it's the sweetest way to say it

...so these are for my fabulous mamma!! Thanks for the help with the washing-smoke-damaged-burned-laundry mamma!! What would i do without you?!

babybib - gnomies!!

So another bib, the design for this one is from the pattern website urban threads i think, I got it a while ago and can't remember now...
Free-hand lettering is the hardest thing!! Slow and hard!!!

even further for the planet

So in February last year i posted about the fact that i decided to make a change for the sake of the environment...and i've never looked back. I am a complete and utter convert - never again will i return to the disposable version.
So, they're particularly useful after childbirth, so i decided to make a couple more of the smaller size...

babybib - scary dragon

So this one is a little more detailed and a little more boy-ish than the rainbow heart...it seems i can't help myself from making him girly stuff!!Zigzag is still a little rusty - not quite as polished as i would like buuuut...i'm getting there.

Lista della Spesa

So i hate going food-shopping, probably because i'm not a fan of cooking and it bores me to death buying ingredients. But i am a fan of eating, so it's pretty fortunate for me that i have a live-in italian chef...although it does mean that we are forever shopping for ingredients, and since the chef has to do a full kitchen-cupboard-audit every time before we leave for shopping...it wastes quite a bit of time. Enter.. a shopping list!SuperD rustled this one up and painted on the names of common ingredients. All the basic stuff is marked on, each with a little wooden peg to flip when we run out of something.
The aged look was achieved by dragging a lighter over the surface of the painted wood to soot-y it up a bit.
The blue paint is chalk-board paint so we can add details that aren't listed, or to specify exactly what type of stuff needs to be bought.
Then all we need to do before leaving for the shops is to take a phone-photo of the board and use it to work from while we're wandering round the supermarket! Easy peasy!!

babybib - rainbow love

So i got a lot of blank bibs so that i could embroider my own design on them. My sewing machine isn't the most reliable at doing the satin stitch-zigzag round the edge of applique so i thought i'd start with something pretty simple!!! A few hiccups, but we got there in the end...now for something more detailed!

camping gym - babyroom13

So i thought i'd upgrade the playmat into a full scale baby gym. Sorry about the weird pictures, the light is bad these days so im forced to go outside to the dull patio. The poles are pipe insulation bought from B&Q hardware with a fine wooden dowel pushed up inside to give them some springy stiffness. I didn't have any brown fabric so i made the sleeves from normal white and orange stripey cotton and then dyed them brown. They're secured at the four corners with little buttons so i can pack it flat if need be. The palm leaves are wired to keep their shape and have a handle on the top to allow me to lift and move the gym easily. And then i just tied on the plushie campers i made earlier (1, 2, 3, 4) to give him something to look at.
This is a poor attempt at a baby-eye view of the underside. I think i might hang a little mirror with bells in the centre just to add a bit more interest to the centre point.

vehicle vests

So in the interests of getting cleaner lines for the little vehicle shapes this time i used freezer paper stencils. I cut them out neatly with a craft knife so i could uses both the negative and positive stencil.
This is just to try and make the little vests a little more "masculine" because i suspect that all my colourful outfits are verging on girlyness...so i'm just trying not to give him an identity crisis too early in life you know??

easy earflaps

So i wanted to make a little hat with earflaps to keep the bambino's head warm when he finally arrives. This is a free pattern that i found on ravelry, but can be found directly on the designer's blog. The hat is super-quick to make, as it uses a couple of strands of wool at a time and is all worked in treble crochet so you can make it in one sitting pretty easily.
I think i'm going to have to make one in a larger size for me, i really like it!!

stamped sleepsuits

So the plain tie-dyed sleepsuits were a little boring weren't they?? I thought i'd have a go at lino stamping on them. It's a little bit difficult to get the stamps to look very neat because the fabric is jersey and so each time the fabric "gives" a little, making it a little bit scruffier than stamping on linen or cotton poplin.
Anyway, I made a bunch of little vehicle lino carved stamps in the usual way and stamped up the little suits with fabric paint before curing them with a hot iron.
I'm quite pleased with how they turned out!