baby sewing

When I was in elementary school it seemed like every other child in my class had a granny square vest made by their grandmother. Both boys and girls wore their granny square vests. Girls tended to wear theirs in bright colors and boys in manly browns and beiges. Some of those grandmothers seemed to be accomplished needlewomen, others crochet with more enthusiasm than skill.

My grandmother died just before that fad hit. And even if she were not underground in New Jersey, the chances of her crocheting me such a vest were slim to none. Mama was not known for her needlework.

I envied the kids with grandmothers or great-aunts who used to make them ugly vests, or sweaters or stocking caps. In the last few months, I have become a great-aunt twice. I have been enjoying the opportunity to make things for these two little girls in our family.

Before I make something for a baby I think about what it is like to be the mother of a small baby. You are sleep deprived and don't really have time to hand wash a wool sweater or to iron a sweet embroidered batiste dress.

I am working on making a polar fleece sweater for the newer of the two babies. I found a site that told me the measurements of a size 9-month sweater. I cut out the body of the sweater. An applique would be a great decoration for the front of such a sweater.

Google makes it easy to find line drawings of any subject you like. I decided to create a bunny for the sweater front. This bunny was my adaptation of one I found on a how to draw bunnies site.


I traced the bunny onto some cotton batiste.


The batiste is blue because that's what I had in my stash. I layered several thicknesses of the batiste together because if you do machine embroidery if your fabric is too thin the heavy stitching tunnels and distorts both the fabric and the stitching.  I suppose that I could have used a heavy interfacing if I had some in my stash. Frankly, even if I had some I probably would have used the cotton because the applique won't be quite so stiff and boardy and this sweater is to be worn by a delicate skinned baby.

I decided to use this silk twill which I had marbled as an experiment a while back as the main fabric for the bunny.

 I straight stitched the outline of the design from the wrong side of the fabric using my drawing as my guideline.

Then working from the front, I satin stitched by machine around the bunny and then hand embroidered the eyes, the nose, and the mouth.

The outline of the feet was done by hand as well.

 I cut out the bunny

 and soon I will sew it onto the polar fleece

sweater front.

This is surprisingly satisfying work.