Preschool nap mat

Today was Hubby's first day back at work after his paternity leave. During our respective leaves, we took Littles out of extended care at her preschool: We picked her up at the end of the school day (2 PM) and brought her home to nap. Now that we're both back at work full-time, she'll start napping at school again.

A few weeks before Noob's birth, her preschool started asking parents to provide bedding for naptime. For those last few weeks, we just sent a small travel pillow and blanket. But for her return to extended care, I decided to sew her a nap mat. She picked a ballerina theme, and I got to work.

The mat
To make the mat, I started by cutting a piece of Warm and Natural batting, sized 90" by 27". I chose this size because it will allow me to make four nap mats using one queen size package of Warm and Natural. I figure Noob will need one eventually, too!

I folded the batting in half along the short edge, so I had a double layer, sized 45" by 27".

I wanted to make the nap mat somewhat waterproof in case of an accident. So I found a big piece of PUL (polyurethane laminate) and sewed it to the batting. If you're not familiar with PUL, it's the material used for the waterproof layer of many cloth diapers. It's soft and flexible, not at all like the plastic pants of cloth diapers of yesteryear, but still very waterproof. It can be found at Joann's (utility fabrics section) or Hancock Fabrics, as well as online.

Here's the batting with the PUL piece sewed on. Most PUL has two sides, a shiny/sticky side and a soft/smooth side. The shiny/sticky side is the waterproof side, so I sewed it with the shiny/sticky side touching the batting, and the soft/smooth side up.

I cut two pieces of fabric to match the size of the batting. For the top of the mat, I used an old flannel crib sheet. For the bottom of the mat, I used fleece. (Fleece repels moisture, so I'm hoping that layer also helps keep the floor dry in the event of an accident.)

To assemble the nap mat, I put the fleece wrong side down, then the flannel right side down (so the fleece and flannel had right sides together, then the batting with the PUL piece facing up.

For a basic nap mat, I could have started sewing at this point. But I wanted to add a couple of additional features.

Straps and name tag
I cut two long straps out of the same fleece that I used for the bottom of the nap mat. I think they were about 4" wide by 25" long. I made them way longer than they needed to be, knowing that I could cut them down later.

I folded each strap in half and sewed along the long side, making a tube. I turned the tube inside out, then topstitched each side.

I decided to make the straps snap into place, because I was too lazy to sew on velcro :) I rolled up the nap mat both with and without a pillow inside, and marked a good location for the snaps for each.

I pulled out the snap pliers that I usually use for cloth diaper snap conversions, and used them to add snap sockets in the locations I had marked. I reinforced each snap with an extra layer of fleece and a piece of interfacing, underneath the socket. This didn't look very pretty, but it didn't matter, since it wouldn't be visible on the finished mat.

In between one of the sets of snaps, I added two more snap sockets, about 3" apart, also reinforced with extra fleece and interfacing. These would be used for the name tag.

Finally, I inserted each strap into my assembled nap mat, in between the flannel and fleece, so that just a small piece of each strap stuck out.

Here is how the bottom of the mat looked when I was done. This is the "wrong" side of the fleece. You can see a little bit of the straps sticking out at the bottom.

Blanket
I wanted to add a built-in fleece blanket. I could have cut the blanket and sewed it into the nap mat, but instead, I decided to make it snap in, so that it could be swapped out later for a new blanket. This also gives Littles the option of pulling the blanket from the side, or pulling it up from the bottom, or both.

To accomplish this, I cut two pieces of fleece to attach the snaps to. The longer piece was about 10" by 35", and the wider piece was about 10" by 25". As it turns out, these pieces were way too wide -- I think I could have easily done just 5" wide for both.

I folded the pieces in half, then stuck them into the assembled nap mat, in between the fleece and the flannel.

Pillow
Again, I wanted to make the pillow snap in. I added two snaps towards the top of the flannel piece, about 10" apart, reinforced on the wrong side with an extra piece of flannel and a piece of interfacing.. This picture shows the snaps along with the markings I made to line them up properly:

Turning and topstitching
Once I had everything in place, I sewed around three of the four mat sides, leaving the short end without the straps open. Then I turned the whole thing inside out through that opening:

I pinned the fourth side closed:

And topstitched around the whole thing. This closed up that opening.

