Baby Crafts Round 2!

So it would appear that 2018 is the year of babies as not long after I started making the baby basket for my colleague, my favourite cousin told me that she was pregnant 😁👶 Of course, I started planning what I could make straight away (like literally went straight to Hobbycraft after work for supplies 😂)

I knew that she wasn't going to find out the gender before the birth so I had to think gender neutral. I went straight to Ravelry to see what patterns were on offer, and I found some ADORRRRRABLE crochet patterns. Before I show you all the pictures, I want to state that I'm not just strangely obsessed with sheep, my cousin's partner is a sheep farmer which is why I went for the sheep theme 😂

So on with the show!

I got the yarn for these from Wool Warehouse and used Aran weight for the sheep hat and Chunky for the pompom hat, and as we all know the bigger the pompom, the cuter the baby!

While shopping at Wool Warehouse I also got some Bernat Blanket Yarn for this sweet little sheep sleep sack! 😍

I will note that as cute as this is, it was such a pain in the arse to make and I vow to never make another one! 😂 The bobbles on the front are easy enough to stitch, but when the yarn is that thick, it really kills your hands!

I also had some sweet, grey, cat print cotton in my stash so I put together a little bib and burp cloth set and a sleeping bag (all of which could have done with being ironed before taking pictures) for when the baby is a bit older.

I just used a towel to back the bib and burp cloth because good quality towelling is stupidly expensive 😖 And some paw print fleece for inside the sleeping bag.

I wanted to present the whole thing in a basket, but my cousin lives in Ireland and unfortunately we weren't able to meet up before the birth so it had to be squeezed into a large postage bag which really wasn't photo worthy😂

I didn't want to put pictures of other people's children on the internet, but you can take it from me that baby Sophie is just so cute!!! 💓

Anyway, see you all next week for my round up of 2018 and plans for 2019! 👋

Oh, Baby!

There must be something in the water, because every time I turn around someone else announces they're pregnant 👶 it all started with a lovely girl at work who is expecting her first in the summer so I wanted to make something special for the baby. She found out it was a boy so I decided to make a little baby blanket in blue and grey to go with her colour scheme for the baby's room and found this lovely chunky yarn in Hobbycraft and settled on doing a corner to corner crochet blanket as it was quick to work up. I used the tutorial from the Crochet Crowd and started crocheting away. I finished the blanket and was really pleased with how it came out, I used four and a half balls and the blanket is 30"x30".

Now I could have stopped there, but now I had the bug, I wanted to make other things for him! So after plenty of time rummaging around in my books and on the internet I made a set of (really soft) hats using Hobbycraft's own baby yarn in blue and grey.

Aaaaand I could have stopped there, but I had some beautiful Peter Rabbit fat quarters that I'd had for a couple of years, but the right project had never come up....until now! It turns out you can get 2 bib fronts out of every FQ, so I decided to do a set of three to go with the 3 hats. I knew that it was much cheaper to buy decent quality towel and cut it up rather than buying toweling from a fabric shop, and as luck would have it, an ASDA extra soft hand towel is just the right amount to cut out 3 bibs 😁 They were so easy to make, all I had to do was cut out a front and back, sew the right sides together (while leaving a gap at the bottom) trim the seams, turn it right side out and zigzag around the entire edge and then just sew a wee bit of velcro on. They took no time at all, but be warned, if you cut up a towel, you'd better have your hoover handy because the fluff goes EVERYWHERE!!

But wait, there's more! I bought a little grey basket from Home Bargains to store it all in and thought it looked like it was missing something. Ahhhh....no baby should start life without a cuddly best friend! So I dug out some grey yarn and got started on a cuddly elephant. This actually took longer to make than any of the others because it was a small hook (3.5mm) and a lot of rounds of stitches that involved continuous counting. But when I finally sewed it all together, the result was totally worth it, he's so adorable!

 

So off he went into the basket, but something still wasn't quite right. So I went in search of the finishing touch, I thought maybe some ribbon would do the trick until I found soft tulle on a roll! AHA! I exclaimed and took it home to finish the job ( I will note that I did actually pay for it 😂) Everything was bundled up in the tulle and even the little elephant got a pretty, little bow round his neck.

 

Now everything was just right! I was so excited to bring it to work the next day for the recipient and thankfully she absolutely loved it 😄

Now I get to start crocheting and sewing for my favourite cousin who is having her first in Autumn 👶 I can't wait to get going!