Frugal Baby Gift Basket

I only had a couple of day’s warning to put together a nice gift for an expectant mom. I love baby showers and I love making gifts for babies so I felt no pressure at all making something on short notice. I spent a couple of days assessing what materials I had on hand and the time I would have to work(seems like there’s less and less of that these days).  I had such a therapeutic morning assembling this gift! With a good plan and a supportive hubby I was able to get this gift done with plenty of time to spare.

The first gift made was a tie dyed onesie. It’s supposed to be black with accordion folds but I forgot that black often comes out purplish. It’s been a long time since I’ve dyed anything! It’s a gift for a boy so I thought I’d better make it look more boyish. I quickly downloaded some clip-art and printed it on iron-on transfer paper. Adorable and gender neutral! It’s also much darker in person.

Next up was a crinkle tag toy. This one was insanely easy to whip up! I saw it somewhere on my internet search for frugal baby gifts but I can’t recall where. But basically it’s 6 bits of folded ribbon, 2 6X6 inch squares of flannel and a layer of plastic in between. It took about 8 minutes to make it and I had to fight my 11 month old to keep it for a gift. She was really loving it!

Last was the bucket to present the gift in. I had posted a tutorial for this project on my old blog but that blog is, sadly, no more. 😦 It’s pretty simple though. You cut 4 exterior and interior pieces 6.5X8.5 inches and 1 interior and exterior pieces 8.5X8.5 inches. Assemble the exterior box by sewing together the 4 exterior side pieces face-to-face on the short sides to form a bottomless box(like a box kite). Then attach the 8.5 inch square to the botom face-to-face.

Repeat steps with interior pieces.

Place right side out exterior box on flat surface and insert right-side-out interior box.

Starting an inch down from the top edge, sew in-the-ditch on all four corners.

Cut a square of cardboard to fit the bottom of your box and slip it in down one of the sides. Then cut 4 cardboard pieces to fit the sides(1/2 inch shorter than the top edge of your fabric).

When your cardboard pieces are all in you can fold in the outer and inner edges, pin and sew shut.

I’ll make a tutorial again one of these days. I wasn’t thinking about it this morning or I would have taken pictures of my work in progress. Duh!

Anyway, I added handles and a little pocket on the front to slip an index card into. That way the bucket is reusable as a nursery organizer. 😉

I added a  Baby Gap hat I picked up on clearance, tissue paper and a recycled card festooned with a recycled ribbon.

All in all this gift cost about $5 and 2.5 hours of crafting.

Boy’s pants to boy’s shorts for free

First I want to apologize and explain why I’ve been neglecting my blog. My two digital cameras were stolen. Unfortunately I’d uploaded the project pictures(and baby pictures too *o* ) onto my laptop, which was also stolen.  Mean people stink.  Anyway, I got my replacement camera yesterday and set to work snapping pics of my sewing again.

I’m really excited to get some posts up! I’ll even have a two tutorials for you all in June. One is a baby’s swaddle wrap from a t-shirt and the other is reusable swiffer dusters.

So, my 8 year old son is growing like a weed, up but not out. So his Winter jeans and khaki’s still fit his waist but not his length. So I cut them and hemmed them. Not terribly original but a way to save $20 on shorts this summer. 😀

Denim Bolster Pillow

This was a bigger project than I’d originally intended but I love the way it turned out. I got to try making and inserting piping again and it’s the best I’ve ever done at it. I still need a lot more practice but I’m happy with the improvement.

Finished size is 5X10X30 inches. The six strips of denim are from jeans, cut 6X31 inches. The ends are cut 6X11 inches. It’s a nice standard size for adult jean legs. The filling in the piping is shoelaces salvaged from my husband’s old work boots. The ties on the end corners(both ends/sides!) were salvaged from gift bags. The idea behind that was that when I have more of these completed they could be tied together for a floor mattress or double thick bolster. I used two old bed pillows for the stuffing.

I have more pieces cut out to make a second bolster but I need more pillows to recycle. And more shoelaces for piping!

So all this cost to make was 1/6th a yard of the strawberry fabric for piping and replacing my machine needle. Sewing denim really gets standard needles dull in a hurry. I have denim needles but the standard was on its last legs anyway so I went with it.

Baby Boy Booties

I made yet another pair of booties for a baby boy. I wish I’d had a baby to try these out on before gifting people with them but even if they don’t work as booties they can be used for decor. They turn out so cute!

Recycled Denim Baby Booties

This week I copied a pattern out of a library book (“Beautiful things to make for baby”) to make my first ever pair of baby booties. It was incredibly difficult using a standard sewing machine to sew around the tiny little curves. I had to handstitch some and the topstitching is messy but overall I think they turned out cute! I’m planning to make two more pairs to give to another expectant mommy as a gift.