Blanket, again
I cut the blanket to come all the way up to the top of the "wing" on the long side of the nap mat. As far as width, I wanted it to be about 10" wider than the nap mat, so that it would fully cover Littles when she was lying under it. I added about 1" on each side for a hem. The final size ended up being about 36" by 36".

I hemmed the blanket all the way around to finish the edges. This is optional, since fleece doesn't fray, but it worked well to give me a double layer of fleece on the two edges that needed to snap in.

I added snaps to the bottom and one side of the blanket, about 5" apart. Then I added corresponding snaps to the two "wings."

Pillow, again
We still had the small travel pillow that we had purchased for Littles to use at naptime immediately prior to Noob's birth. We had a lot of trouble finding a small pillow of this size! I eventually found one at Joann's.

I wanted to make a pillowcase to match the ballerina theme. I found some cute ballerina flannel in the remnants bin at Joann's. It was about 27" wide. The pillow is roughly 16" by 12", so I cut a piece of flannel about 40" by 15" and folded it in half to get a piece that was 20" by 15".

Since flannel frays, I wanted to avoid unfinished seams inside the pillowcase. So I did what I think is called a French seam. Fancy! What I did was sew the two parallel open sides with the wrong sides on the inside. Then I trimmed down the seam allowance to be about 1/8". Here's how it looked:

I pressed the seam open. Then I turned the pillowcase inside out, and sewed again, using a 1/4" seam allowance. This enclosed the raw edge, so I had nice finished edges both inside and out.

I still had one open side. I folded it, then folded it again, and sewed it into place, creating a hem with no unfinished edges.

Here's how it looked when I was finished sewing. Nice, clean edges, both inside and out!

I added some snaps to the back of the pillowcase, reinforcing with a small piece of flannel and some interfacing.

Straps, again
I rolled up the nap mat both with and without the pillow inside, and marked where my previously-added sockets hit on each strap. Hubby had the idea to add multiple sets of straps, just in case Littles' teachers want to send something home inside the nap mat, making it a little fatter than usual. Easy enough!

Once I got the snaps added, I cut the straps a few inches above the last snap. Then I folded the strap in on itself and stitched it closed to give a nice finished edge.

Name tag, again
The final touch! Noob's soft book gave me good practice for putting this together.

In Microsoft Publisher, I created a box about 4" by 2". I added Littles' name, along with a picture from her ballet recital last year. I printed it out on photo transfer paper, then transferred it to a piece of muslin. I added some Heat n Bond Lite on the back.

For the background, I cut a piece of fleece using a pinking blade on my rotary cutter. It was about an inch wider/taller than the muslin piece. I used a slightly different color fleece from what I used on the mat bottom.

I added two snaps to the fleece, reinforcing them with a small piece of interfacing.

I placed the muslin over the snap caps and ironed gently to fuse the muslin to the fleece.I did a satin stitch all the way around the muslin to secure it to the fleece.

Finally, I snapped it into place on the outside of the nap mat.

Some parting shots!

Rolled up, name tag visible:

Snapped closed for transit:

Unrolled:

Action shot... Littles refused to lie on it properly. Oh well!

So that's how I did it! Despite all the steps, it was really fairly easy to put together. Good thing, too, because I don't know how much napping Littles will actually do on this :) These past few weeks, while she's been home on Christmas break, she's only napped maybe one or two times a week. And I'm sure that once she's back in extended care, she'll be more interested in playing with her friends than napping! Oh well. This mat will work well for overnight visits to see friends and grandparents, so I think we'll get some use out of it that way, even if it doesn't get used much as school!

Soft shirts

About this time last year, when I sewed my first few pairs of fleece PJ pants for Littles, I had to figure out a way to make matching shirts. I had the idea to take plain t-shirts and embellish them appropriately, but I couldn't find reasonably priced long-sleeve t-shirts, and it didn't make sense to pair those nice warm fleece PJ pants with a short-sleeve shirt.

One night, I got the idea to make a long-sleeve shirt by sewing fleece "sleeves" onto a short sleeve shirt. The result...

Cute? Hideous? I'm still not entirely sure. But certainly, these shirts were fast and easy to make, cheap (I used leftover fleece scraps and standard Hanes boys underwear shirts, which I bought at Wal-mart for around $6 for a 5-pack), and very soft and warm!

