crafting for baby – a few non-essential items

I previously wrote about how I was preparing for a frugal baby, listing the absolute bare minimum essential things that I thought I would need. Then we brought the little fella home.

I never expected that I would be bottle feeding so to the list of essentials we added a breast pump (I was trying for a few weeks to bring my milk in), bottles, formula and steriliser (as I expected to breast feed, we started out boiling our bottles on the stove top. A steriliser was an expensive but oh so wonderful convenience purchase). We also ended up with a pram (for nanna really), a bath and a bouncer, both of which get a pretty good work out.

Apart from the essentials, I also did some less essential crafting before the new arrival, that I wanted to share with you. Despite being non essential, we use the items below on a daily basis. As a quilter, I have quite a stash of fabric from my cashed up days, so everything except the fabric and notions for the bag was made from what I already had on hand (no extra money spent).

I made a baby or nappy bag from this tutorial at A Mingled Yarn. I used cotton instead of vinyl for the inside and as commenters on the blog post suggested, reinforced the back pocket. The only modification I would make is to make the side pockets a little deeper so that they close over larger bottles. Oh, and DH would prefer it in less ‘girly’ material so that he can carry it.

To go with the nappy bag, I made a matching change mat out of scraps of material and recycled vinyl from old packaging. The back is made up of patches of scrap fabric so that nothing was wasted.

It’s amazing how much strong plastic packaging we get as packaging. Below is an example of where I got the plastic to make the change mat. The zipper on the packaging was salvaged and stashed away for another project.

I also made a nappy stacker that hangs off the cot. The stacker is tied to the cot. When full of nappies, it weighs an absolute tonne and a coat hanger would neither hold the stacker without bending or go over a door handle. The stacker is a variation of this tutorial at Sew Dang Cute. I got rid of the ruffle and added some pockets to each side for liners and wipes what not.

The dinosaur embroidery is just some clip art from the web that I altered in Inkscape. I have learnt that satin stitch isn’t a good stitch for large areas, Romanian couching would be better for next time.

And again, I made a matching change mat with vinyl between the cotton fabric and a terry flat nappy.

These change mats may seem a bit frivolous when you can just use a nappy or a towel, but they certainly saved a lot of surfaces (like the in-laws’ back car seat) when we travelled down to NSW for dad’s funeral.

Finally, I made some burp cloths from another nappy and cotton backing. The only regret with these is that I haven’t made more, because we use them all the time and they get pretty icky quickly.

I did also make some bum wipes out of scraps of nappy from the change mat and burp cloths. These just go in the wash with the nappies and get reused. The joys of EC is that wiping baby’s bum is a lot easier if he goes over a potty.

There were many other projects on the list, but they will probably have to wait for baby no. 2.

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Have you read these posts?

1. frugal toys for baby
2. Preparation For A Frugal Baby
3. for the home–12 days of christmas crafting round up
4. gifts for teenagers–12 days of christmas crafting round up
5. gifts for children – 12 days of christmas crafting round up