I can’t help but share a picture of my 6-year old granddaughter’s first sewing lesson.

Once a week I pick her up from school and she spends the afternoon with me.  Last week I asked her if she would want to learn how to sew and she enthusiastically shouted “YES”.  Today I introduced her to the sewing machine, stressed safety procedures, and after getting a feel for the machine she stitched without thread on lines that I drew on cardstock.  She’s a natural if I do say sew.  I then threaded the needle and she stitched out a number of floral and animal designs.

There’s no greater satisfaction than shared interests between a grandma and grandchild.  I love it.

In preparation for the arrival of my fifth grand baby next month, I’m busy sewing baby gifts.  Here are the first two – all completed:

My daughter never finds out the gender of the baby until he/she is born, so I tried to keep the color palette neutral.  All the fabric is from the Dandelion Daydream line by Maywood Studio, which I purchased from one of my local quilt stores – Sew ‘n Save.  When I need a number of different coordinating fabrics, I usually go with one line because all the guess work is eliminated.  They just all magically coordinate.  Love that!

Let’s start with the car seat cover.  I used this tutorial.  But be warned, unless you know the type of handles your intended car seat has, don’t sew the handle covers on yet.  Some car seats have a straight across handle bar, others have a zig zag.  I sewed the cover for a straight across handle bar only to find out that my daughter’s car seat has the zig zag handles.  Who knew?!  As you can see, the outer fabric is mostly green with some tone on tone flowers. 

The fabric on the underside is the only fabric not from the Dandelion Daydream line.  It is a super soft, polka-dot Minkee.  Perfect against baby’s delicate skin.

Okay, next is the apron. I’ve never made one of these before, but my daughter requested one.  I started with this tutorial but gave up following it as the instructions were a bit vague.  I did, however, use her suggestion to angle the top corners of the apron rather than leaving them square like a big sheet.  But be careful when you do this as it will give you two bias edges, which are easy to stretch out when you are hemming/finishing the edges.  The sewing steps were easy enough to make up as I went, once I had an idea of what a nursing apron/modesty cover was!

Here are some close-ups:

Completely enclosed and finished seams on underside of apron

Front pocket

Adjustable neck strap

Front of the apron with the boning inserted in the casing 

Thanks for wading through this lengthy post.  My last baby project will be a simple crib-size quilt.  Stay tuned . . .