New Baby Care Package

Remember that time I told you I was going to be a step-aunt?! Well, baby Graham arrived on Good Friday and he is absolute perfection.

Since we can’t get to Tennessee right now (and want to give my stepbrother and his beautiful wife time to adjust to being a family of 3 without having to worry about entertaining us), I decided to make a little “care package” for them.

For baby Graham

I have been secretly pinning baby accessory tutorials for months now so I decided to finally get started on one of those.

First up: Cloth Baby Shoes!

When the cloth shoe idea for baby Graham came to me, I knew exactly what material I wanted to use for the exterior…

Not only did I already know that baby Graham was going to be the kind of baby that loves plaid (his Dad recently taught ME what madras is), but the sentimental mush in me wanted to include some fabric from his loving grandparents (who are by the way, OVER THE MOON!).

The Pattern

I got the idea from Pinterest (via Beck and Lundy’s blog) and downloaded the pattern from Stardust Shoes {original link appears to be broken. Download the baby booties pattern here}. Like I have been doing for all of my new patterns, I traced the pieces onto freezer paper for pin-free pattern cutting (read about this genius idea from my friend Addie K here) which made cutting out those tiny little pieces a breeze.

The Material

Lately I have been on a mission to use up the material I have on hand (after realizing I’m quickly running out of fabric storage space…). I am proud to say that I did not have to buy any new material for these! Since the pattern pieces are so small, these make for a great scrap buster project. I used some gray “vegan leather” (aka soft vinyl or pleather or whatever you’d like to call it!) I had on hand (it makes for a great stable fabric for the bottom of bags or embellishment for clutches). I am running low on light-weight fusible interfacing so I had to use fusible fleece. Since that is substantially thicker than what the pattern called for, I only fused it to the lining pieces (I would’ve fused to the exterior fabric, but I was using a super soft knit for the interior and wanted to keep it from slipping too much). I even had some of the elastic on hand – win!

So I threw on a cute tag that came with my Mollie Makes magazine (picked that gem up in England – love it) and the baby portion of the care package was complete!

For the new Mom

I wanted to get baby Graham’s mom something to remind her that we’re thinking about her too! I can’t imagine cooking a human for 9 months followed by all the horrors of labor so I wanted to send her something that would make her feel fancy (because from all the blogs I follow/Facebook posts I read, being a new mom sounds like it may have a few less-than-glamorous moments 😉 ).

I went with my own experience of what makes me feel fancy: pink nail polish. I picked up Essie’s Sugar Daddy shade (the selection at Publix was kind of limited so please excuse the name of the polish!) and wrapped it up all fancy.

For the new Dad

I struggled with what to get my stepbrother to make him feel fancy so instead I decided to go with a Starbuck’s gift card. He’s already headed back to work so I think coffee will serve him well as he makes the transition as a new Dad 😉

And so I leave you with proof that my new nephew is absolutely adorable…

Remember that sweater we got for him while we were in England?! (See it here!) Well, here he is sporting it like the dapper little dude he is.