red-orange yarns into another, and follow a traditional two-color pattern (sweetheart pullover from Falick and Nicholas' Knitting for Baby. The result is a somewhat too-stretchy sweater that recalls the history of many, many baby sweaters that came before it. My husband suggested, after the fact, that I make the heart orange - which would have been lovely. Another smart idea that I didn't get in time would be to knit this sweater in the round, thus saving much weaving in of ends. Two months later, I knit a hat to match. I especially like the tricolor pompon, who waves precariously atop a little "stalk" à la Dr. Seuss.

Fassett B&W Frames Quilt

This is my second go at this pattern. Here I used Fassett shot cottons in blues and greens (not at all my usual palette, and a very fun departure) for the centers and border edge; and batiked black & white abstracts (from Portsmouth Fabric Company) for the outer squares. I particularly enjoyed randomly piecing the shot cottons to create a multicolored border:
The finished quilt measures 45" square and features thin cotton batting. I thought it'd be easier to machine quilt through thin batting, but found it just as challenging as with my previous attempt...every time two quilted seams meet, there's an icky bubble! I designed this quilt to complement our emerging nursery and its black n' white theme, which we hope will be easily understood by infant eyes: