Baby gifts

A good friend of mine has a baby that is going through a tough time right now, so I couldn't help but put together a little package of handmades to make baby (and mom) feel a little better. (Plus I had a new bootie pattern I wanted to try out!)

The booties are from Anna Maria Horner's Handmade Beginnings. I've previously made baby booties following the pattern in Amy Butler's Little Stitches, but I like these better. For one thing, they seemed to come together a little bit easier/quicker without all that fussing with velcro and many many layers of interfacing. For another, I think they're just as cute. Anna Maria's pattern doesn't call for any hand-stitching, instead telling you to fuse the insoles into the bottom of the booties, but I had trouble with that. I ended up blind-stitching the insoles in to the lining, just to make sure they stayed in place.

I made the booties in the 6-9 month size and the 9-12 month size. For the largest size (pictured above), I used a textured fabric for the sole to give baby a little bit of grip for scooting around. The grippy fabric was really inexpensive at my LQS and easy to work with--I'm glad I tried it out for this project.

The Scottie dog softie was made following this (free) pattern, with a few modifications. I reduced the size of the patchwork squares slightly, to 2" cut, because I wanted my doggie to be more baby-sized than the one in the pattern. I had a much more difficult time than I thought I would stitching the gusset around the dog! Those corners were really tricky. Instead of using buttons for the eyes, I blanket-stitched on some felt circles. I get so nervous using buttons on baby things! (I used quilting thread to stitch the buttons to the booties, and even then stitched each one a good 20 times, just to be safe!)

Hope you like it, kiddo!