I ended up making three shirts in this way last winter. We pulled them out again a few months ago as the weather started to cool off, and Littles has worn one of them just about every night since. A few nights ago, they were all in the wash, and Littles was very upset begging for a "soft shirt." We tried giving her some other shirts that are soft, but no, no. She wanted a cute/hideous fleece-sleeved "soft shirt."

So I got to work. And I took pictures this time to show how I put these together.

I start by taking a few key measurements. First, I need to know what length the sleeves must be. I do this by measuring an existing shirt -- or, in this case, one of Noob's onesies. It's about 7" from the shoulder seam to the cuff.

Since the sleeves of the short sleeve shirt will stay somewhat intact, I need to get some measurements from it, too. This is hard to see, but it's the sleeve of the short sleeve shirt. It's about 1.5" from shoulder seam to cuff, and the hem is about 0.5".

Now I can calculate how long my fleece sleeves have to be. They must be (total sleeve length) - (short sleeve shirt's shoulder seam to cuff length) + (short sleeve shirt's hem length * 2) + (desired hem length for fleece sleeve). Here, that was 7" - 1.5" + 0.5" *2 + 1" = 7.5"

As for how wide, the fleece sleeve needs to match the width of the short sleeve shirt's sleeve, so I need to measure that. Here, it's about 3.5". I'm going to use a 0.25" seam allowance, so that means that the fleece sleeve needs to be 3.5" * 2 + 0.5" = 7.5" wide.

So I cut two pieces of fleece with those dimensions. I folded each piece in half to create a tube.

I also prepared an embellishment. This shirt will go along with Noob's Dallas Cowboys PJ pants, so I cut a Cowboys helmet out of some fleece. (The same thing I used to embellish his sleep sack.) I've also used t-shirt transfers in the past, but they get all cracked and yucky-looking over time. Fleece is much more durable.

The shirt is a Gerber size 18 months shirt. Gerber stuff runs really small, so Noob has been wearing this since he was about 3 months old. I got it at a thrift store for about 50 cents. I've been looking and looking for plain white short-sleeve infant shirts like this in regular stores, but I haven't found any! Too bad. They are so versatile.

I started by sewing the helmet on to the front of the t-shirt. Then I started to work on the sleeves.

I folded the fleece in half, right sides together, and sewed up the open side. Fleece is much stretchier in one direction, so I made sure that the stretchiness was going across the width of the sleeve. That is, the open ends of the fleece tubes stretch more than the side I sewed up.

I turned the tube/sleeve right side out and the t-shirt inside out. I inserted the fleece into the t-shirt sleeve, right side to right side, and pinned it into place:

Then I sewed the sleeve into place. I think it looks best to sew right around the original seam line on the shirt sleeve. That way, you don't see the original hem line just above the new seam when you're done.

Here are both sleeves finished. You can see the navy blue thread that I used, right near the original seam line. On the bottom sleeve, I've also trimmed the seam allowance:

Then I hemmed the bottoms of the sleeves. You could actually leave the raw edges if you wanted; fleece doesn't fray.

All done!

Here's how it looks! (Please ignore the strawberry yogurt all over the front. I should have done the photo session before breakfast.)

(Yes, he's wearing his Mini Mocs. They go well with these PJs!)

Here is Littles modeling another "soft shirt."

I got the t-shirt for this one through a co-op that I'm part of. The co-op organizer found an amazing deal on toddler t-shirts -- it worked out to be about $1.50 a shirt including shipping and everything, so basically the same cost as the underwear shirts at Wal-mart. But these shirts are much higher quality and come in colors. I had this yellow shirt in mind specifically to match these yellow Pooh PJ pants. I also picked up a bunch of pink and blue shirts so that I have them on hand for future projects!

(Yes, those are Mini Mocs on her feet, too! That's a pair that I made a while ago. They are made entirely out of pink fleece, no other materials.)

Littles loves her new "soft shirts." I'll probably make more of these before winter is through!

Toddler soft book: Do not attempt this project :)

Just kidding, it wasn't that bad. But this project took significantly longer to put together than most of what I do. I usually sew after the kids are in bed, and I can finish most projects in one or two nights of dedicated sewing. This one? Took the better part of a week. It wasn't particularly hard to sew, but there were just a lot of steps.

As with the tutu, this came from one of the project idea sheets that you can pick up for free in any Joann's store. They are also available online. Here is the link.

This particular project was for a toddler soft "book" made out of fabric. Noob already has some store-purchased soft books, and they are great! They hold up to everything a baby can dish out -- chewing, pulling, folding, you name it.

