Up-cycled Baby Bibs or Another Reason I Need a Sewing Machine

I am learning to sew, and at the moment I am terrible at it. I have a wonderful friend who has come over with her sewing machine to show me the basics and I have the general concept but the detailed stuff still throws me. This is the same friend that did most of the work on E's awesome superhero rag quilt (see that project here), and she was kind enough to come over for another lesson in our attempt to make baby bibs from Goodwill t-shirts and terry cloth. We had both pinned a few different blog posts about making baby bibs, and ended up using the template from http://sewshesews.wordpress.com/2010/04/08/quilted-patchwork-bib-pattern-and-tutorial/. I had two superhero t-shirts I picked up from Goodwill and an old hooded towel of K's. The hooded towel worked great because it was fairly thin terry cloth which was much easier to sew.

 The beginning was fairly easy, make a good fold and have good fabric scissors or a fabric rollie blade (not sure if that is the official name for it). We did the same thing on the t-shirt, but that was much more difficult as we had to find a good place to position the template to maximize superhero coverage. Unfortunately, Captain America didn't make the cut on the first bib and only Thor's arm made it into the second bib.

 We the proceeded to put both pieces face to face and "pinned the hell out of it". Working with t-shirt material can be a pain because once it's cut it wants to curl and keeping in flat can be a chore. Then you start sewing about 1/4 inch from the edge. Leave a section un-stitched so you can pull it inside out and then top stitch. I bought fasteners from Walmart for around 3 bucks and they came in a pack of ten. Hammer those bad boys in and BAM you have a up-cycled baby bib. You can use Velcro but in my experience the bibs with Velcro get pulled off much easier by feisty baby hands than the ones with snaps.

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Our adorable model showing off his new bib

 As you can see we had to sacrifice Thor but Captain America does make an appearance in this one. I attempted to sew this one and failed miserably around the curves at the top of the bib. I can sew a straight line pretty well and could probably rock out some pillows, but these were hard. My friend fixed my mistakes and all and all it came out really well.

The third one my friend made out of some fabric she had and the back of the grey t-shirt we used for the first bib. She used a zig-zag stitch and minky fabric (both way out of my realm of abilities) and it turned out super cute too. This is a great project and super eco-friendly. My two bibs around 2.50 a piece for material (mind you I used a towel I already owned). It did take around 4 hours to finish them all but it was the first time we had done them and we were keeping an eye on both kiddos. Once I get a better handle on sewing curves (and maybe my own sewing machine) I will definitely make more of these. I might also start making square bibs instead, we'll have to see.