Baby Shower

 This past weekend I was so blessed with a shower for Cooper!  My best friend Erin put everything together and did an amazing job with all of it!  

 There were lots of yummy snacks

 Including these delicious and adorable cupcakes and cookies that Erin's sister-in-law Lindsay made!  The shower was at Lindsay's house and she was so sweet to make these sweet treats for everyone.

There was also bib making

 A photo booth

 And diaper messages!

 We were so blessed to get so much of what we need for Cooper.  It was overwhelming all of the love and support and generosity from those who love us and him

 And of course the best part was celebrating with some of my favorite people...

 Friends from church

 Family

 Friends who are pretty much family

 And of course my best friend and the wonderful hostess of the shower!

We got home and David and his dad unloaded all of the gifts.  We went through them that night so I could show David everything and I looked up and saw Lily sitting in the midst of all of the gifts.  All 3 of us are a little overwhelmed with all of the goodies that we received!  We are so thankful for everyone who came and supported us and for all of the gifts to get us set for his arrival!  

Next project: organizing everything and finishing up his nursery!  Pictures to come soon {finally!}

Baby Sewing Projects: Hooded Towel

I've posted a few times about the hooded towels that I've made following the patterns from Crazy Little Projects.  Over the past few years I've made the Minion, the Owl, Elmo, Batman, Minnie Mouse, and a Ninja Turtle.  So I figured I would make a towel for Cooper.  I looked through my stash of towels and I already had a blue bath towel and half a red hand towel leftover from Piper's Elmo towel, so I decided to use those since those are the main colors of his nursery.  I didn't see any of the animals I wanted to make, so I decided to try putting his name on the hood instead and I love how it turned out!

This is the main tutorial for making a hooded towel from her website.  I started with the red hood and sewed the first seam and then added the letters.

Here were my starting supplies for cutting the letters.  I used 6 different scraps of fabric that I had leftover from other projects that I've been working on.  I sprayed them with starch and pressed them.  Then I ironed on the Wonder Under.  Several tutorials for appliqueing that I found recommended peeling the paper backing off of the fabric after ironing it together and before cutting the letters out, but I found it way easier to leave the paper backing on for cutting purposes.  I cut the letters out with my Silhouette.  Then I had to apply a little head on the back again to get the paper backing off cleanly before ironing the letters onto the towel.

 The letters positioned and ironed on--ready for stitching

 I used one of the small zig zag stitches and navy thread to sew around each of the letters to make sure they stay on well through lots of washes!

 Then it was time to complete the hood.  I sewed up the back of the hood to put it together.  One of the tutorials on Crazy Little Projects' website mentions sewing a straight line toward the top and cutting a little of the excess towel off so that the hood is more rounded instead of a straight point, so I usually follow that advice on my towels.  In the picture above, there is a green pin placed when I sew straight across before cutting that little tip off. (You can see in the picture below how the finished hood is straight across the top instead of pointed)

I sewed the pleats on the blue bath towel and then sewed the hood onto the towel and I was done!  

And another angle, hanging from his door.  I am very happy with how it turned out and look forward to using it at many bathtimes to come!  It took about an afternoon to complete since I had to applique all of the letters on, but overall it was a pretty simple project.  I'm grateful that I found that original hooded towel tutorial--I have definitely gotten a lot of use out of it!

Baby Sewing Projects: Pregnancy and Nursing Pillows

So slowly but surely things are coming together in Cooper's room and I'm going to start sharing a few of the projects I've been working on.  I'll probably wait until after my shower in a few week to share pictures of his nursery so that I have a chance to finish it up.  But I've had a lot of fun working with my sewing machine again over the past few months.

This project is one of the very first ones I made after finding out I was pregnant.  I've had lots of people rave about the Snoogle pillow and how much it helps with sleeping and positioning for sleeping.  So when I found some patterns to make your own pregnancy pillow on Pinterest I thought I'd try them out.

I ended up going with this pattern from Mama Can Do It.  I think I somehow found a link to a free or reduced fee version of this pattern, but it only costs $10 full price so it's not a bad price when you compare it to the cost of a pillow.  And it has a pattern for the pregnancy pillow as well as a pattern for a nursing pillow (like a Boppy) and a cover so I got a lot out of the pattern.  And one of the best things is that she offers lots of tips for saving money, such as using old sheets to make the pillows instead of buying fabric.  So the only thing I had to buy was stuffing and I got a big bag at Walmart for less than $10.  So overall I spent less than $15 for a pregnancy pillow, a nursing pillow and 2 covers for the nursing pillow.  

 So here is the pregnancy pillow in all it's glory.  In all honesty though, this is pretty much where mine lives:

On the floor in the corner of our room.  It just has not been very helpful for me.  I thought since I have such a hard time sleeping when I'm not pregnant that it would help me get in better positions, but it really hasn't made me any more comfortable.  I've adjusted the amount of stuffing in it a few times to make it more/less firm but that didn't really help.  I even pulled it back out a few weeks ago when my hips were starting to hurt to see if would make a difference now that I'm further along--but it really just ends up being a nuisance to me.  Most likely it's because when I wake up I have a hard time going back to sleep already, so having to reposition with the pillow just adds to that and then I'm wide awake.  It does help some, but I haven't found it be helpful enough to make a difference for me.  It could also be because it is a knock off of the original snoogle, so it's not as good as if I'd just gotten the real thing!  But I'm mostly glad that I didn't spend very much on it.

In the original pattern, you make the nursing pillow as the top of the pregnancy pillow and then make a pillow case to hold it all so you can remove the nursing pillow.  Since I had enough sheet material, I made the full pregnancy pillow and then made a separate nursing pillow.  Before we found out baby's gender, we had planned to use navy as our main color in the nursery, so I made this cover for the pillow pretty early on: 

And then a few weeks ago Joann's had all of their nursery fabric on sale, so I made another cover so I'd have 2.  I added some snaps that weren't on the original pattern so that the cover stays tight around the pillow.

I'll be interested to try this out once Cooper is here to see if it works as well as an actual Boppy or if it's not quite as good.  But it was a fun project to work on to keep me busy during the early months of pregnancy when time was passing so slowly!