Sewing for baby!

Hello, my name is Freya and I'm new here! 

Not long after I was born, my mummy made me "model" the swaddle wraps that she sewed "for me" before I was born, although she was fully aware of my aversion towards being swaddled, and my incredible ability to wriggle out of them.

Don't worry though, I freed my arms within a matter of seconds! 

Then she made me pose on the nursing pillow with the cover that she sewed up... 

And you know what? She was absolutely right - having a spare cover has come in very handy indeed ;)

Alright, thank you Freya, that's quite enough baby talk for now. Mummy can take it from here. 

So, my darling baby daughter arrived 10 weeks ago, and our lives have truly been changed forever. My dear husband and I are both completely smitten, and we wake up every morning still in awe that a little person has joined our household! Sure, not everything is as we expected - after all, who knew that baby Freya would hate being swaddled so much after all the efforts that I've put in in sewing up those swaddle wraps? But we are both enjoying the lovely surprises and new challenges that parenthood has thrown at us so far, and are working very well as a team. 

Once we've moved past the precious early weeks (and made Freya pose in my earlier makes), I've been back to my sewing table. 

The first thing I made was a padded play mat for Freya, using some poly wadding, a piece of floral Cath Kidston cotton, and some polka dot grey polycotton (for the bottom layer - not photographed) from my stash. This has been a great stash busting project! 

Although we already had a "baby gym", I wanted something that would fold up small for that portability factor. And of course, this was super simple to make - I sewed the 3 layers together at the edges, leaving a few inches unstitched, turned it inside out, topstitched all around and voila - we have a play mat, and much more storage space in the sewing room! Freya has since spent quite a bit of time on it, and seems to enjoy it so far. 

Having enjoyed the simplicity of sewing a big rectangle with the play mat, I then used up the leftover brushed cotton fabrics from the swaddle wraps, with some bamboo batting to make a quilted baby blanket. I basically used the same method (similar to these here and here), but added a couple of rows of stitching vertically and horizontally down the middle of the blanket to ensure that the bamboo quilting stays in place. 

This was initially made for wrapping Freya up warm in the winter months, so for now she is loving lying, and sometimes napping on top of it.  

It hasn't all been about the baby though. I'm very pleased to say that I have also managed a spot of selfish sewing, and made a few nursing clothes (I suppose this is still baby-related, but some of the nursing clothes will be worn beyondyond my breastfeeding days). Stay tuned and I'll be back to share some of these with you in the coming days, perhaps when Freya has another long nap!