My friend L and her hubby T are having a baby in just a few weeks! Last month, we had a baby shower to celebrate their growing family - I should mention that the Mom-to-be is a HUGE Harry Potter fan (Seriosuly, in a game of HP trivia she is truly a wizard of knowledge...she can recall the tiniest little detail that no mere muggle could ever remember! It’s amazing!)....so our lovely shower hosts went all out to include thoughtful little touches of the HP throughout their home:
Soooooo cute, right? It was a truly magical event! I wanted to jump in on the HP fun as well so decided to try my hand at creating a Baby Crinkle Ribbon Toy....Potterized!
I had never made one of these before so took to the internets to gather some intel from those who had (no need to reinvent the wheel here). There were many tutorials to choose from, so I used a few as reference to come up with a plan that would work for me.
A glance at the supplies:
The fabric (cut roughly in 8X8in squares....because I purchased the cute HP patterned swatch from ETSY and that’s how big it was 😉):
The ‘Crinkle Paper’ (Options: Baby wipes wrapper or a silver cracker packaging. I ended up going with the cracker packaging because it was a little more Crinkly):
The Ribbon (The plan: Ribbon tags to represent the colors of 1 Hogwarts House on each side of the square):
The fancy HP glasses fabric would stand alone on one side, but I wanted to add a little something to the grey fabric on the other side. Visions of the Deathly Hallows danced in my head in a dream a few nights before so I went with it. I found some iron-on fabric at the Hob Lob and cut out the pieces of the Hallows to iron on before starting the ribbons. I made a paper template to cut thru using a rotary cutter, ironed on and then also sewed into place (for durability as a baby plays with it):
Now onto the Ribbons! This was the part I was feeling a bit of stress about- one Blog just said to hold them in place and layer the fabric square and crinkle paper on top. That seemed wrought with possible ribbon holding failure so I listened to another one that said to sew them into place first- it was a good idea.
The ribbons should be placed with the loops facing in towards the middle so they are right-side-out after all the pieces are sewn together....it’s confusing to visualize in your head, but just trust those crafters who have gone before you on this one. I placed them, pinned them and then sewed them into place:
And did the same with the other 3 sides!
Now we layer all 3 pieces together! Place the first piece of fabric with the pattern facing you:
Then the other square piece of fabric with the pattern facing down:
Then the crinkle paper and pin it all in place:
Carefully sew the 3 pieces together - leaving an opening on the middle of one side so you can invert the whole project right-side-out at the end. I also trimmed off a little of the excess fabric on the edges after it was sewn so it wouldn’t be too bulky when turned out:
Once turned out (which is a bit of a challenge when you don’t make the opening quite wide enough....oops! Note to self for next time!), sew the little opening shut and you are all set!
I also sewed an extra zigzag stitch around the whole square at the end to look fancy and to also really make sure those ribbons were held in place....baby safety first!
Projecto Completidio!! I don’t know....um, that was my fake Harry Potter spell way of saying that this little sewing project was a success? That’s how cool I am.
