Heather's Handmade Life: Choosing to live, work and parent with happiness + creativity

DIY crib bedding

Posted on June 25, 2018 by Heather Laura Clarke

My friend is expecting her third baby, and we’re all so excited for her. She wanted a rustic, woodsy feel for the nursery to go with the rest of her farmhouse, and didn’t want to reuse the old brown and green bedding from her previous two nurseries.

*Is there anything better than a blank canvas?*

We ended up spending just $75 on everything we needed to recover her old crib bumpers* as well as make a brand-new crib sheet and a four-sided crib skirt.

I also made her a sweet, woodland-themed quilt for her baby shower.

If you’re an expectant parent, feel free to hand these tutorials over to a friend/family member who sews and beg them to help you make custom nursery bedding. You’ll be able to get exactly what you want for a fraction of the price of baby bedding sold in stores, and think of the possibilities …

Let’s get started!

How to recover crib bumpers:

If you can’t find bumpers to match your nursery decor, it’s easy to recover old ones with fabric you love.

What you’ll need:

4m of prewashed fabric (cotton, flannel, etc.)

Sewing instructions:

- Lay each bumper over your fabric, and cut around it leaving a border of about 2” (6cm) excess fabric.

- Do this again, because you’ll need two pieces of fabric for every bumper (a front and a back).

- Take a piece of fabric and lay it wrong side up. Fold the edges over by 1” (3cm) around all four sides, so you can see the good side of the fabric.
  Press or pin to keep it from unfolding. Repeat for all fabric pieces.
- Make a “bumper sandwich” by stacking a piece of fabric (right side down), the bumper, and another piece of fabric (right side up). Repeat for all bumpers.
- - Pin the top piece of fabric to the bottom piece of fabric, sandwiching the bumper inside until you can’t see it. Make sure to pull the bumper’s ties through the sandwich so they’re hanging out, otherwise they’ll be trapped inside for good. Repeat for all bumpers.
  - Stitch all the way around each bumper, removing the pins as you go, until the bumper is fully encased in the new fabric with the ties hanging out. You’re done!

Now who’s ready to sew a fitted crib sheet to match those bumpers?

How to sew a fitted crib sheet:

This crib sheet should fit all standard crib mattresses, and has French seams to protect it from many trips through the washer and dryer.

What you’ll need:

2m of prewashed fabric (cotton, flannel, etc.)

62” of 1/4” elastic

Sewing instructions:

- Trim your fabric down so you have a 69” x 44” rectangle (175 x 111 cm)

- Cut an 8” square (20cm) out of each corner

- Fold each cut corner over onto itself (wrong sides together, right sides out, raw edges aligned) and stitch a seam along the cut edge.

- Flip the sheet so the right sides are touching and the wrong sides are out — hiding your seam inside. Stitch another seam outside of that first seam. Now your raw edges are encased inside this neat double seam, and your crib sheet won’t fray or fall apart in the wash.

- Now that you have a nearly-finished sheet, you need to create a casing for the elastic. Fold the raw edge of the sheet (all the way around the bottom) under by 1/2” (1.5cm) and then again by 1/2” (1.5cm) and press it with a hot iron.
- Stitch as close to the second fold as possible almost all of the way around the crib sheet. Leave a small gap when you’re almost back to where you started.
- Slip a safety pin through one end of your elastic, and pull it through the casing you just made. Securely knot or stitch the ends of the elastic together (overlapping by a few inches) and stitch up the gap in the casing. You’re done!

Ready to finish it off with a DIY crib skirt?

How to sew a crib skirt:

This crib skirt has four pleated sides and is designed for when the crib is at its highest setting (for newborns). As you lower the crib mattress, tuck the excess skirt fabric underneath the crib.

What you’ll need:

An old sheet or fabric for underneath the mattress (measuring 52 1/2” x 28” or 134cm x 71cm)

3m of prewashed fabric for the panels of the crib skirt

18-20” high x 72” wide for the long sides of the crib (cut two)

18-20” high x 50” wide for the short sides of the crib (cut two)

Sewing instructions:

You should be starting with five pieces of fabric — the big “mattress piece” rectangle that won’t really be visible, two long skinnier rectangles for the long sides of the crib, and two shorter rectangles for the short sides of the crib. (If part of your crib will be up against a wall, feel free to skip the panel on that side.)

