Bathtime for Violet

My friend Heidi is having her second daughter any day now.   I wanted to make her a little something for the baby and had been scouring the internet for ideas for weeks.  I settled on making her a hooded bath towel and washcloth from this tutorial .  

While I was still on maternity leave I had gone to the fabric store with my mom and bought some flannel fabric that was purple with fairies on it.  I had loved it and thought I would make another changing table pad cover for Olivia.  She had taken to pooping on her changing table cover and it was always dirty.  Right after I bought it we got a gift card to Babies R Us in the mail from one of our friends.  I love sewing, but being a new mother is tiring.  All Carter's was on sale at Babies R Us for buy one get one 50% off.  I think you can see where the story is going.  The changing table pad covers were bought.  Now that we have three Olivia is dirtying them next to never. 

The fabric was just waiting for something adorable to be made out of it. A few weeks ago Heidi had posted some pictures of the baby's room to Facebook.  I saw on the wall that the name "Violet" was written out in wooden letters. When I saw that the new baby's name would be Violet I knew immediately that I must use it for her gift.  Not only was the fabric soft and cute, but it was light purple!!  At first I thought I would make the towel part out of this brown terry fabric that I have in my stash.  However, currently my stash is in the very bottom of Olivia's closet, underneath her baby tub, and a load of other stuff.  I got lazy and decided to buy this pretty purple towel from Ikea.

The tutorial called for a 30X30 square but the towel was 28X55.  I thought I'd just cut a 28X28 square.  Easy right?  Somehow my cutting ended up so so wrong.  I cut the towel.  Then I cut the fabric.  Did I cut the fabric crooked on one side.  Of course I did.  I cut it again.  Second time's the charm right? Nope.  The fabric and the towel were absolutely NOT the same size.  At this point, I didn't have enough fabric left to try again, so I made due.  I have no idea what happened.  Either Ikea lied about the dimensions of their towel, it stretched, or I am just HORRIBLE with measurements.  

Helping Mommy sew 

Mom! I'm falling!!

Just as a side note....Have you ever cut a towel.  Little pieces of terry get EVERYWHERE.  It almost looked like Grimace had shed all over our couch.

Once I had the fabric and the towel laid on top of each other and pinned I started on the binding.  I bought purple bias tape for the binding (well actually my sister bought it for me cause I couldn't find it at my fabric store). I usually make my own bias tape, but when one has a newborn time saving methods must be used.  The tutorial instructions said to just sandwich the binding around the edges.  I thought that would be MUCH harder than just using the two step method to putting on the binding.  I did it my way and then zig-zagged the edges.  It didn't line up perfectly on the edge on both sides, but I didn't mind.  I thought it made the towel look whimsical?  What do you think? 

Next I tackled the washcloths.  I made those out of scraps of the towel.  Instead of making them with both fabrics like the hooded towel, I decided just a fairy on each side as decoration.  I used the zig-zag stitch to sew the fairies on, and again, the stitching didn't line up perfectly on both sides, and whimsy ensued.

I'm actually really happy with how everything turned out.  It wasn't as easy as I thought it would be, but the end result looked adorable.  Hopefully, Baby Violet will love her bath set!!

Linking this to a few parties :)