the last minute crafts

Well, I have a feeling this blog is going to be migrating more towards cute baby Charlie pictures and less towards arts and crafts. This is out of necessity for the next phase of my life...Partly because my middle fingers are still staying asleep all day long (from the carpel tunnel I got in pregnancy...It is supposed to go away, but hasn't yet), thus making it impossible to do small crafts. And partly because a baby on a two-hour nursing cycle pretty much leaves you with 45 min free every two hours..if you are lucky, and that barely is enough to eat and shower and sleep on! I'm told it improves...so we are hanging in there for that!
...so this blog is my last ditch effort to avoid succumbing to a blog completely devoted to cute baby pictures. Instead I will post cute baby crafts! Here are a couple things I made in the last few days before Charlie got here.

Boppy Cover
The boppy covers I had were made out of cotton, which is going to be great in the summer, but felt really cold to touch with all our cold weather, so I came up with this grand plan to make a cover out of flannel. I put the original cover down on two layers of fabric and using my friend's quilt-pizza-cutter-tool thing (I have no idea what it is supposed to be called) I just cut out the shape. I used chocolate brown flannel and blue linen.
note: next time I will imitate the original more exactly and include the little extra piece on the inner curve. It turns out that piece helps the boppy fit around your stomach, without digging in.

Then, because I wanted to see if I could do it, I cut out some pieces for an applique of a bird pattern that I liked.

I sewed the pieces together with the zig-zag stitch.

And then I zig-zaged it onto the blue side of the cover.

I really liked how it turned out, aside from not being as flexible as I'd like it to be in the center. (Can you believe Charlie is in that tummy? Crazy to think!)

Car Seat Cover
When the thermostat got to 6 degrees I decided our baby would probably need more than a blanket to go outside in the car seat. After looking at $40-50 products that were meant to keep babies warm in their car seats, I decided I could make something similar. I found some fleece on sale and also cut up couple outdoor fleece jackets from the thrift store (washed, of course) to make the cozy several layers deep.

I used muslin to sketch out a rough pattern where the seat belt pieces needed to come through and then cut out a back and front and put in two side zippers. It was pretty tricky to get so many layers through my sewing machine...I had to borrow my friend the quilter's sewing machine to finish it up. But the results and cost were definitely worth it.

I put a little snail applique on the foot of the cozy. It needs little antennae to be stitched in still, but that will have to happen later.

I'll let you know when crafting becomes an option in my schedule again, but for now this is Keren-the-Crafter signing over and out!


...stay tuned for cute baby pictures! =)