Homemade baby cloth wipes

I'm 5 and a half months pregnant now and at what you might call a baby-moon stage where I'm somewhat more productive, feel healthy and am probably at the nesting stage too considering I'm slightly more organised than I usually am. Great time to be making something for the baby today, I thought. We have decided to fully cloth-diaper this time. With Adam and Mia, we only partially cloth diaper and didn't have enough CDs for fulltime. This time insyaAllah I am determined to cloth diaper Baby no 3 fulltime. Both my babies are fully toilet trained for a long while now so I have no ideas yet on the latest reliable brands of CD or how to cloth diaper a newborn, so if you have any tips, please leave a comment! I'd really appreciate it.

Anyway, I was thinking about CDs today and went digging in my sewing room to find anything I could use to make some CDs, maybe. I found this 2meters length of blue cotton flannel. I bought this at Adam's request a couple years ago when I was sewing a bed set for his birthday. He specifically asked for this fabric, 'to make into my selimut', were his exact words, which I thought at the time was pretty smart for a 3 year old because flannel does make great blankets. However I ended up sewing a quilt cover instead for him using another fabric, so this flannel has been sitting in my shelves ever since. I thought it would totally make lovely absorbent baby cloth wipes.

I set out to make full use of every inch of this 2 meters flannel. Afterall you can never have too many wipes, can you, especially with newborns. They pee and poop ALL THE TIME.

If you want to make these wipes too, basically what you need to do is just fold up the fabric to find the approximate size that you think might be good for wipes.You don't need a ruler at all. Fold up, look at it, put your hand on it to see if it'll cover your whole hand as you wipe and go by instinct. Then cut. They don't have to be exactly the same sizes either.

I ended up with about 24 pieces of smaller sized wipes which will be perfect for wiping bums and 16 medium sized wipes which can  I thought might be nice as burp or vomit cloths too.

Then all I had to do was serge the edges, and in less than an hour (from cutting to sewing), I was done! 40 wipes in total from 2 meters of fabric. Awesome. I know these will be so useful when the baby comes.

Adam made 4 of these for me and they look just as perfect as mine. He's not new to sewing. After watching me sew for practically the whole 5 years of his life, he has made his own pants, his own apron, some small toys for himself and even little gifts for Mia.

Recently he made these pink pillows for Mia's dollies. His idea and work from start to finish.

Back to the wipes, they would be a great first project for your child if they want to learn sewing and you own a serger.

I think I remember the flannel fabric being quite cheap when I bought it. Maybe I'll visit Nagoya again and buy some more plain flannels in other colours. More wipes in other colours and also, I'm thinking they'll probably make good absorbent kitchen wipes and swaddling blankets for Baby3. This was a very easy project and gives instant gratification. Try it!

How to make a volcano - a tutorial

Start by cutting out a third off an empty plastic bottle. Tape the bottom of the bottle onto a board.

Crumple up newspapers into balls and tape around the bottle making the rough shape of a volcano.

Make a paste of flour and water. Cut newspapers into long strips, dip into this paste and then wrap the strips around your volcano.

Keep wrapping layers upon layers.

You can make ridges or bumps or whatever you like. Then let it dry overnight. (it needs to dry fully. Warn the kids about this before you start)

The next day, paint your volcano. Let it dry. Then the experiment can start.

Volcano eruption recipe:

1 tbsp of bicarbonate soda - Place this inside the bottle

mix together separately -
1/4 cup of water
1/4 cup of vinegar
a few drops of red food colouring
a few drops of washing up liquid

* Depending on your bottle size, you may need to double of triple up the amount stated above. We doubled up.

Pour this mixture into the bottle. Stay back and watch the eruption!

Full on volcanic eruption. Beautiful!

Have fun!

Mia's easy skirts - a tutorial

I made these skirts yesterday for Mia. They took about 10 mins each to sew. I thought I'd do a tutorial here for anybody who'd like to try one. This is a very good choice for a first project if you're learning to sew.

(please excuse the crumpled pink skirt. already been worn and may have a bit of pee on it too. shhh)

Start with measuring your child. You will need her waist measurement and the length of skirt you want. You will cut a rectangle of fabric like the above. The width of this rectangle will be her waist measurement times 2, and the length would be the length of the skirt plus 1.5".

For example Mia's waist was 18" and length of skirt for her was 10". So the size of the rectangle above was 36" x 11.5".

Sew up the side and zigzag stitch/serge the edges.

Press the seam to one side.

While you're at the ironing board, press the bottom hem of the skirt. To do this fold up by half an inch, then then fold again by half an inch to enclose the raw edge.

Sew the hem.

Now zigzag stitch or serge the top edge of the skirt (not shown in pic). Then mark the top edge at four places (divide skirt into four equal sections. Or more sections if you're making a bigger skirt)

Get a length of elastic that is your child's waist measurement minus 4". Mia's was 14" long.

Sew it up into a circle using a zigzag stitch like the picture above.

The mark the elastic into 4 sections and mark.

Fold down the top of the skirt by half an inch and enclose the elastic in it, pinning at 4 places that was marked. Sew over the top of this enclosure (yes sew over the elastic) using a wide zigzag stitch while stretching the elastic to fit the fabric. See picture above. To do this start by stitching a few stitches at the first pin, remove the pin, the hold onto the next pin  stretch the elastic to fit the fabric.

This may seem difficult to imagine, but trust me it is wayyy easier that making a loop to insert the elastic into. ( I hate threading elastic into the waist. and the elastic always likes to curl up or down or all over the place )

This is what it will look like from the inside when you're done.