The original project called for a shapes book, featuring a different shape on each page. But, well, you can buy books about shapes anywhere. Even before I started, I could tell that this project was going to take a lot of work, so I wanted to do something truly unique.

The original project suggested printing out the names of each shape onto special fabric paper that you can put into your inkjet printer. That gave me an idea: Rather than just printing words, why not print pictures as well?

And that's how "Noob's Book of Family" was born. Each page features pictures of Noob's close family members (parents, sister, grandparents, and aunt): Here are two pages:

Here are the changes I made from the original project:

1. Obviously, I used photos, instead of shapes.
2. Rather than using inkjet fabric paper, which allows printing directly to fabric from an inkjet printer, I used inkjet t-shirt transfer paper. Then I transferred the printed images to plain white muslin. I did this because I wasn't sure whether the inkjet fabric paper was washable -- and anything intended for use by a baby needs to be washable! This solution was also a little cheaper than the inkjet fabric paper.
   
   Here is a picture of the muslin with some of the pictures transferred onto it. You can also see the Heat n Bond on the back of the pictures:
   
3. I only made 5 pages, rather than 6. This was not intentional. I didn't read the directions carefully when I was buying fabric, and only bought five colors of flannel :) It worked out for the best, though, since 5 pages was more than enough work!
4. I wanted each page to make that "crinkly" noise, because Noob loves toys that do that. To accomplish this, I added two pieces of cellophane for each page, I got the cellophane at Joann's -- it's designed for use in wrapping gift baskets. I cut the cellophane to be the same size as the flannel/batting for each page, and inserted it in between the batting and one of the pieces of flannel.

A couple of tips that I want to remember if I'm ever crazy enough to do something like this again :)

• Leave about 1" on the border of each page for the grommets. I centered the pictures on each page, and so the grommets ended up going through some of the pictures. You can see it in the "Mom and Dad" sign on the red page above, as well as on the picture of Noob and me on the left of the yellow page. It doesn't look too bad, but it would have been nice to avoid it.
• I used a pinking rotary cutter to cut out the name signs, and it was really hard to cut straight. For the last few that I did, I added a dotted border in Publisher before I printed, and then cut along the dotted border. That helped a lot. Here's a close up of one in progress, showing the dotted border:
  
• I had a really hard time getting the pictures lined up straight on the page, relative to the seams that I ended up sewing. You can see how crooked the "Book of Family" sign is on the cover! I think it would have helped to draw the seam lines on the flannel, line up the pictures relative to those lines, and then sew along those lines.
• The instructions call for half a yard of Warm and Natural batting. I think Joann's just wants to sell more batting :) You only need 8" -- the batting for all the pages can easily fit into the width of batting by-the-yard, with enough left over in case you mess up.
• I had to do a lot of ironing! Ironing to transfer pictures to the muslin, then ironing to bond the Heat n Bond to the muslin, then ironing to fuse the Heat n Bond + muslin to the flannel. Eventually, I figured out the easiest way to do this:
1. Transfer the pictures to the muslin.
2. Before peeling the paper off the picture transfer, bond the Heat n Bond to the muslin. I used a big piece of Heat n Bond to bond to a bunch of pictures all at once, and that worked well.
3. Wait for everything to cool off.
4. Remove the transfer paper from the muslin. Save it!
5. Cut out the shape.
6. Remove the paper from the Heat n Bond. Place the picture in the desired spot on the flannel. Place the original transfer paper on top of the picture. (This keeps it from sticking to the iron!) Iron to fuse the picture to the flannel. Remove the original transfer paper from the picture.
• Don't do this project on a deadline! e.g. Christmas :) I'm pretty sure Hubby wanted to kill me by Christmas Eve, because I left this project to the last minute and had to spend soooooooo much time working on it, rather than helping him with Christmas preparations! It's not hard, but it does take a lot of time, so plan accordingly.
• This would actually be a really good "travel project" (a project to do while on the road), because you don't need a sewing machine for a lot of it. You can get all the pictures done and pages assembled with just scissors and an iron. Once that is done, the sewing goes pretty quickly.

Despite this being a big pain to put together, I'm really pleased with the way it turned out. Of course, Noob is much more interested in stealing his big sister's Christmas presents than playing with his, this one included. Sigh. But hopefully he'll appreciate it in the months/years to come!

(Back cover of the book :)