Baby Shower Gift Basket - For a Baby Boy!

Recently, I made another liner for a basket with the intent of using it as a new baby gift. And today I'm going to show you what I did for the gift basket. It's a lot like the Baby Girl Gift Basket I did a couple weeks ago, just more boyish.

This gift basket included:

• Soft wipes refill pack (buried on the bottom)
• Customized wipes container (to match the basket liner)
• Package of baby toys
• 3 customized onesies
• Felt Bitty Booties
• Rolled up diapers (about 16)

Here is a close up of the onesies - made with heat transfer material cut with my Silhouette machine.

Also a shot of the customized wipes container (since it's kind of buried in the gift basket). It was made to match the gift basket. Be sure to check out the tutorial!

The Bitty Booties were made with the pattern found at Heather Baily Designs. I think that making these things might be my newest obsession. Just a word of caution to all my preggo friends (and those with new babies). If you find a pile of these on your doorstep, don't look at me!

Baby blue felt with a darker blue cotton lining and white grosgrain ribbon accent.
Whip stitched around the edges for decoration.

So cute, right!?

So there you have it. What kind of things do you like to give new mommies and babies?

Customized Wipes Container

As part of the Baby Boy Gift Basket that I'm doing, I made a coordinating wipes container to match the basket liner.

I've seen a few customized wipes containers floating around in blog land. I love this idea over at Junk in their Trunk. She painted and modpodged paper onto a wipes container.

I also really liked this Wipes Band idea from Less Cake {more frosting}.

But, I didn't have the really wide elastic and I wanted to make something to coordinate with the basket liner (LINK TO POST) I made to go in the gift basket. I decided I wanted to use the same fabric and dress (or boy) it up a little bit. The main reason for customizing this case though....

Pretty insane, right? I found this wipes container clearance at Walmart for like $0.75. This was before Andyroo decided to potty train, so I grabbed it thinking we would surely use it.

Nope! And now I have this cute (if you like Nemo) but kind of hideous container of wipes that needed to be used. Andyroo tore the plastic off while we were walking through the store and I couldn't stand the thought of these drying out and going to waste. I couldn't just stick them in with a baby gift like this.

Because of the mistake I made with the basket liner, I didn't have a piece of material long enough to go completely around the wipes case, so I had to use two pieces. One went over the back of the wipes case (it was about 9 or 10 inches) and the other went around the front and sides (it was about 17 or 18 inches long). You'll want to measure the wipes container you're working with in order to get an accurate measurement.

I wanted a finished edge, so I hemmed the edge of the material. My wipes container measured about 3 3/4" tall, so I cut my pieces about 4 3/4" and turned up about 1/2 on both the top and the bottom.

For the short piece on the back, I didn't worry about finishing the short sides, but for the long piece, I also turned in about 1/2 inch to give the seam a more finished look. The picture above is of the longer front piece.

After the two pieces were hemmed, I hot glued the back piece onto the wipes case first.

Then I also hot glued the front piece around the rest of the case. I'm all about symmetry, so I found the middle of the front piece and centered it on the wipes case so that they fell evenly on the back of the wipes case. The front piece overlapped the back piece by about an inch on each side.

No more Nemo!

I added a little flair to the wipes case so that it wasn't quite so boring. Nothing much, just a little (manly) ribbon.

We're linking up with these super awesome parties:


Whatever Goes Wednesday, Idea Sharing Wednseday, What I Made Wednesday, Creative-ly U, Feature Yourself Friday, Just Something I Whipped Up, Frugal Friday, DIY Under $5, Lovely Little Linkup, Craftastic Monday, Woot Woot Wednesday, Strut Your Stuff, Our House of Joyful Noise, Get You Craft On, Wow Me Wednesday, Lovely Crafty Weekend, Weekend Wrap Up

Another Basket Liner Redo

I have another friend who just had a baby and I wanted to do a gift basket for her also. The last basket I created was rectangular, so I decided to go for a challenge and found a round basket that needed a liner! What do you think?

Because this basket has kind of a lip on the outside, I decided to use a little elastic to keep the liner around the basket. Can you see the lip that I'm talking about?

I started by tracing the bottom of the basket on some tissue paper. Cut out the circle, and you'll have a pattern for the bottom of your basket. Something like this.

Cut one out of your material. I'm using a printed snuggle flannel, by the way. It was a remnant from Joann's that was given to me by the lady who gave me my sewing machine.

Also, the first way I did this was a fail. But first, I'll show you how I ended up doing it. The circumference of the basket was about 47 inches. I also measured the height of the basket - from the bottom up to the underside of the lip of the basket. Mine ended up being around 9 inches. So I cut two pieces that were about 11 inches tall and about 30 inches wide. I debated on whether I should have that much in the width of the material, but after you see my mistake, you'll understand why I went with that much material. I also really quite liked the finished product. So in the end, I'm glad I stuck with the 30 inch (60 inches total) width.

Pin the two pieces (the 11"x30") with right sides together and sew up the short sides so that when you open it, it makes a circle.

