August 23, 2009

The Woven Wrap

I am soooo thankful Mandy left this comment on my post about Slingin’ Babies.

Many of the DIY mamas on TBW have made wraps out of osnaburg material for a woven wrap supportive enough for a bit heavier baby.

The very next day I was out and about with Micah in the knit wrap when I realized it has been a while since I’d had him in there. He’s now about 20 lbs and he kept slipping further and further down until he was about hip level! I immediately thought of Mandy’s comment and trucked myself over to WalMart (the one on our side of town still carries fabric).

I ended up buying homespun for $2 a yard and cutting it down the middle to make a wrap for me and a wrap for my friend Ashley.

The picture isn’t the best because I looked like an ogre that day and wanted my face kept out of pic and Micah was a man on the move. But, you get the idea…

By the way, I’ve since test drove this little number several times and I am thrilled with it! I didn’t bother to hem the raw edge in case you are wondering. And I’ve updated the original post (with a much better picture!) as well.

If you have any posts on slingin’ babies, let me know and I’ll add a section on the original post with a link to your post so others can see how you sling your babies! (I’ve already added Mama K’s awesome baby carrier reviews post, so go check it out!)

August 12, 2009

Slingin’ Babies

I LOVE slingin’ babies! No, I don’t mean throwing them around! I mean “wearing” them by carrying them around in a sling. Many of the fabrics carriers available on the market can be made by you at home quickly and rather painlessly (even for a sewing novice!). I thought I’d share some of my experiences with making and wearing these different types of carriers.

The first sling I ever made was a ring sling from the Maya Wrap instructions. I just grabbed some old fabric I had laying around and bought cheap rings from Hobby Lobby. I am VERY lucky the thing didn’t break! I learned later that you shouldn’t use these rings and you have to be careful about what fabric you use as well. When I learned about this, I bought “real” rings from the SlingsRings website. Wow, the difference! I also started using heavyweight fabric. I tweaked the pattern that MayaWrap gives because I felt it needed more fabric and I added a pocket near the end of the tail to hold a diaper and wipes container, or a wallet and keys, or even toys for baby.

Micah in a ring sling made from light blue toile

The next type of carrier I made was a Mei Tai (Asian-style) carrier. Many of you are familiar with my “Fancy Mei Tai“, but prior to that I had a not-so-fancy one. I used a pattern from Sleeping Baby. (She had adapted the usual Mei Tai pattern to include larger straps–which I highly recommend.) I used a nice heavyweight cotton and it turned out wonderfully. I have since chosen to decrease the width of the pouch and taper it at the legs, as well as making the width of the straps just a bit less. I prefer the pattern with the rounded top as well. It gives a bit of support for smaller babies and can be folded down for older babies.

Keian “helping” Mama cook.

Emily enjoying a beautiful October day.

Micah in the “fancy” mei tai.

I didn’t really like using either of these carriers with a newborn, so I asked around and was told a pouch was the best for little bitty ones. So, a pouch I did make! Once again, I used the instructions from Sleeping Baby with a heavyweight cotton. (that was also the first and only time I’ve made a French seam!)

Newborn Keian in a pouch

However, I never felt very comfortable with this carrier and it hasn’t been used since the above picture was taken (that is baby #4 in there). It might be because my newborns are a good 10 pounds.

Finally, I arrived upon the best (in my ever-so-humble opinion) carrier for wee little ones…a wrap!

Emily at 4 months

A wrap is basically a long piece of fabric, wrapped around your body and baby tucked snuggly inside. For newborns, their heads stay within the fabric and right up against mama. For bigger babies, they can face in or out and if they fall asleep, you can tuck their heads into the fabric the way you did when they were newborn.

This has got to be the EASIEST carrier to make. You don’t even need to know how to sew! My friend, Tina, and I “made” the carriers shown below in a few minutes. We had one for her, one for me and one for me to share with a friend! Three wraps in a matter of minutes!

Newborn Micah in my brand new wrap!

Micah in a woven wrap.

