Making Shannon’s Baby Lovey <3

I’m so happy… there’s a new baby in the family! Not mine or I wouldn’t be sewing so much. No, my adorable sister in law recently gave birth to a healthy, beautiful little girl. And she doesn’t sew. Not even a little. So I had to make my new little niece something extra special.

I used Shannon’s free tutorial here on her blog 2 Little Hooligans. It is very well written and easy to understand.  When I explained to her what I was in need of, Mary of Fabric Tree sent me this beautiful bundle of fabric:

I can’t say enough how much I appreciate her talent for putting bundles together. It saves me so much time and worry. (really)

And once again, the fabric was cut so straight that no trimming was needed, I could start cutting the strips for this fabric right away. This happened before when I was making pretty camera strap covers {blog post here}. I love Fabric Tree for that too.

So, this tutorial is pretty straight forward. First you cut lots of strips and gather them.

I had not used the gathering foot on this machine yet, so I decided to experiment. I turned the stitch length up to the max, tightened up the tension by two, and gave it a go. Perfect! This fabric is pretty lightweight and that helped too. Eight ruffle strips done in about 5 minutes.

Sewing the ruffle strips together seemed a bit trickier because it is not natural to push double layers of bunched fabric under your presser foot. But it worked.

Following the rest of the tutorial is pretty straightforward. I basted my ruffle on instead of using lots of pins the way she does. It takes longer, maybe, but I don’t like sewing over pins. Also, I don’t want to talk about the ultra cuddle fleece on the back. Please someone never let me use that again. Just use minky like she does. I’m sure it’s way easier.