This is the long piece folded up

After you've sewn the sides together, you'll want to make a casing for the elastic on one of the long sides. I was working with pretty small elastic - 1/4", I think. Unless you have a patterned material that needs to be one way, it doesn't really matter which side you put the casing on. Make sure to leave an opening so that you can put the elastic in later. The side with the casing will be the top of the liner.

At this point, don't put the elastic in yet. Instead, you'll need to gather the bottom of the long pieces so that it will fit your bottom circle. I used my sewing machine to make the gathering stitch. Pin the bottom circle and the gathered side together.

Sew these two pieces together carefully being sure not to catch any extra of the bottom or side pieces in your stitching. I may or may not have accidentally done that.

Once those two pieces are sewn together, you can put the elastic into the casing on the top. I know there are lots of ways to do this, but I just took a safety pin and attached it to one end of the elastic and started pulling it through the casing. That's the way I learned years ago in a Home Ec class! After it's through, sew the ends of the elastic together then finish the casing.

To keep the elastic from rolling, I sewed the elastic down in a few places after it was in the casing. I picked about 4 or 5 places and just did a simple straight stitch across the width of the elastic and casing.

Put it in your basket and admire your hard work!

Now, what NOT to do...

I had the brilliant idea of trying to taper the liner so it was more fitted to the basket. Apparently I didn't have the right equation (I've been watching Numbers on Netflix) because it did NOT fit.

Luckily I tested it out before I attached the bottom! I'm not sure if I needed to add more height or width to the material or if I just shouldn't have tapered it quite so much. I don't know where my math went wrong, but that's why I decided that more was better for the second try. So, this is a perfect example of trying things out as you work to make sure that things fit properly. I would have been so upset and I would have had to start completely over if I hadn't checked.

I'll be using this basket for another baby gift, so check back and see how it turns out. I'll also be using this same material to cute-ify a wipes case, so check back for that tutorial too!

Bitty Booties Inspiration

Have you seen the Bitty Booties created by Heather Bailey!? Holy cuteness. I saw these made on another blog quite a while ago and saved the pattern for later. I have tons of friends with new babies or about to have babies, so I'm pulling out the pattern and whipping some up.

I went looking for inspiration over at the Bitty Booties Flikr Group. I think I'm even more confused now though, lol!



Baby Moderno by Honorita



From Kukadas' Photostream - Las Kukadas De Sandra

LOVE the simpleness and the lining! From Incy Wincy Stitches Photostream

From Sweet Mammy por Fabiola Beppler's Photostream

From Gracious May's Photostream

Also from Gracious May's Photostream

From BumbleBL's Photostream



From Il Cassetto Delle Idee's Photostream



From emmmylizzzy's Photostream

From Mostly Charlie's Photostream

Red Boy Booties from sybrowskym's Photostream

Now I just have to figure out what I want to do. I'm including them in another new baby gift basket I'm doing later this week. Check back to see what I came up with!

(All photos used were found on the Bitty Booties Flikr Group. Links posted when possible).

Baby Shower Gift Basket - For a Baby Girl!

Earlier this week I showed you how I took a thrift store basket and made a new liner for it. And today I'm going to show you what I did to make it the cutest, most girliest baby shower basket ever!

Sorry for the not so awesome backdrop there. I was literally putting this thing together until the minute I walked out the door. And then it dawned on me that I should take another picture of it all wrapped up and put together. Poor Andyroo. He was all happy and excited to go to Grandma's (while I went to the baby shower) and he had to wait for mom to snap a few more pictures. I didn't have time to set up lighting inside the house, so this is on the stairs going upstairs and out of the house where there is more sunlight.

This awesome gift basket includes:

• A soft pack of Pampers wipes
• Rolled up diapers - about 25-30
• 3 Customized onesies
• 3 Flower clips
• 2 Ribbon headbands
• A boxed set of baby toys

In order to get some height in the gift basket, I used the wipes as a base in the bottom of the basket. Behind the wipes, I placed the boxed set of toys. I placed the diapers around the bottom and built up from there. The onesies were rolled up and set on top of the diapers. The flowers and headbands were placed around to add a little flair and then I wrapped the whole thing in a big cellophane bag. Here's a better picture of the basket minus the flowers, the headbands, and the wrap.

The diapers were each rolled up individually, then wrapped with a piece of ribbon and stuck together with a glue dot. Those size 2 diapers are tiny compared to the huge ones I was using for Andrew!

Here's a shot of the onesies. I would have preferred to use pink and brown, but I was out of brown Heat Transfer Material.

These were designed and cut using my Silhouette. LOVE that thing!

I didn't get a picture of the flower clips or headbands because I was running late. The flower clips were simple silk flowers with the plastic removed, re-glued, and then hot glued to a small alligator clip. The headbands were a small piece (about 5 or 6 inches) of ribbon sewn to a piece of soft, stretchy elastic (about 4 or so inches). After seeing our neighbor's new baby, I think I made them too big. But hopefully the baby will be able to grow into them.

The new mommy loved the gift basket and everyone was really impressed with the customized onesies! I hope she doesn't mind if I make some more girly stuff and drop it off on her doorstep!