Baby Clothes

Once we moved into our house, I began wondering about how to make baby clothes.  We have 5 adorable nieces and nephews and I thought it would be fun to make something cute for each one.  After I did a little blog research on one of my favorite blogs, I came across this:

http://lemontreecreations.blogspot.com/2010/12/shut-up-and-sew-appliques-for-beginners.html

I decided to make ties for the boys and do something really girlie for the ladies.  I went to Hobby Lobby and got my fabric, thread, and "Heat n' Bond."  For the ties, I put computer paper over the plain white shirts and eyeballed the ties.  I then took the "pattern" and traced it on the fabric.  Next, I followed the directions on Heat n' Bond and attached it to the material and then cut out the traced tie.  (Note: For these first projects I bought Heat n' Bond that wasn't double sided, so while it stuck to the fabric, it didn't stick to the shirt.  Not a good idea!)  

After cutting all my pieces I very carefully pinned the ties to the shirts and then hand-sewed them to the shirts.  Here's a tip:  Don't do this!!  Get the double sided Heat n' Bond!!  

While, I think these are really cute, they are a little lumpy and not as even and I would have liked.  

For my niece, my friend Molly, helped me draw and sew this on.  The legs were drawn from fabric paint and the eye is a sewn on button.  

For my other niece, I made a tutu from elastic and 3 different colors of tulle.  This was incredibly easy!  I took the elastic and sewed two ends together and then cut the 3 colors of tulle into multiple pieces of similar length.  Next, I took the pieces of tulle and tied them around the elastic, one-by-one.

(These are pictures taken in the car, because this is a great road-trip project.)

For the front of my niece's shirt, I made the J out of an old pink sock and hot glued it to the fabric.  I then hand-sewed the circle to the shirt.  

Because I was finally getting the hang of the hand-sewing, I decided to do her initials on the bottom of the onesie.   

While these might not be the most durable, they were fun to make.  Over the last few months, I've started downloading pictures offline for patterns and I bought Heat n' Bond that irons on to the fabric and shirt.  Another thing you can do is wash and dry the clothes before decorating so that they won't shrink and buy clear fabric glue so the edges don't fray.  Here are a few other projects:

(GQ for his initials:)

As you can see, the ironed on look is a little sharper than the sewn look.  However you do it, its a ton of fun and there's a lot of inspiration online.