7/22/10

Crunchy Baby Tag Toy




Back when I had Brooke, my DEAR, dear, dearest friend Pam sent a package of baby goodies and within her box of creations was a cute baby tag blanket. It's soft, chewy, and Brooke loves it! {love ya, Pamsies!}

Lately, Brooke is obsessed with the crunchy, plastic baby wipe packaging and I can't change her diaper without {carefully} hiding it from her. So I'm making her a *crunchy* tag blanket toy and now we'll have one of each! One for quiet times and one for her to be loud with! Perfect!

This little project was simple - no special measurements, just eyeballing. You can eyeball, right? So go grab some fabric scraps, some ribbon scraps, and join me!

































***Note: you don't have to make yours 'quilt style' like I did. You can just use one big piece of fabric, but I happened to like the busy fabrics together like this to add interest.
Now cut six squares of random pieces - five rectangles cut in half. I believe mine were 4 x 7 and then I cut them in half.

I also played with various colors of
trim on the square pieces and loved it! You'll want to sew those onto the squares before you piece them together.

Sew the squares together with right sides facing; press open












Then sew the rows together, right sides facing; press open.

Now I'm not a quilter, I don't have the nerves for it...and you can see why. Even though I measured everything, cut all of my squares perfectly square, they still didn't line up whilst sewing them together. WHY??? I don't know. But who cares, right?! It's still darn cute. (plus, babies don't care.)

Then you square up your lines with your rotary cutter & ruler after your pieces are all stitched together.














Now pin on your ribbons. Get creative, colorful, and have fun! Velvet textures are great, too, but I couldn't find any.


Now on to the crunchy part. This is a piece of the baby wipes packaging I cut up - I probably could have done a better job at getting a larger piece, but it isn't going to matter. The thing will crunch! But because it's smaller than my top and bottom piece, I'm going to sew it onto the wrong side of my fabric before I do anything else so it will stay put.

There! Now it's secure and not going to go anywhere. If you don't want this big of a piece, do strips, circles, or random patches on this bottom piece. That way you'll still get crunch without it being SO crunchy!

Next, you should baste your ribbons all the way around before you stitch the thing shut like I did, that way you can remove your pins. You don't want to turn this right-side-out with pins in it. {durh...wish I would have thought of that sooner...}


Then put right sides together, sew around leaving about 6 -8 inches opening in the side. Clip your corners and trim up the trimmin's - you know the drill.


Turn your fabric right-side-out; press flat.

Now you can put that last little ribbon in place while tucking the hole back into place.

Sew close to the edge all the way around, securing the opening and finishing the piece.



And that's it! Now go grab yourself a cute little baby and let 'em barf all over your hard work!

Brooke LOVES this, by the way!!! I even think it exceeded her low expectations. haha.


















20 comments:

missliss5/Melissa said...

ABBY!!! That is beautiful and darling and I love it!

Unknown said...

This is adorable. One fabric piece would be easier, but I love the mixture of prints. Great job!

chris said...

Oh, Abby this is such a great idea. Brooke is darling. What a fun age she's at.

Rachel@oneprettything.com said...

That is so, so cute! I love the look of this, it's gorgeous! Thanks so much, I'll be linking.

Welcome to the Garden of Egan said...

She's getting so big! Darling little angel.

Cute baby toy. You are a genius.

Terri said...

Very cute idea. So babies like those tag blankets? When my girls were little they had one toy that had something crinkly in it, I always came running thinking they had something they shouldn't have.

Scented Sweetpeas said...

My little one used to adore crunchy sounds too! I used to give her greaseproof paper to play with and she used to sit there for ages just crunching it and chewing it :-)

Christy Wheeler said...

I am making one today!

nikiweller said...

Abby,
I can not remember how I came to find your blog. I have been following you for about a year and a half now. You are a delight!!!
No kidding I was just pulling out fabrics to make a taggie blanket when I took a snack break and saw this post! Brilliant!!! I shall now make a quilted boy version. Thank you for sharing.

Blessings,
Niki

p.s. your photography is so fresh looking!!

Laura said...

Super idea! I love that it uses little bits of fabric, doesn't take long to make and is so practical!

Unknown said...

great idea. and so adorable!

i'm linking.

thanks for this tutorial.

doro.

Paula said...

My baby girl is 4.5 months. I was looking for THE BEST tutorial out there because there's so many. I think the squares might be worth it if it keeps baby's attention for those extra 10-15 mins!! I'm making this tomorrow!

Tanjas Traumberg said...

Hi Abby!

This is so beautiful!

But I like to add a safty advice, if you don't mind:

Cut some big holes or rips into the wipe plastic, so the baby gets enough air if it lays the tag toy on its face!

Greetings from Germany,

Tanja
:-)

kath001 said...

What an awesome idea! I was looking for some ideas for handmade stimulating toys to make and mail, so this being lightweight is perfect!

I'm thinking that when you pin the ribbon tags, if you put the heads of the pins toward the outside instead of toward the inside as shown in the photo, and leave the heads overhanging the edge a little, you could skip the basting step and just remove the pins as you sew around.

Thanks again for the great idea and the fabulous tutorial!

kathleen

Abby said...

Kathleen - INGENIOUS!!! You're so totally right - thanks for that. I'll fix my instructions with that option.

Abby said...

Thanks, girls, for all of the helpful input!!! And thanks, Frau, for the safety info - we wouldn't want these to harm babies.

DeGooyer Family said...

What a REALLY good idea. I need to make one of those - and quick. THANKS!

Jen E said...

I used your tutorial yesterday to make a taggie blanket for my five month old. Except I'm super lazy, so no quilting for me=). It turned out really cute and he loves it. Even my husband was impressed. Thanks for the great tutorial.

Monica said...

I just LOVED seeing this project SO much that I made one this afternoon for my baby girl who is a week younger than yours! Mine isn't as cute as yours because I didn't have all the different types of ribbon and rick rack, etc as you have on yours but my daughter is LOVING IT to death right now! Thanks for posting such a cute and great project. You got me motivated to be crafty today! ;o)

Janette Chiu said...

I love it!! It's so cute! Thank you for sharing it!!