A few months before Ronin was born, I got bit with the crafty bug. You probably saw the baby quilt I made but it didn’t end there. Using bits of left-over quilt fabric in addition to other pieces from various projects I have made over the years, I made some baby booties, a little hat, and then Joshua and I stenciled a slew of onesies.
I didn’t post them right away because the majority of them were gifts for friends who were expecting babies. And then I continued not to post them because I’m a lamer.
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First off, Baby Booties! Unable to resist such cuteness, I searched out simple patterns online and found some good ones. Of course, the ones I wanted to make I couldn’t find a pattern for so I downloaded a similar pattern and adapted it.
These are made from an old cashmere sweater of Joshua’s that met with foul play (a washing machine incident that totally wasn’t my fault) and got used to make a whole bunch of different things. I had some scraps left still and made this little teeny hat and booties to match (the booties are made from the pattern above, mostly). I was going to make them as gifts but they turned out so wonky that I had to keep them for myself. And then the wonkiness grew on me and I embroidered (if you can call it that) a twee heart on the sole to make it that much more knock-you-down adorable. Ronin wore the hat (the booties were way big) home from the hospital.
Of course, I was still short a bunch of gifts for friends. Onward!
The following are adapted from the pattern linked above:
These are made from scraps of wool, silk, and cotton, with flannel lining on the inside.
Last but not least: the onesies!
“Lefnut” was for our friend Kurt, named after his skateboard in college. “Riot” is a graffiti we saw in Barcelona in 2003.
Both the dummy (pacifier) and the chair are from graffitis we liked in Barcelona. The dummy was one of the most prolific graffiti tags in the city; this guy painted these things everywhere, elaborate ones with multiple colors, plain ones just black and white, and we saw them in other towns: Valencia, Sitges, Tarragona, etc. The chair was a simple stencil that we found in a few places around town; it was one of my favorites for some reason.
This is just a design I made up. I had to go and make it all complicated with three different overlaid stencils (the branches, the flowers, and the flower centers), which of course required multiple paint applications (with dry time between). Whew. Turned out pretty awesome I think though, as modeled by Celine here. I had to go out and buy pink paint for this (alas, no other color would do for the cherry blossoms), which undermined my War on Pink for the most part. I further rebelled in irony by also painting the Dummy above pink.