Made It: Toy For A Baby Boy

Hello! A neighbor family just welcomed a baby boy into the world, and I wanted to make a gift for the little guy. I looked over various baby-gift patterns I've collected over the years. Almost had settled on sewing a tiny pair of slippers, but came to my senses. Under my hands, the slippers could have ended up misshapen and too small to boot. 

So instead, I chose this:

Simplicity 5767, a pattern set for simple stuffed toys. For me, that's more like it! The pattern dates from 1964, but was unused when I found it in a thrift store. 

The elephant toy caught my eye:

I don't know what the little thing is that's dangling from the elephant's trunk, but it's not part of the pattern. 

Naturally, for a baby boy I used blue gingham instead of pink, and here's how it turned out:

I think I did pretty well, considering how brief the directions were. Every step for making all eight toys - including embroidery instructions for each - had been condensed onto the back of the pattern envelope. Still, it wasn't hard to figure out. You know this had to be easy when I looked up info on the pattern online and read a woman's memory of making these when she was in Girl Scouts. The toys were then distributed to children staying in a local hospital. What a nice idea! 

I also thought it was nice idea to put a jingle bell inside the elephant as I was stuffing him so that it would make a little sound when the baby shook it.

Sewing for babies means that certain precautions are necessary. The embroidery was done carefully so that the baby wouldn't pull out the floss and try to swallow it. And I tied double knots in the bow so that the ribbon couldn't come off. 

I made a card to go along with the gift. I'm more experienced in this craft, so I think my creation turned out nicely:

Materials used:

• white card stock
• scrapbook paper piece
• blue art paper piece
• off-white art paper piece
• baby boy illustration cut from 1940's craft magazine
• "A very young child is a baby." and "baby" cut from 1960's children's dictionary
• "it's a boy" stamped in black ink

A close-up of the boy's face:

 
How sweet is that? Older craft magazines are full of great illustrations such as this. These drawings were meant to entice readers to send away for patterns, since the fictitious people were modeling the finished results.

Like with the baby slipper pattern, there's no telling how my effort at sewing a onesie would have turned out - but at least my baby gift and card turned out fine!