Fold the edges of ALL FIVE pieces underneath by 1/2” (1.5cm) and then again by 1/2” (1.5cm) and stitch along the second fold to hem them. This is so your crib skirt doesn’t fray and fall apart in the wash someday.
Spread the biggest rectangle (the mattress piece) out on the floor, right side up.
Take one of your long panels and lay it over the big mattress piece lengthwise (right sides together) so their ends are matched up. The long panel is TOO long for the mattress piece, so you will need to fold/pleat it a few times — any way you want — until they are the same length.
Pin the long panel to the mattress piece, right sides together, and stitch them together. Repeat for the other long panel.
Take one of your short panels and lay it over the big mattress piece along the short end (right sides together) so their ends are matched up. The short panel is also too long for the mattress piece, so you will need to fold/pleat it a few times — any way you want — until they are the same length.

- Pin the short panel to the mattress piece, right sides together, and stitch them together. Repeat for the other short panel.
- Flip all four panels down so the right sides are showing, and slip the whole thing onto the flat board below the crib mattress. You’re done!

***

(*RE: BumperGate. I’ve gotten a lot of emails about crib bumpers, since this article ran in the newspaper this past weekend. I don’t “endorse” crib bumpers and didn’t use them with my own babies, BUT my friend has used them with her two previous babies and wants to use them again. That’s her choice, and any parent’s choice. I just made them look pretty for her.)

Cake pops are surprisingly easy

Posted on June 19, 2018 by Heather Laura Clarke

1 Comment

Cake pops are surprisingly easy to make {Heather's Handmade Life}

I always admired parents who made cake pops. They seemed so fancy and I’d imagined they’d spent hours in the kitchen, perfecting each little ball of cakey goodness before dipping it and decorating it.

While I’m definitely better at baking than cooking (which isn’t saying much), I don’t like making cupcakes because I find it a pain to frost them individually. I prefer to just slap some frosting on a cake — much faster — and maybe toss on some sprinkles. I assumed cake pops were way out of my league.

But when we threw a “mobile” birthday party for our daughter back in April, I realized cake pops would be really convenient. We wouldn’t need to pack napkins or muck around with globs of frosting and we’d also avoid the crumbs that come from half-eaten cupcakes.

I was shocked to discover that cake pops were MUCH easier than I’d imagined. They were actually kind of fun to make! They were tidy to eat, really delicious and a huge hit with our party guests (and their parents).

So, if you’ve been tempted to try making cake pops but figured they were too difficult, here’s exactly how to master them on your first try …

Start with a cake — any cake. It could even be a store-bought cake. I’d thought about doing the cheater method, which involves using unglazed Timbits you preorder from Tim Hortons. But in the end, I decided it was much cheaper to just use a 99-cent chocolate cake mix from the grocery store. I baked it in a rectangular pan and let it cool.
Crumble it up with your hands. This part is fun. Normally you’re all concerned about your cake baking evenly, but this time you just tear into it with your bare hands like an animal.
Mix in a few tablespoons of frosting — any frosting. I warmed a bit of butter and made a tiny batch of chocolate buttercream, but you could use a few spoonfuls of canned frosting. You just need something to make the cake stickier.
Roll it into balls. I could have used my cookie dough scooper, but it didn’t take long to roll the cakey mush into little balls. It was like making meatballs, except I could sneak a bite here and there without an E. Coli risk.
Dip the sticks. I’d bought a package of lollipop sticks at the craft store for a couple of bucks, along with a package of candy melts (which had always been a total mystery to me). I poured about 1/4 cup of the melts into a dish and microwaved them until the melted, stirring every so often. Then I dipped one end of each lollipop stick and shoved it into a cake ball. I stuck the whole batch of balls-with-sticks in the freezer for 15 minutes to firm up.
Dip the pops. I poured the rest of the melts into a glass dish and heated them up in the microwave. When they were nice and melted, I started dipping each cake pop into the melty mixture — using a spoon to help coat them. The melts are very forgiving, so you can really slop on the goop and it hardens into a smooth coating. If you want to shake on a few sprinkles (or dunk the whole pop in a bowl of sprinkles), do it now while the coating is still wet.
Stand them up to harden. We had just bought a new BBQ the day before, so we still had tons of styrofoam lying around. I stuck each lollipop stick into the styrofoam so the cake pops could harden, and any excess coating could drip off. (The next time I made them, we didn’t have styrofoam so I stood them up in my cooling rack.)

