My projects

Since I'm stuck at home (and I'm procrastinating like crazy on deciding if I'm finishing my Ph.D. or not) I decided I needed a new way to be productive during the day. There is only so much laundry and cleaning that needs to be done. What better way than to make stuff for our little man that will be arriving in a few months. So a few weeks ago I went out and purchased a sewing machine and searched online for some easy do-it-yourself baby projects.

I started off with a very easy project, making burp cloths. Basically you only need two things, Gerber cloth diapers and a few colorful swatches of fabric. You do some cutting down to size, some folding in the edges, sew then together and wala! Pretty, inexpensive, & unique burp cloths. Here is a sample of what I've made so far. I've actually made quite a few, since you can never have enough clean cloths lying around when you have a newborn.

Minus the initial investment of the sewing machine, they cost around $1.50 each to make. They are also multi-functional. They can be used as burp cloths, changing pads, or just cleaning cloths.

After I accumulated enough burp cloths, and was a little more confident in my sewing ability, I moved on to something slightly more complicated and made a swaddling blanket. It was still pretty simple though. Just get two yards of coordinating fabric (I used flannel), cut them down to equal size, and sew them together. Here's the first one I made.

I thought the monkeys are super cute. And it will be nice and warm, since our little guy will be arriving in the fall. It can also be used as a blanket to lay on the floor for "tummy time". With the fabric that I used the cost of this was only $6. I plan on making a few more with different fabric. And perhaps matching burp cloths if I am so inspired and I have enough left over fabric (I still have a few cloth diapers that I have to do something with).

So then after this project I got a little bit more adventurous. For the first few months we're going to have the baby in a bassinet in our room for a number of reasons (1) we'll be moving soon after and so it's impractical to set up a whole nursery, and we'll need to second bedroom for guests anyway (2) I'll be breastfeeding (3) since we'll have guests I do not want certain people who shall remain nameless to take over, so having the baby in our room will hopefully prevent that.

Anyway, finding cute bedding is hard, since I hate all the hokey ones with animals and trucks. It's even harder finding smaller bedding for cradles and bassinets. So I decided to make a quilt. Now mind you I have never made one in my life, so I had to go online to even figure out how to make one. Chances are it's not going to be the best quilt in the world, but I'm sure the baby wont even notice.

So that's what I started today, and I got pretty far. I cut out all the squares and basically got the top panel finished. I think it looks pretty good for my first attempt.

The picture sucks because I took it with my iPhone. So in-real-life the colors are much more vibrant (like that yellow is actually orange and the blues and much darker than they look in the picture). But oh well. You get the idea. I'm happy with it and my other half liked it, so I guess that's all that matters. Next week hopefully I will finish it, and it will be good enough to actually use.

Other projects I've been thinking about include changing pads, bibs, wall-art, and a mobile. I've got plenty of fabric left over from the quilt to make a matching mobile, but I really have no idea how to make one. I'm sure there's something on the Internet that will tell me how :-) And not to worry, I am not totally baby obsessed. I have also been making things for the apartment, like the living room curtains and trow pillows for all the rooms. Aren't I just becoming little Suzie homemaker!