Less than a year ago, when my youngest was only three months old, Amanda over at SouleMama posted about this wonderful birthday book she made her youngest in celebration of her first birthday. I promptly saved this idea away in the back of my mind with a promise to myself that I would make such a book for my daughter's first birthday.
I just LOVE the idea of making a personalized baby book ... one where the child gets to see her pet cat when learning the word cat or her daddy when learning the word daddy. And I love even more that it is a fabric book that can be sucked on and chewed (this one is a veteran book-chewer!).
Here is my selection of fabrics:
As is normally the case, I waited until the VERY last minute to make this. Less than a week away, I finalized my fabric choices. The photographing, photo selection, printing, and sewing was all left to stolen moments during the final days before the celebration. The snowpacolypse gave me an excuse to ignore my other responsibilities and get this finished on time, though admittedly, I was putting the finishing touches on it the morning of her birthday!
I had so much fun working on this project, and it came together quite easily. I used a baby board book we already have (and like the size of) for general dimensions. I decided to only use batting on the cover as I felt it would have made the entire project too thick to close properly, and I'm happy I did that.
Lessons learned from this project:
- It would be so much easier to cut everything out evenly if I had a cutting mat and rotary cutter. I've never used one of these before, but lifting the fabric with the scissors (especially if it isn't pinned down to the pattern or whatever else I'm cutting) doesn't leave a straight edge.
- When working with Stitch Witchery:
- Don't use your ironing board as a cutting board
- If you do, make sure to clean up any tiny scraps of witchery before you iron anything, and
- Make sure your large piece of stitch witchery isn't anywhere close to the iron
- The print-on fabric was really nice, but frayed at the edges. The iron-on transferred (ironed on to white fabric) where perfect for the wording. I can't decide which I like for the photos, but do not, under any circumstances, iron over the iron-on pictures unless you have them covered first with parchment paper!!!
- A jeans needles in your machine works great for stitching all the pages of the book together.
- Look closely at the notions aisle AFTER you have found your fabrics. I would have used more rickrack and ribbon around some of the interior photos if I had more on hand that matched my fabrics!
