Sunday, January 10, 2010

Baby in a Bag

Among the other things that I've been doing this week--sledding, seriously considering homeschooling the girls next academic year, cooking dinner after dinner after dinner, reading novel after novel after novel, and watching scary movies with Matt (if one can be said to have "watched" Paranormal Activity if one had one's hands in front of one's face the entire time)--I've also been sewing a part of my collection of awesome thrifted shirts into what are, I guess, newborn gowns, but what Matt and I always called "baby bags":
They're to sell at Barefoot Herbs+Barefoot Kids, our local hippie parenting store, and frankly, I can't think of a better thing to do with the Che Guevara T-shirt that just never quite fit right again after Sydney came to be.

The basic pattern is easy enough, although the lap shoulders gave me hell. After I figured out a cobbled-together pattern for them that worked, however, I made up my own construction technique that is definitely NOT the way you're supposed to do them, and that, and an outrageous number of straight pins (and plenty of Law and Order: SVU on Netflix), gets them done:
The reason that Matt and I so adored the baby bag is in the bottom hem:
Elastic! The gown is meant to be long on the baby, and so the elastic keeps it narrow enough that she can kick and kick and kick happily and not kick off her clothes, but it is the easiest imaginable process in the world to pull the gown up to change her big, cloth-diapered butt.

Of course, the baby bags that Matt and I used were lovingly gifted to us from places like BabyGap, and so they were on the cool side of baby-dom (I think I remember that one had a houndstooth pattern--woo-hoo!), but they weren't as cool as this. Just think--tie-dye! Skulls (Stolen from my own private stash of skull shirts that I'm saving up to make a skull T-shirt quilt out of, no less)!
Awesome bands!
I have a Smashing Pumpkins one, too, that I'm hoping to finish up tonight before watching The Puppet Masters with Matt.

And, um, of COURSE the Great Wall of China:

Don't tell Matt, but it kind of makes me want to have another baby, just so I can dress her entirely in clothing that I've sewn from awesome thrifted T-shirts.

Because if I was pregnant again, I'd TOTALLY have all the time in the world on my hands for sewing newborn layettes, right?

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Fabulous baby bags! I hope you sell tons and tons of them!

NYCNancy said...

Please don't home school yr children. That's exactly what Dr. Laura wants you to do!

I believe public school is necessary for a child's interaction with others. Do like I've done... fortify their school lessons with home tutoring in foreign languages or musical instruments.

I considered having my kids attend private school. I'm glad I didn't. Public school made us cool, right?

urban craft said...

These are way way rad! Home schooling can be cool, you just need to go along with your kids learning patterns. Let them lead you. Lots of people are products on public schooling, and many are over weight and on welfare.

julie said...

I bet that I could homeschool and still, somehow, keep Dr. Laura hating me. The challenge of it will enliven our days! I do wish I had someone in the house who could teach the girls Russian, however...really, any slavic language would do.

I hope I sell tons and tons of baby bags, too! I hope I sell so many that I have to raise the price because I can't make them that fast, and then I hope that they still sell out and so I have to raise the price again, world without end, amen.

Tami Lu said...

I could teach them Italian by correspondence. And via dictaphonic pagers.

cake said...

i love these baby bags! and i know someone that i am going to need to get one for real soon. so, if you find some green-themed t-shirt, say, a tree, or a re-cycle symbol or something like that, wildlife...? please set it aside for my friend's baby. they are all about cloth diapering and e.c., so these would be perfect.

Elisabeth Leahy said...

Just stumbled across your blog and I love these bags so much I'm going to go and ransack the rest of our posting history for anything else fun and crafty... so, I'm off to do that now. Thanks! :)

julie said...

Ransacks are almost my favorite kind of sacks!