If you’d like to try making one of these wraps for yourself, here are the instructions…

Easy Wrap Instructions
Here’s what you need:
5-7 yds of stretch knit fabric (think t-shirt material)
or
5-7 yds of woven fabric (basically woven is any material that is woven together so the threads look the same on both sides instead of a cotton that is printed on one side)
1 pair of scissors
tape measure

1. I’ve found it to be easiest to lay your fabric out on the floor if you can find an area large enough to work in (you don’t have to be able to lay out the entire 5-7 yds either. Cutting on 2-3 yds at a time works fine) The reason I don’t use a table is because knit stretches and that can make cutting rather interesting when you have that much length to work with. It seems to always end up hanging off the table and stretching out too much. You want your fabric to lay smooth as you cut. If you are using the woven, a table should work fine.

2. Knit is typically 60″ wide, woven 45″. Each wrap is 20″ wide, so you will get 3 wraps from one length of knit and 2 out of the woven! (Honestly, I just cut the woven down the center) One to keep and one or two to give away! So, the next thing you do is cut the fabric at 20″ wide up the entire length of fabric. When Tina and I made ours, we used her concrete basement floor and one of us scooted along with the tape measure while the other one scooted along cutting at the 20″ mark. We had a dozen children standing over us watching us creep along–what a sight!

3. Do that one more time for the knit and you now have 3 wraps! Knit doesn’t unravel like other fabrics, so there is no need to sew a hem. I’ve managed to find knit on clearance for as little as $1/yd! Even if it does cost you more than that, you’re still saving a mint over the name brand wrap price! I found woven for $2/yd and as yet, I’ve not bothered to hem the other side.

4. Now learn how to carry baby!
(ps-the reason I say 5-7 yds is because despite what many sites say, not everyone can get by with 5 yards and do ALL the carries. Consider your body size when purchasing yardage.)

Here is my absolute favorite site for teaching carries for all of the baby carriers shown here:
The Baby Wearer

You will find videos and step-by-step instructions on these sites. If you are uncomfortable experimenting with your baby in the carrier, use a baby doll until you are comfortable. I would highly encourage you to take your new carrier, stand in front of your computer with the videos on these sites and try the carries right along with them, rewinding as needed. I also encourage you to have a friend or your husband or older son or daughter nearby to be an extra hand or two when you are first learning. It can be tricky until you get the hang of it…especially the back carries!

And in case you haven’t figured out just how passionate I am about slingin’ babies, read my post on slinging Emily…it will give you some insight into just how much wearin’ my babies means to me. May you be as blessed!

Links to more about Slingin’ Babies!
(I’m starting a section in this post linking to what others are saying about slingin’ babies. If you have a post from your blog or other great slingin’ link, let me know and I’ll add it here! To start us off is…)
Mama K with her fantastic Baby Carrier Review.
Baby Wearing for Beginners
Wrap-a-Baby
Nugglemama’s Babywearing Safety post
Adventures in Babywearing
Babywearing International

June 29, 2009

The Button-Down-Dress-Shirt Dress

As you know, I ADORE reconning things I don’t use and making them into something I do use. Just as socks become baby leg warmers and t-shirts become diapers, this time a man’s button-down dress shirt became this:

This dress looks amazing, but it is really quite simple to put together. The full instructions for this dress are found HERE.

Ty has a shirt just like this (this one was given to us by a former co-worker of his), so my husband and daughter went to church yesterday in matching apparel! How fun!

June 27, 2009

My Personalized T-Shirt & a Giveaway!

Several years back I had a shirt screen printed for my husband to the tune of $30. Now, you know me…always trying to find a way to do it myself for cheaper. I do love to patronize home-based businesses, but there is something terribly satisfying about making something yourself and saving money while you’re at it!

I had seen THIS SHIRT and thought it would be fun to have a shirt with a somewhat obscure word on it that describes me.

(For those of you without a medical dictionary handy, the official ACOG definition of a multipara is a woman who has given birth 2-4 times. A GRAND multipara has given birth 5-9 times and a GREAT GRAND multipara has given birth 10 or more times. The grand multipara term was whispered around me during my ER VISIT last September, which made me giggle since I knew exactly what they were talking about in such hushed and serious tones.)

