Baby Projects: Sewing

In conjunction with Eleanor's room and baby preparations, I've had a lot of sewing projects going on. Most time-consuming, and most fun, were Eleanor's new curtains. She requested purple. She wanted light purple, actually, but I'm a big fan of blackout-type curtains for babies and toddlers, so I made dark purple curtains with purple and pink felt flowers.

This is the same way I made the nursery curtains, which are dark brown with green felt leaves. (Why felt? Why, no hemming of course!) I then used spray adhesive to attach the leaves to the curtains.

In the intervening three years, almost half of the leaves have fallen off or been ripped off by tiny fingers, so I did realize this time around that just spray adhesive wouldn't be enough. When making the new curtains, I did use spray adhesive to position the flowers, but this time also stitched around the edges of the flowers to make sure they're not going anywhere. Because, of course, after all of this work Eleanor will never be allowed to redecorate or change her room in any way. These curtains will last until college!

After finishing her new curtains, I went back and reattached or attached anew the green leaves on the nursery curtains, then sewed around the edges of those, as well.

Also learning from past experience, we had made cloth diaper wipes from cut-up receiving blankets for Eleanor. These did require hemming, but just a quick zigzag stitch around the edges. For diaper wipes, it doesn't have to look pretty--just get the job done! I hemmed a few more of these that we had never finished off before, because we can never have too many wipes!

Finally, completely unrelated to the kids, Beckett has twice chewed holes in our one sleeping bag, for no apparent reason other than he's a dog. I sewed up the holes when possible, or made patches when necessary.

You might think that I felt a sense of accomplishment after all this, right? Except that, as I was making progress on all of these projects, Beckett was at loose ends one day and occupied himself by puking on, and then eating, one of the dining room curtains. So a sewing project that had been finished five years ago is now back on the to-do list.

Just like so many aspects of life, the sewing tasks never end!