Homemade Travel Crib Mattress Pad

My husband and I decided to get a baby travel crib to use as a baby crib for Lukas’s first few months. Our apartment is not very large, and a travel crib has a lot of advantages: Firstly, it doesn’t take up much space. Secondly, you can push it around from room to room. Thirdly, it is much cheaper than a brand new bassinet/crib. And, finally, it’s high enough that our 19 month old can’t reach well into it. The one disadvantage? The mattress was very hard and sunk in a bit in the middle.

The solution ended up being a combination of flattening out the bed by adding a piece of cardboard and a blanket under the mattress and adding a mattress cover. The problem was only that they don’t make mattress covers for baby travel cribs. Therefore, I decided to sew one up myself.

I decided to use a similar concept to the baby pillows that I made for Jonas. They have just enough fluff to be comfortable, but are flat enough to be safe. I also added some fold over corners to the cover so that it would stay on the mattress, another safety guard.

I think the resulting cover is so cute, it is really a shame that you have to put a sheet over it. Maybe, when he’s a bit older, I’ll just leave it in the bottom of the playpen.

Here’s the quick and easy how to:

1. Measure your playpen/travel bed so that you know how big to make your mattress cover. Then cut out 2 pieces of material, plus 2 pieces of thin polyester backing adding a half inch to each side.

2. Now cut out 4 square pieces of material, about 8 x 8 inches. Fold material in half with the nice side on the outside.

3. Lay down the pieces as follows: First one piece of material with the good side facing up. Now add the triangles to each corner, so that the two open ends of the triangle are facing the corner. Then, add your next piece of material with the good side facing down. Finally, lay the polyester backing down on top. If you have difficulties sewing over polyester backing, add a layer of newspaper to this, which you can tear off later. Add stick pins around the entire square to hold.

4. Leaving about a half inch all the way around, sew around the rectangle until you are about 4-6 inches from where you started. Now turn the entire piece inside out, so that the right side of the material is now on the outside, and the polyester backing on the inside. You will see that the triangles can be folded to either side.

5. Finally, sew up the remaining 4-6 inches by hand and you are finished.

When I added this mattress pad to our crib, my baby finally slept “like a baby.” If you need a temporary crib or travel a lot, consider making your own mattress pad.

Movable Door Height Marker

When I was a little girl, the door frame to my bedroom was covered in marks depicting not only my height at various ages, but also the height of my friends and even my stuffed animals. Even after I stopped growing, I loved looking at it and seeing what years I really shot up and who I was friends with at different times. There was so much history on such a short little space.

Now that Jonas is getting older, I wanted to have a place where I could also mark his height. Unfortunately, I've moved so many times in the last few years that I really doubt that it makes sense to use a door frame. So I decided to make a door height marker that I could take with me from one place to the next.

This movable door height marker is made out of material and is a bit different than the one on my bedroom door. I love the visual of seeing how much one grows during each year, because it varies so greatly. Therefore, I decided to cut and sew a piece of material for the first year and then to add pieces of material which extend from this piece for every year after that.

At the moment, I only have two pieces of material for Jonas, since he is only 18 months old. The first is 21.3 inches long, his birth height, and the second is 9.7 inches, since he was 31 inches at one year (21.3 + 9.7 = 31). On his second birthday, I will add a third piece of material to his marker.

This door height marker can be hung in a door frame, or hung on the wall until the child is a bit older. If you have more than one child, you could hang them next to each other to compare heights. Maybe someday I will sew this one into a quilt and give it to my child when they go off to college, have their own child, etc...

Here is the how to:

1. Cut a piece of material which is four and a half inches wide and so long as your child was at birth plus at least a half an inch. Turn the insides of the material together and sew along the edges with about a quarter inch remaining, leaving the top open. Now turn it back right side in, fold in the top edges a quarter inch and leaving the top open, sew around these edges or iron them down with heat bonding tape. Iron flat.

2. Iron Wonderunder to a contrasting fabric and then cut out the name of your child and how tall they were at birth. Iron this onto your material. Your first piece is finished!

3. For every year your child is old, add another piece of contrasting material and the age of the child. Eventually, your door height marker will be very colorful and a great way to remember how small your child once was.

Baby's First Pillows

At 15 months, I decided that it was time for my son to get his first pillows.

He already had a blankie that he would keep wrapped around him no matter where he traveled in his bed. He loves his blankie and other than his comfort rag, it was the only thing allowed in his bed at night. Nevertheless, I had to admit, he was getting older and maybe it was time to pimp his bed a little.

I wanted to get him some pillows that fit his personality, but that weren’t too high or fluffy to make them unsafe. Most standard kid pillows are still too big for a child under one. Therefore, I decided to make them myself. The first night I gave Jonas his new pillows, he was so thrilled. I checked on him a few times and no matter where he was in his bed, his head was either on the pillow, or tucked under his arm. Often when he wakes up, he’ll look at his pillow and start babbling about all of the different cars and trucks on it. Now, he can’t go to bed without them anymore!

Since Jonas loves anything with wheels, I used some material I had which was covered in different vehicles, some racecar material, and some neutral material for the back of the pillows. The easiest way to make a pillow is to sew a square or rectangle and then stuff it with polyester backing. Nevertheless, polyester backing can start to clump when it is washed too often. Therefore, I decided to use polyester backing strips (You can buy it in a roll) which I could sew into the sides of the pillow, thus preventing clumping.

Here’s the how to:

1. Cut out two squares or rectangles of material into the size you would like plus a quarter to a half inch on each side. My pillows are 12 x 18 inches. Then cut out polyester backing strips the same size as your pillow. I used 4 layers of backing. Finally, cut out a piece of newspaper also the same size.