I wanted to design my own grand multipara shirt, but didn’t want to pay for the screen printing of it if I could do it at home. I had heard you could buy printer paper that could be used as iron-on transfer sheets (what will they think of next?), so I searched all around and finally found these at Office Depot. (The price at my local store was MUCH cheaper than on the website!)

(I could have used the dark t-shirt transfers, but I knew my design wouldn’t require it. For truer color on a shirt that is somewhere between light and dark, you’ll want to use the dark t-shirt transfer sheets.)

Before I move on, I’ll give you a quick overview of what you need to make your very own personalized t-shirt:

A T-Shirt

Iron-On Transfer Paper (light or dark)

A word processing program

printer
scissors

iron

pillowcase (to place underneath shirt when ironing)

I bought t-shirts from Hobby Lobby for 50% off their already ridiculously low price. They have this sale quite often, so keep your eyes peeled. (Janelle @ Blessed Nation Ranch let me know that at the CraftsETC site there is a 10% off coupon code: twitter09. You also get FREE SHIPPING if your order is over $25!)

I wanted to dress the shirt up a bit before doing the iron-on. One of the easiest ways to do this with a t-shirt is to lettuce-edge the sleeves and hem-line. You can do this with a regular sewing machine by using a close zig-zag stitch, but it is much easier and nicer looking to use a rolled hem stitch on a serger and stretch the t-shirt as you go.

(thankfully I already had hot pink thread loaded in my machine!)

Here’s a closeup of what the sleeve looks like finished.

And the entire shirt finished.

You can add ribbon and buttons and fabric paint for an even fancier shirt. Embellish to your little heart’s content!

Next, you create your design on the computer. Use a simple word processing program and totally personalize your t-shirt with colors, fonts, pictures, and/or wordart. I recently did a shirt for my daughter with a picture of her guinea pig on it!

Here’s the design I created…

Once you have your design, do a test print on regular paper. Make sure you print in MIRROR IMAGE. This feature is found under PROPERTIES and then ADVANCED in your printer dialogue box:

If you don’t print in mirror image, this WILL NOT work! Doing a test print on regular paper is important to make sure you do not waste the transfer paper.

Once you are satisfied with your design, print in mirror image onto your transfer sheets. Cut around your design trying to make the edges a bit rounded (they stay down better if you do this) and cutting as close to your design as possible.

It is important to note here that there are directions in the transfer paper package. Follow these directions PRECISELY! I am giving very rough instructions here based on the paper I purchased. Other transfer sheets may require something a bit different.

Now comes the exciting part! Take your cut out design and place it where you want it on your t-shirt…

iron according to directions, let cool a sufficient amount of time and then…

The moment of truth!

Your very own personalized t-shirt!
(or rather, MY very own personalized t-shirt!)

Now for the GIVEAWAY!!!

I have one already cut out, ready-to-go smaller version of my iron-on transfer that I will give away to a winner chosen at random from my comments section! Just leave me a comment on this post and on

<
/p>
(the date my Emily made me a GRAND MULTIPARA!)

I will let Random.org choose a winner!

(by the way…this is my first ever giveaway and I so excited!!!)

May 16, 2009

Moccasins for My Mountain Man

My husband has always been an outdoorsman. He loves nature and all things natural. So, it was a “natural” (pun intended) leap from that to his interest in the mountain men of the 1800′s.

Last year, on our annual trek to the mountains, we stopped at Bent’s Old Fort and my husband’s fascination grew. (It really is an awesome and incredibly educational site in case any of you are needing a field trip!)

He decided to grow out his hair and sign up for a summer event at Bent’s Fort where he gets to be a trapper for an entire weekend and learn the ways of the mountain men. It is actually considered a continuing education course and he will have to take a pre and post test (been a mighty long time since those college days!)

He is incredibly excited about this opportunity, but there is one very interesting aspect of this trip that has posed a challenge…EVERYTHING visible must be AUTHENTIC. That means that his clothes, razor, canteen, knife, EVERYTHING must be made from the same materials they would have been made from back in the 1800′s. No tennis shoes, no jeans, no modern weapons, no modern anything (unless you cannot see it).

