Archives for March 2015

I realize that this is my 3rd baby related post this week, so apologies for those of you who aren’t really in that phase of life! And apology number two, I really wasn’t sure how this project would turn out, so I didn’t photograph it during daylight hours, so the pictures are pretty terrible, but the project turned out so well that I had to share it!

I have seen several toys for young babies with the ribbon pull tabs and always wanted to make one (I have boxes of scrap ribbon that I just knew would be perfect for a project like this… remember me the hoarder? This is why).  I literally made this project with all things I had on hand in my craft scraps and one random kitchen item.  That random kitchen item? A Cheez-It bag.  I had read on a sewing blog sometime a while back (can’t for the life of me remember which one) that to make a child’s toy have that crinkle sound that they love so much to use a cereal bag (washed, of course) on the inside.  So when I decided to make this toy for a friend, I just decided to wrap all the fun things into one toy and add in a crinkle layer.  But since we didn’t have any empty cereal bags, I settle with the recently finished off Cheez-It bag.

So here is what I made:

First I used my embroidery machine to put her initial on, but that is a totally unnecessary step if you don’t have an embroidery machine! My two fabric pieces are 12×12, but depending on what size you want, you can adjust accordingly.

So here’s what you need:

• two pieces of fabric 12×12
• an empty and washed cereal bag (or other snack food bag) cut to 12×12  (mine actually wasn’t tall enough to do 12×12 so I just made it 12″ wide)
• 12 or so pieces of various ribbons approximately 5 inches long
• one piece of 12×12 batting (optional if you want to make it a little more cushionier)

When you lay it out to sew you will have them in this order: batting, fabric 1- right side up, ribbon (folded in half with at least a quarter inch sticking out), fabric 2-right side down, then your cereal bag.  I left a little extra ribbon hanging inside because I wanted to be extra sure there wouldn’t be a loose end come out that the baby could choke on. It would also help if you had pins to pin this together and keep your ribbons in place, but somehow those went MIA in the move and I was sewing this during a snowstorm, so I didn’t leave to go get some… I just decided to go for it.  However I will say, this is DEFINITELY a project pinning would have helped with.

Then just sew a straight stitch down all four sides leaving a small hole for turning.  For square projects like this I start at one corner, backstitching the end, then go to the first corner, leaving my needle in the fabric I lift my presser foot, turn the project 90 degrees and sew the second side, continuing until I get to about 3 inches from the corner on the last side and backstitch again.  Trim your corners and then turn your project right side out.

I wasn’t sure what would happen if I ironed the project with the plastic wrapper inside, so I decided to play it safe and leave it un-ironed (melting plastic is not my favorite smell).  But since it is going to a baby I don’t think she’ll care that it isn’t ironed.  To finish it off, I topstitched around the edge.  And now baby C will have lots of little ribbons to grab ahold of and it makes a very satisfying crinkle in the middle! A perfect baby toy!