Kevin, a guy from work, is about to become a father for the first time. His wife Leslie is due in a couple of weeks. I was going to knit something, but I'm rubbish at knitting to a deadline. I know that nine months to knit something teeny like a pair of booties should be more than enough, but ask my uni lecturers. I seriously suck at getting things done on time. (Good thing I never realised my childhood dream of being a journo hey!).
But these bibs I managed to get done and I handed them over today. I'm so chuffed with them. I got the pattern on the weekend (seriously marked down in price) and plugged away at them over the last few days.
Here are things set out ready to go. The white background is to hide the mess around this photo.
I decided to make two bibs - the spider and the turtle. I've made a couple of changes, but I'll explain as I go.
First I did the turtle.
The bibs are padded. I was meant to use some iron on padding, but they didn't sell that at the store I was in, so I just used regular padding and stitched it down. This is going to be the head.
There are the instructions for attaching the head to the body.
Here are my pieces. Now it looks like it should be easy enough, since the curve of the head matches the curve of the body. But look at the drawing. They wanted you to pin it slightly differently, so opposite curves matched up. I'm not the best at explaining this, but it was confusing me and annoying and I swore a lot.
Eventually though I got it sewn on and when you flipped the head down it matched up.
I didn't really take as many photos of this step by step as I'd thought. Oh well.
Here's everything laid out, ready for me to sew up. The legs were meant to be ribbons, but I decided, since I didn't have ribbon wide enough, I'd use fabric to make them. Padding them wasn't fun. Or rather, turning them around the right way once I'd sewn them up was a bit annoying. Again I swore a lot. After all, what kind of bib has flippers??
I actually asked Sam that question as I chatted to her while I worked. Her response? "The super cool ones!" So apparently this is a super cool bib. I guess I can work with that. ^__^
Here is everything sewn up. Just need to add eyes.
The pattern suggested buttons, two layers of them, but I thought that might be a bit dangerous. So I cut out some spots from the body fabric, drew black spots with fabric paint, and stitched them on. But I didn't really like the result.
So I tried to do satin stitch over them instead. Hey, at least they won't come off! And despite one being different to the other (apparently, according to Sam), they turned out ok don't you think?
Finished bib.
The other bib didn't take anywhere near as long.
I attached the legs, all stitched firmly down so they won't fall off if Bubs decides to chew on them. I realise you can only see the black basting stiches there, but I also zig zag stitched them with my machine.
I pinned them up, stuffing the legs inside, and sewed the front, back and padding together.
Then I turned in in the right way. Again I just needed eyes. The original pattern had fangs or something as well but I didn't think they looked any good.
OK, so I know I said I didn't think buttons would be safe, but I found these and they just seemed like such a good colour match, and I sewed them on with double thread, and two different lengths for each one (so if one length snaps there's still another length holding it on.). I considered gluing them down as well, but I only had super glue and I didn't know if that was all that safe either.
So yeah, there are the two bibs. I gave them to Kevin today and he seemed to really like them. He even tried them on (I soo should have taken a photo of that!). Now I need to make some for Jackson, the incredibly adorable son of another guy who works here. Remember what I said about not getting things finished in time? I have an almost completed cardigan that I started to make for Jackson that is now way too small for him. Opps. Oh well. Just found out an old neighbour of mine had a baby, and she's tiny, so maybe the cardigan will fit Astrid. ^__^
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