Once the cake pops were hardened, we were able to cover them individually in plastic wrap tied with ribbon. Even the unwrapped ones travelled beautifully, all stacked up in a plastic container. They were gobbled up without any mess, since each one is only a few bites’ worth of cake, and everyone loved them.

Cake pops, you’re the new cupcake — and I’m glad.

DIY pergola picnic table

Posted on June 18, 2018 by Heather Laura Clarke

When you’re a certified indoor person and avoid the sun like a vampire, it’s a challenge to have children who love (and need) to play outside.

Even with my collection of oversized hats, sunglasses and tubes of fancy sunscreen, I’m all about sitting in the shade. I don’t like to feel hot, I’m prone to heatstroke, and working as a drugstore cosmetician in high school and university left me extremely paranoid about sunburns.

I wanted a spot where I could sit outside our house semi-comfortably to supervise the kids in their little pool. A large umbrella seemed like the obvious solution. But we live on top of a very windy hill, and umbrellas are a joke. (Well, and a weapon, since they’re likely to catapult through the air whenever the wind picks up.)

Picnic table — Here’s the picnic table we started with …

My next thought was a retractable awning attached to the house to cover our (very small) back deck. But those started at $500 and the majority were several thousand dollars (yikes), plus there was a good chance the wind would destroy it anyway.

“I just need some kind of little roof,” I whined to my handy husband on a particularly sunny day. “Just something to cover me. We could almost just …” I paused, looking at the picnic table sitting in the backyard.

“We could just put a roof on the table! …”

DIY pergola picnic table {Heather's Handmade Life} — Pin this project for later!

He agreed that would probably be the best solution, and we didn’t have anything to lose — the picnic table was already several years old, and building onto it wouldn’t harm it.

He wasn’t as pleased with the second part of my plan, though: to move the picnic table onto our back deck.

“It’ll take up almost the whole deck!” he complained. “Why can’t it stay on the grass?”

“No! I’ll use it much more if it’s right here on the deck,” I countered. “I’ll also have a better view of the kiddie pool. It’ll be like a lifeguard stand!”

Grudgingly, he agreed and helped me lug the heavy picnic table onto the deck. It didn’t leave much room for anything except the BBQ, but I knew it was still the best spot for it.

After a quick trip to the store for pressure-treated lumber, he started by attaching four tall “legs” (2x4s) to the picnic table and then connecting them across the top. It looked like a strange outdoor canopy bed.

Then he framed out a wider roof, so the benches would be fully shaded, and started covering it with planks made from 6” fence boards.

We considered where the sun tends to strike during the afternoon, and decided to take the planks partially down the “wall” on the west side and provide more shade. Of course, if it were completely up to me, I’d run the walls up and down both sides so I was basically sitting in wooden box with air holes. 😉

Once it was built, we did a quick coat of stain to match our deck (Sico’s “Autumn Brown” in exterior semi-transparent). I also re-stained the faded picnic table to match, and then we were done!

Our “pergola” picnic table is way sturdier than a store-bought patio set with an umbrella — the wind is DEFINITELY not blowing this heavy wooden structure over — and it’s a compact way to seat a lot of people in the shade.

I’m pleased to report it became an instant hang-out spot for the neighbourhood moms. We gather there on sunny afternoons to sip Diet Coke and chat while our kids run around like maniacs in the connected backyards.

I’m considering adding more fence boards — or maybe outdoor curtains — to give me a teeny bit more shade, but overall I’m very happy with my new “vampire perch.”

Don’t forget to pin this idea for later!