A Plethora of Bibs

The baby's room, which has been turned into my temporary sewing room, has exploded with bibs.  

Our little one is still sleeping in her crib in our bedroom, taking up the space where my sewing table used to be.  I keep saying that I will move her into her own room "next week".  Next week always seems to come and go, and as a result, my sewing table has been set up where her crib should be.  In all seriousness, I will move her within the next month- just as soon as I finish up a few more projects and complete her room.

The bib sewing arose out of necessity.  And cheapness on my part.  Nearing the six month point, the baby is drooling everywhere.  She is constantly soaked.  For some reason we have almost no hand me down bibs from our older daughter, and I was getting pretty tired of changing the baby's outfit five times a day.  While shopping a few weeks ago, I almost bought a huge pack of bibs.  Holding them in my hand, I thought, "I can make these.  For free."  I knew there was tons of cotton, flannel and nylon ripstop in my fabric stash.  I knew I had both velcro and metal snaps.  I also knew I had thread in pretty much every colour under the rainbow.  Free bibs it was.

The hard part was getting around to it.  I dug out a pattern I had from when our older daughter was a baby and cut out many, many bibs in both cotton and flannel.  Then the cut fabric sat on the coffee table for over a week.  Naptime is a precious time, and the bibs didn't make the cut for a while.

I decided not to use the ripstop as a semi-waterproof backing since the stuff I had in my stash was all in masculine colours.  These were to be girly bibs.  Instead, I used three layers to make each bib.  If I used cotton to make the bib, I made sure to include a layer of thicker flannel between the layers to make the bib more absorbent.  The flannel bibs are extra absorbent with three layers of flannel.  Good for those extra goobery days.

I was going to write a tutorial on making bibs.  Then I thought, there are so many out there and I didn't want to be too redundant.  Instead I decided to link to my favourite patterns and tutorial. 

• A pattern for a small sized bib from Chickpea Sewing Studio  

• My favourite pattern from Juicy Bits

• A tutorial from Juicy Bits - it begins about halfway down the page

Once you get used to making these, you can add designs to the front with applique, ribbons, ric rac, etc.  For now, I just made a pile of plain bibs to save me from piles of baby laundry.  They were quick and easy and just the right price.

Shared on:

Lovely Crafty Home