And from the outside. Quite an even neat finish.

Tadaa you're skirt is done.

Happy sewing!

Red slime

These days Adam is filled with the excitement of 'making things'. Everyday he asks me 'I want to make something. Let's look for a recipe'. The other day he wanted to make slime.

RED slime! It was quite a lot of fun. the slime behaves rather strange - it is solid when you grab a handful and roll it up like playdough, but when you let it rest it turns into liquid and drips down your fingers. Try it!

Slime Recipe

a cup of cornflour

water (room temp)

some food coloring *optional

-gradually mix water into the cornflour until you get the consistency you like. food coloring too. mix it all slowly. mix it hard and fast. Play.

Cushion cover tutorial

I made more of these cushion covers. They take very little time and fabric to make. I made them really simple, and let the beauty of the fabric take center stage. Would you like to try?

Start by measuring your own original cushion cover that you want to replace. If you don't have it just measure your pillow and add maybe 1/4"-1/2" ease. Mine was a 15.5" square. Add seam allowance of 0.5" x 2 = 1".

Cut your fabric to your measurement. Mine was 16.5" square. Oh I have a terrible habit of not pressing my fabric before I cut...as you can see in the above picture...but don't do that...press your fabric first k :)

Pin one of the seams (this seam is for the zip). Machine baste (use the largest stitch length setting on your machine) this seam with a 0.5" seam allowance.

Then stitch 2" from the 2 edges of the seam with a regular stitch length to reinforce. I stitched up to 2" because my zip was 15" long. Decide on how far you need to stitch up depending on your cushion size and your zip size.

Press open the seam.

Pin your zipper to the center of your seam. Look at the above picture. This is what I mean by 'decide on how far you need to stitch up' . The end of my zipper is about 1.5" from the edge of the seam. So I decided to sew up to 2" in to encase the zipper.

Change to a zipper foot on your machine. Sew close to the zipper teeth on both sides.

Using a seam ripper, rip open the machine basted seam. Leave the 2" (that you reinforced ) of both edges closed.

Your zipper seam it ready! Wasn't that easy? Leave the zip slightly open.

Pin and sew the other 3 seams with a 0.5 seam allowance.

Trim the edges.

Turn the cover inside out from the zip opening.

Press the edges, slip in your pillow and you're done!!

Enjoy your beautiful cushions :)

Gypsy skirt tutorial

Would you like to make this gypsy skirt? You can. It's so easy, it can be your very first sewing project. Ready? here we go.

The skirt consists of a waistband, made out of stretchy knit fabric. You only need a little bit of this so you can cut up an old t-shirt. This body of the skirt is made up of 6 panels, narrow at the top and wider at the bottom.

Gather your tools.

The first part of making this skirt involves...err...a bit of math. It is the most important and the hardest part of making the skirt, but I promise you once it's done the rest of the skirt will be a breeze.

There are 3 body measurements you will need to take - waist, hip (largest), and distance from hip bone to the skirt length required.

First let's do the calculation for the waistband. For the width, subtract 3.5" from the waist measurement, then divide by 2 (2 pieces front and back). For the length, use 10" for adults. Children you can reduce as you see fit. Mia's was 6" long.

For example if your waist measurement is 28.5" - 3.5" = 25". Then 25/2 = 12" will be the width.

Cut two pieces of the waistband using the width and length you have calculated. Make sure that the stretch of the fabric is along the width. It doesn't matter if the fabric doesn't have any stretch lengthwise.

Next calculate for the 6 panels of the skirt. For the narrow width of the panel, start with the hip measurement. Add 2 inches of ease (1.5" for children) and divide by 6 (panels). Then add the seam allowance of 0.25" times 2. The wider bottom panel width will be twice the narrow one.

for example with a largest hip measurement of 38.5" + 2" = 40.5". then 40.5" divide by 6 = 6.75". Add seams 6.75 + 0.25 + 0.25 = 7.25" is the narrow width. The wide bottom width is 7.25 x 2 = 14.5".

for the length of the panels, add a 0.5" seam allowance and hem allowance of 1" to the distance from hip bone to required length. For example if the required length is 31", 31" + 0.5 + 1" = 32.5" = length of panels.

Cut the body of the skirt as pictured, using the measurements that you have calculated. Narrow at the top and wide at the bottom, symmetrical.

Sew the sides of the waistband. I used a serger but it doesn't matter, knit doesn't fray.

Pin the side seams of the skirt panels.

Sew the seams. Again I used a serger but if you don't have one you can sew the seam and then zigzag sew the edges to secure it.

Sew all but one of the side seams. See picture above.

Press the seams to one side.

Topstitch next to the seams, catching the pressed edges on the wrong side.

Then sew the last seam, press and topstitch. Now it's already looking like a skirt.

Fold down the waistband halfway along it's length, with the rightside out.

I don't have a photo of this step - divide the waistband to six sections along the width. Turn the skirt inside out, put the waistband inside the skirt and pin the raw edges to the 6 seams of the skirt. It will make more sense in the next photos.

Sew the waistband to the skirt, using 1/2 inch seam allowance, stretching the waistband to fit. Depending on the fabric you use this step can be a bit tricky because the knit fabric might roll up onto itself making it difficult to sew this seam, but it's ok, just continue sewing.

The resulting seam could be a bit messy like this.

But you can serge the edges and then it's cleaner. Turn the skirt out and press this seam with the seam facing downwards towards the bottom of the skirt.

Press the bottom of the skirt inwards by 1/2 inch twice. Sew the hem.

Your skirt is ready!

Now off you go!