Sewing By Stephanie: Baby Showers!

Today we celebrated the upcoming birth of what is sure to be a beautiful child. Two friends from church are expecting their first baby girl soon and we celebrated with a baby shower today. Since the majority of the gifts I've been making recently have been for either boy gifts or gender-neutral gifts it was pretty fun to be able to make something for a girl that could be girly. And knowing that Emily loves butterflies certainly helped with the design.

At first I was contemplating making a blanket, but then I received an email in my inbox from the baby's godmother saying she was organizing a quilt for the family and wanted to know if I wanted to contribute a square or two. To sweeten the deal she was having a night at her house where we could go and work on our squares... Sweet!

I ended up making two squares while I was hanging out enjoying banana bread and wine. The first was a pink heart on a butterfly-print background with the words "Happy Family" embroidered in the heart.

The second square I wanted to be simple yet beautiful. I had some ivory eyelet scraps left over from making Wendy's dirndl (Hi Wendy!) for Oktoberfest so I thought I'd just cut a butterfly shape out of the scrap and sew it onto a green background.

It looked so pretty that it inspired me for a future project to make a full quilt using blocks of eyelet butterflies on differing backgrounds. Forgive the quality of the two photos, I took them with my phone at night in a dimly lit room.

I didn't get a picture of the finished quilt today at the baby shower when Emily opened it, but it was BEAUTIFUL. Sarah did a great job putting it all together and putting the backing on. Maybe someone who was there snapped a photo of it and would care to send it my way...hint, hint.

Not onto the present! Since a quilt was already being made I thought I'd go the onesie route. I recently won a set of beautiful pink and green Riley Blake fat quarters at a giveaway going on at Melissa Stramel's Blog and thought that the solid pink, polka dot, and paisley prints would look great used together.

Awhile ago I bought several blank white onesies in two sizes to embellish and use as gifts, and so I used one from each size for the gift. For the 6-9 month sized onesie I decided to make a matching skirt for her to wear with it. I used the same pattern for the skirt that I used for the Cthulhu skirt, but since I had a limited amount of fabric I shortened the yoke so that it was basically just a waistband.

I decided to make it as versatile as I could so I made it reversible, with the paisley print on one side, the polka dot on the reverse, and the pink as the waistband.

Construction of the skirt was simple. If I had taken any photos of the process I would try to make a tutorial, but since I didn't I'll leave it to your imagination how I put it together...

For the onesie that matched the skirt I made a butterfly template out of paper and then with right sides of the fabric together I machine stitched all the way around. I then trimmed the edges and clipped corners, then I cut a slit in the center of the butterfly on the side of the fabric that would be against the onesie. I then used the slit to turn the butterfly so that the right sides were facing out, and pressed it with my iron. I attached the butterfly to the front of the onesie using a zigzag stitch, and then cut out a butterfly body shape in a contrasting fabric and appliqued it onto the wings shape. With a pink embroidery floss I then secured the body to the onesie so that it wouldn't fray in the wash. Done!

For the 0-3 month sized onesie I didn't want to make a skirt, so I had to think of something different. I made a similar butterfly to the one I made for the other onesie, but I switched which fabric was the wings and which was the body, and constructed it and attached it to the onesie. For the "something different" to go with this onesie I decided on some butt ruffles. I've seen this done in several patterns on diaper covers and so I figures it couldn't be that difficult. I took a this strip from each of my three fabrics and used my serger to serge all the way around the edges. I then basted across the top of each and used the basting stitch to gather the strip into a ruffle. I then pinned them to the butt of the onesie and attached them with a zigzag stitch. The zigzag allowed the ruffles to stretch with the fabric, which I thought would be a VERY good idea since the ruffles are supposed to stretch across the baby's butt. I then made a bow out of the pink fabric and attached it above the ruffles. Done!

I really like the way these outfits came out. The fabric I used was perfect and super soft... a great quality fabric all the way around.

Since I was so pleased with the project I decided to do something special with the photos (and this is fun)... I enlisted Granite as my photographer's assistant and we headed outside. I've seen a lot of photos on blogs recently where the project was displayed hanging on a clothes line in front of flowers and plants, and I wanted to duplicate that effect. In our complex we have several different "pockets" with pretty plants and flowers so we headed over to one with our clothesline, clothespins, camera and tripod and set up. Granite's job was to hold the end of the clothesline. The other end we secured to a tree. It actually worked really well, I just wish it hadn't been as windy as it was. Oh well, I only needed to get a few good shots to make it worth it (and it was definitely worth it!)