Essential nursery makes

In October and November, most of my creative time and energy has been spent getting the nursery ready. I've finally taken a few pictures of the now finished room so I can tell you all about it. You'll have to excuse my really poor photographic skills though!

We rent our house so we couldn't do too much to the room or its structure. That's when wall stickers come in really handy, they jazz up a room in no time and leave virtually no damage when you have to remove them. I'd fallen in love quite early on with the Jomoval Scroll Tree range so we bought that and on the back of it, agreed on an owl theme for the nursery. The wall sticker comes in 80 or so individual bits so putting it up, while simple, does require a little bit of patience!

To my delight, we've inherited our crib. It actually is the crib my sister and I slept in when we were born and the same crib all my nephews slept in more recently. Of course with the crib being nearly 35 years old, the original lining and draping hasn't survived so I had to make a new one. Without a pattern.  And using elastic, something I haven't done in my sewing adventures so far! 

This is where all my lovely fabrics came in handy though! After a lot of thinking, and calculating, and checking with my other half that I was doing it right (baby brain is a real blight and I can't trust my own judgement at the moment), I've managed to produce something pretty decent. Well I think so anyway! 

Overtime, the crib will get replaced by a cot bed (another inherited item) and I'll have to make a bumper for it but we've got a few months ahead of us for that.

The next step was replacing the curtains and I wanted them lined, to keep most of the light out and most of the heat in. We debated buying another owlie fabric for the curtains but were worried that it might be overkill. With this in mind and in an attempt to limit costs, we eventually decided to use a perfectly good fabric, cream with dark pink polka dots, that was lurking in my stash. I'd originally bought it with the idea of re-upholstering a chair but that same chair has since become the cat's near permanent residence and as her fur is grey and she moults quite badly in the summer, a cream fabric didn't seem like a good plan anymore. 

I had to do a bit of online research to find out which was the best way to make lined curtains but luckily, you can find tutorials for pretty much anything these days. We had a near disaster when baby brain struck and I seamed the wrong end of the lining. I am very grateful for my darling husband who patiently unpicked my mistake stitch by stitch!

The chest of drawers/changing station was also a hand-me down, from hubby's side. We've jazzed it up with more Jomoval wall stickers. 

Having it all laid out and ready makes it all suddenly very real! Overall we're really pleased with the nursery and I really hope our little Goose likes it as much as we do. I'll leave you with a few more pics of the finished room. The gorgeous little cushion on the nursing chair was screen printed by the lovely Helen Rawlinson who teaches at the Make Lounge.

Dummy clips

With only a few weeks left before "B" day, it's fair to say hubby and I have gone a little baby mad lately.

We've spent a fair amount of time shopping for baby essentials and cute baby outfits. While the dad-to-be has been busy dismantling, painting and re-building the baby furniture we've inherited from our sisters (one of the perks of the being late starters of the family!), I've been washing and tidying away all the baby clothes, packing hospital bags and sewing curtains and crib linings. 

I'm pleased to say that, on target, the nursery was finished before I hit week 34. A post will follow soon once I've remembered to haul myself and the bump up those stairs to take pictures. 

There's been little time left for leisurely crafting. I'm putting the finishing touches to the knitted sleeping bag I started months ago, I still haven't printed all my baby grows and I'm still hoping I'll get to make and finish a bumper and a quilt for our playpen before the due date. 

I have been missing my crafting and my blogging more and more and was getting rather desperate for a quick and easy project. Then my friend Lorna posted a picture of homemade dummy clips on Facebook and I felt instantly inspired. There it was, my quick and easy project! 

I've been making a few of them in the past couple of weeks, improving my design with each one.

The first one was really simple, all that's required is a pretty ribbon, a dummy clip, a popper and basic sewing skills:

Inspired by Lorna's work, I took it a step further and started adding beads, held in place by knotting the ribbon at both ends:

But then I started thinking that it would be nice if the dummy clip had some elasticity to it. However, I didn't want to use an elastic that I would have to knot as I felt that would be too risky to a baby if it unravelled. After a bit of searching, I've found metal free hairbands that are thin enough for me to thread beads on but also sturdy enough to remove the risk of them snapping at the slightest tug. So here's what the design has evolved into:

I'll probably make a few more of those before Baby Goose arrives, one with her name would be nice but since we're keeping it secret, it won't appear on here for a little while ;-). Oh and should you wonder who Alana is, it's my neighbour's gorgeous baby girl and I still need to go and give her that clip!