The 10-Minute Baby Bib

Baby M. reached a big milestone this week- eating solid food! So far he's had pureed organic sweet potatoes (tomorrow we're going to try avocado), and he loves it! We had no trouble getting him to eat from the very beginning, and now he even squeals in delight when he sees he's about to be fed. He only had a couple of big bibs (tons of little spit-up bibs), so I made him a few. They're super easy to make- literally took me about 10 minutes to do one while M. was napping. I used some dinosaur-printed flannel I already had from when I was making him fitted diapers before he was born, and I used a piece of the waterproof diaper liner fabric (PUL) for the back. You could also use terrycloth (an old towel, even) or microfibre for the back.

I used one of the bibs Baby M. already had as a template, and cut one shape from the flannel, one from the PUL.

With the right sides of the fabric facing each other, I used the machine to sew the two pieces together, leaving an opening at the bottom of the bib. I then turned it inside-out.

Then I used a fancy-schmancy applique stitch on my sewing machine to just topstich around the edges of the bib (tucking in the edge that I had left open). A regular stitch would work just as well.

And then sewed on the velcro: one piece on the top of one side of the neck; one piece on the bottom of the other side.

If I were making these to sell, I might use a bit of matching trim/bias tape instead of the topstitch, but it's cute both ways.Serves its purpose well in any case. Here's my little sweet-potato face putting it into action:

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The Get Baked! Art For Your Sweet Tooth art show was supposed to start tonight, but was postponed because of the raging blizzard outside. Instead, it's starting next Friday, February 12, at the St. John's Arts and Culture Centre, with the opening reception (featuring a cupcake buffet!) at 7:30pm. It's running for the whole weekend. That means I've got an extra week to put the finishing touches on some pieces; yippee! I ended up doing more than I first thought: the two applique/embroidery pieces, some miniature wall art pieces, and some cupcakes made from recycled sweaters and needle-felting. With some help from my friend Adam of Electric Twilight, who's a fantabulous graphic designer, I also did a photography series that's a visual recipe for vanilla cupcakes... instead of written quantities and directions, you follow photos (i.e., a picture of a cup of milk, etc.) to make the cupcakes. We put it together into a little book, and made 25 copies, which we're selling at the show. The best part about doing that project was that I had to make the cupcakes to photograph!

These were the final products, which were shared with my nephew, Little E. He says "cupcake" like it's two words ("Tara! Look! Cup! Cake!"), and it's so adorable, it was worth making them just to hear it. :)

 I recently learned, while poking around online for inspiration for a good recipe to use, that cupcakes came about because baking large cakes was difficult over a hearth, and usually came out burned, so people in the 19th century started baking them in teacups, which was quicker and easier. When I lived in the U.K., I never heard them called cupcakes... over there, they're "fairy cakes;" maybe because they're small enough for the fairies to eat. Cute!