Crafting, crafting, crafting

I was a busy bee in the last 24 hours. We had a bag of mainly hideous late '80s baby clothing that had been given to us through Freecycle (an online local community where people post offers/wants of items to recycle: find your local group at http://www.freecycle.org/). Save a few items, we were going to donate the rest of the clothing, but there was some cute teal fleece that I turned into a pair of newborn baby slippers. I have a couple more pairs in different colors cut out but not sewn; hopefully those will get posted in the next few weeks.

While still in a crafty mood, I decided to run to the fabric store to see if I could find anything that struck my fancy and was very lucky. I found this great heavy polka-dot fleece that I made into a no-sew fleece Mei Tai for ~$15. A Mei Tai is an Asian-style baby carrier meant for inward-facing front, back, and hip carries. A shirtless David is modeling it with the help of McIntire the bear. The dimensions are a little large with the no-sew (only recommended for fleece), so the final adjustments will have to wait until we have a live baby to try it with.

Tonight I also made a peanut shell baby pouch with this awesome elephant fabric. This project took ~15 minutes and less than $4; pouches retail for $40+. McIntire is lying down in a cradle carry inside of the pouch; we decided to leave the cats out of this fun, as Maxwell was still angry about the attempt to get him in the booties.

Something I learned working Crunchy Granola Baby and attending our baby-wearing workshops, is that you can never have too many types of baby carriers. In the works for the next week or so is a water Mei Tai (for the beach, pool, and shower) and a corduroy Mei Tai, both of which are sewing projects as opposed to the fleece. Mei Tais retail for $50-90 and both of these future projects together cost me under $30 for the materials. So, stay tuned for upcoming baby projects.