Baby Shower Gifts

A friend is having a baby in the next month and so we're having a baby shower next week for her.  Surprisingly I've never been to a baby shower before and I found it much harder to chose a gift for a baby that hasn't arrived yet and we don't know if it is a girl or boy.  Usually I buy a gift after the event so I know whether to go to the pink section or the blue!  I wanted to make something for this baby so after getting inspiration from the blogosphere (as ever) this is what I made.

A taggie blanket and ball

I had this great Maisy Mouse fabric and the beige fleece is a baby blanket both my kids used so I thought it was fairly gender-neutral.  I thought it would be nice for the blanket to comfort another child.  The ball and blanket was made using this tutorial from New Conceptions.  The blanket was very easy but the ball was a little trickier, the fleece slipped a bit as I was sewing so the points don't quite meet as neatly as I would like but it looks good.  I also tried to make some matching shoes but as the fleece was slipping I've ended up with one shoe bigger than the other!  There was no way I was going to give them to  my friend so now the girls have some shoes for the dolls!  I think if you used fabric for both layers you would have no problem and they would be absolutely adorable! 

After the disaster of the shoes I wanted to make something else so I settle on a baby busy book. 

More fleece.......

Continuing the Maisy theme......

Busy/Quiet books seem to be quite popular across crafty blogs (I think a lot of kids have them for church and there seems to be a correlation between church going and crafty bogging esp in the US!)  Most of them were for older kids so I just blagged it with mine, must admit there was a bit of trial and error and some of it was determined by the size and colour felt I had.  When I know the baby's name I'll offer to put the name on the back of the book.  In my searching I found this great blog to make a quiet book for an older child, there were other tutorials out there but this one was comprehensive. 

The pink corduroy came from a old pair of trousers that both Miss M and Miss C have worn but how have an unrepairable hole in them!  The orange triangle is left over from the Superhero cape I made for this baby's big brother.  I made that ages ago but will give it to him at the Baby Shower.  I quite like the fact that I managed to recycle some fabric in this project to make it a bit more meaningful.  I hope the mum likes them, just in case I bought some babygrows and bibs in the sales!