2. Layer the items as follows: First lay your two material pieces with the good sides of the material facing each other. Then, add the polyester backing over the material. Finally, lay the newspaper on top. It is much easier to sew over newspaper than polyester backing, which will catch on everything and snag. Now use stick pins all the way around to hold it all together.

3. Finally, sew around your pillow leaving about 6 inches on one side. Turn your pillow right-side-in. Using a needle and thread, sew the 6 inch opening shut. Your pillow is finished! Super easy.

Baby's First Drawing Greeting Card

When you have a baby, you have a lot of firsts. Most of these, you never get the opportunity to film, photograph, or document. Your child’s first drawings, however, are easily saved and also make great gifts.

The first time I gave Jonas some crayons and paper, he colored 4 or 5 sheets with big wavy lines. Sometimes, he even held a crayon in each hand and drew in stereo. Of course, I had to watch him the whole time so that he didn’t eat the crayons (they must taste good), but I must admit, most of the time he was more concerned with drawing than eating. He sure had a lot of fun.

I decided to make greeting cards out of most the drawings so that I could share this first with my family and friends who don’t live close by. Since I also had a bunch of little photos from our Sears portraits that we had made for Jonas’s first birthday, I decided to add them as well. Here’s the how to:

1. Cut out construction paper cards by folding the construction paper in half and cutting or tearing along the line. Then fold this piece again to make a card. To cut out the window, I folded one of the sides again in the middle and then cut out the square on the fold.

2. Cut your child’s drawings (mine were normal typing paper size) into four pieces. Tape or glue this drawing inside your window. If you would like a little more contrast, draw a black line around the frame before you add the drawing.

3. Glue on the child’s picture to the side of the drawing and write the child’s name and when the picture was made.

4. Finally, write a greeting inside the card. I wrote a greeting from my son stating how he had drawn his first picture. I also let Jonas color the envelopes. Then send your cards to your friends and family. Maybe your artwork will land on a refrigerator, or maybe, just maybe, your child will become famous and your friends and family will have a piece of your child’s very first artwork.

Red Rocking Chair

I’ve always wanted a rocking chair, especially the old fashion kind that people used to sit on while on their porches like in those movies about the deep South. When I started nursing, I decided it was high time to get one, since I was probably going to spend a lot of time rocking a baby and I wanted to be comfortable.

Since we didn’t have a lot of money to go out and buy a new rocking chair (I hadn’t realized that they could get so expensive), we decided to look around at local thrift shops. To our surprise on half price day at the Salvation Army, we saw an old wooden rocking chair on sale for only 20 dollars. The finish had worked its way off most areas and it was wobbly in places, but with a little work it would do.

The how to, or how I got it too look like what it does today:

1. After buying sandpaper, brushes and some paint, I got started sanding down the old finish. It took me a bit longer than I had figured sanding around all of those round edges, but not as long as it would have taken if I had completely sanded off the varnish.

2. Then I washed off the dust left from sanding, let it dry completely and got ready to paint. The paint I bought was a bit translucent, which meant that I had to paint the whole chair about 3 to 4 times. In the end, I liked the look of the wood through the paint. Nevertheless, if you want to save time, make sure you buy paint as opaque as possible.

3. Finally, I added a seat cushion I bought at IKEA. Someday, I’ll sew a new one and post it. For the time being, I like the cushion I got and the reds match great.

I put Jonas in the rocking chair to take a picture, but it was hard to get him to sit still enough to take it. I wouldn’t advise putting a nine-month-old baby in a rocking chair without a lot of supervision. However, as an adult, they are the best and if you are nursing, you have to have one. I’ve put myself to sleep nursing in mine a few times.

Elephant Mobile

Elephant Mobile

This elephant mobile is one of the first baby crafts that I made. Matthias and I were about to move and I was going through all of my art stuff trying to figure out what I could throw away. Since I had still had a lot of leftover material from other projects, I decided to sew up these little elephants. I figured it would be a one afternoon project, but in the end, I did two and made about 8 little guys. They were really super easy.

Originally, I thought I would use all of the elephants for one mobile, but I only needed four. I took a cheap musical mobile, cut off the hanging animals, and hung up my elephants in their place. Very cute and Jonas loved the music. I attached an old plastic pearl chain at both ends to two more elephants and then hung them over the baby stroller so that Jonas had something to look at. The last two elephants ended up just hanging in his room on the wall.

This is really a great starter project, since you can’t mess it up.

Here’s the how to:

Take an index card and draw an elephant on it. Take another card and draw the ear. Cut out the ear and lay it on the elephant. Now draw a line where the ear should go on the elephant and then cut a slit through the index card. Now cut out the elephant. Your patterns are ready.

I used leftover material and some blue fleece. I used the fleece as the back of every elephant and for all of the ears. This way all of the elephants had something in common. Lay the elephant pattern on a piece of material and draw around it. When you cut out the elephant make sure to leave about a quarter inch. Make sure to also draw a line where the ear should go through the slit. Then cut out the elephant ears out of the fleece.

Now sew the ears on each of the elephant patterns making sure you sew it on the front of the material. I only sew the part where the ear attaches to the elephant so the ear can flop. Then put one fleece elephant and one material elephant together with the ears side touching. Sew all the way around leaving about one inch unsewn on the butt of the elephant. Then turn it all inside out. You might need to use a tweezers to pull the legs through.

Stuff the elephant with polyester filling. I use a pencil to stuff the fillng down into the legs and trunk. Then sew up the butt of the elephant. Add a tail with some yarn or embroidery thread and sew an X for an eye. Finished!