Tentative steps into sewing gifts

With the expectation of the first baby in our family a few months away sisters, girlfriends, mums and sister-in-laws gathered to shower the mum-to-be with the cutest of cute gifts - baby gifts!

Not the cutest present
but very practical, a baby
car seat from my
my mum and sis to the mum
to be

My little sister was organising the baby shower for our sister, so I didn't find out when the shower was going to be until 2 weeks out. Argh, this is why MY profession is event planning, I'm a touch more organised than the rebellious little sister. ANYWAY... as I was planning to sew some gifts for this occasion I jumped in straight away looking at patterns and ideas online. I'll let you in on a little secret.. there is SO MANY CUTE baby things to sew!

I had to narrow my search down to BEGINNER projects. If you have been following my tentative steps into the world of sewing you will know I was still baffled by patterns, sewing jargon and all those buttons on my sewing machine!

I decided on some simple nappy covers with singlets that had matching cutouts on them and some baby shoes. I just couldn't go past the baby shoes, even though they looked pretty difficult. 

The horsey and matching nappy cover. You can't really tell in this picture (thank goodness) that my sewing on the singlet is dreadful! It's ok but there were just way too many turns and with this tiny singlet it was very hard to turn it on the sewing machine without sewing the front to the back, which I did twice!

Take 2 - much easier shape this one!

Take 3 - (Almost) PERFECT! Except I should have used pinking shears or a zig zag stitch around the edge, but there was no way I was doing these EVER again! By the way - can you tell my family is a farming one, with the horses, chickens and dogs! Also we didn't know the sex of the baby so I tried to go as gender neutral as possible by I was also being frugal and only using what was in my stash!

Next up was the baby shoes. They were actually a lot easier than I thought! The worst part is sewing the sole and 2 top pieces (front and back) together without a) snapping the needle or some other sewing machine malfunction or b) not having all pieces together under the needle and having to resew to make sure they are all secured together. Once that part is down though its just a matter of threading the elastic and bingo, you have a pair of these little beauties!

I was pretty happy with how they turned out, they do look a little odd shaped though, oh well!

Here are the links to the patterns/instructions I used:

Nappy (diaper) covers

Baby shoes

Kim xx