Herein lies the challenge…don’t know many mountain men with a size 14 foot. Actually, I don’t know many men period with a size 14 foot. While my husband has only minimal trouble finding shoes these days (I remember the days when we would walk into the shoe store and ask for whatever they had in a size 14 and be lucky to have more than one style to choose from!), finding authentically crafted 1800′s footwear in a size 14 is literally IMPOSSIBLE.

However, my ever-resourceful husband was not deterred. “We’ll just MAKE them,” he declared!
He settled on making moccasins for a variety of reason and began scouring the internet in search of a do-it-yourself shoe pattern. He spent hours cutting out patterns that were supposed to fit his feet. I would sew them up with a heavy-duty twill to check fit, only to find that every single pair fell short of perfection. In fact, none of what he found online actually worked for his foot.

He finally landed on a simple pattern from a book at our local library (as soon as I find that book, I’ll post it here!) He cut it out on a brown paper bag, I sewed up a twill pair, and the shoe fit!

From there, he had to purchase the materials to make these moccasins. It required:

a glover’s needle

a skein of synthetic sinew

leather for the sole

leather for the upper

a leather punch

a Poundo board (optional)

(He chose a hard, but pliable leather for the sole and a leather that resembled deer hide for the upper.)

As you can see, the sole is a traced copy of his foot with a bit extra all the way around. (seeing this makes me think it has to be his oddly shaped foot that kept the other patterns from working!) The upper is the same copy but with extra on the back end and a split up the middle. There is most definitely a Right and a Left and both these he marked in pencil on the inside. Then, he used the leather punch to punch holes all the way around the sole of the moccasin.

Next, came the stitching. That was my job (and what a job it was!)

You start at the toe and whip stitch to the back of the moccasin, then repeat down the other side. This is no easy task. Since he had punched the thicker leather, I was able to pull my needle through there, but the upper leather was not punched (nor could it be since it needs to be eased a little to match as you sew.) I ended up pulling it through with pliers at each stitch. When my hands wore out, I sewed and my husband pulled the stitch through. I did the sewing in bits and pieces because of this. Quite often I had to stop due to pricking myself. One time I stitched halfway down one side before realizing I had the sole on wrong and had to undo the whole thing. This project was most definitely made up of blood, sweat, and tears.

After you sew to the back of the shoe, there is about 4 inches left over. You line the back up and stitch it up to the ankle with a running stitch and then stitch back down with a running stitch that fills in the gaps between the first set of stitches.

You then cut the leather that is leftover on the back to make fringe.

And here’s the final product!

You’ll notice a bit of discoloration on the toe…he had to get some leather stretcher in order for them to be comfortable in the toe area. He says they are great now and a PERFECT FIT! Yay! Mission accomplished!!!

So, think of him as he’s out roughin’ it in his new (and authentic) moccasins. It will be interesting to hear if they really prove to be comfortable when he’s out there being a mountain man.

April 23, 2009

BabyLegs for the Cheapskate

There are some nifty little things out on the baby market called BabyLegs. They are basically toe-less socks that you put on baby’s legs (or arms) to keep them warm, give them padding when they crawl, make diaper changes easier, or simply as a fashion statement. Ever since I was first introduced to the concept of BabyLegs, I’ve been fascinated and well… envious. They are so stinkin’ cute! But wowser, the price tag for glorified leg warmers didn’t jive well with my thriftiness!

As you know, there is a website for everything under the sun, and my favorites are those sites that tell me how to do it myself. If the instructions are clear enough (ie. enough pictures!), then I try it. Well, these instructions couldn’t be easier!

I bought used socks at Goodwill for $.99 a pair after a failed attempt at WalMart and Whiz! Bang! in 5 minutes flat, I was the proud owner of a pair of knock-off BabyLegs!

And here’s my adorable model in an argyle pair…

Cute! Cute!

This past weekend he wore a brown pair to a nearby homeschool convention and I had a ton of people stop me to ask about them. I just love it when I can say, “Made ‘em myself…and YOU CAN TOO!!!!”

This post is linked to: