While the rest of us brought in a new decade with popped corks and fists full of confetti, our little Girlie celebrated her exact half-year-ness, to be rung in with a scheduled doctor's visit and introduction to solid food. Well, solider, at any rate. Which means that new bibs are in order.
The Boy, also, of course, once embarked on the whole solid food thing, and had his own set of bibs, made of the cheapest of terry cloths, purchased by the gross, and declaring such pithy gems as "Grandma loves me." But those are gone, having been sent off to Goodwill or left to the moths in some forgotten corner of the attic. So, like I said, new bibs are in order. Which is just as well, because we have some old flannel receiving blankets taking up precious dresser space in the kids' room. These dozen or so blankets have been the latest go-to in my constant house-scrounging for fabrics to re-imagine into something new and useful. It's not that I'm cheap. God help me, I'm so not that. And I do love a good trip to the fabric store to test the hand of printed cottons in modern hues. And sometimes I do bring some home to bolster an already rich supply of fabric to have on-hand. But I like the idea that these soft little blankets that once snuggled our baby boy, all asquirm with limbs that refused any ordinary swaddle, can find a home in the life of his baby sister, who even now at six months, thinks her brother is the bees knees.
Those blankets have already had their ranks thinned in the name of a quilt for The Girlie whose progress has been slow, advancing only on those nights when (1) I want to curl up in my favorite chair and watch the ol' tellie, and (2) I don't have a crossword puzzle stumping me (because I like to work on crosswords while watching tv, which I know, seems a tad counter-productive, but it's what I do).
But now I've found a second perfect project for the flannels. I've spent a busy little week making and tweaking these bibs, from the pattern in Amy Karol's book. Now, each of those receiving blankets yielded 6 bib fronts. And the inexpensive Ikea dishtowels each yielded 4 backs. So, doing the math, I should have ended up with 12 bibs, right? A lofty enough number, to be sure, but I decided to dip back into my stash for some fabric more befitting a Girlie. So sixteen cozy little bibs now sit at the ready, eager to de-splatter the face of my now not-so-little baby.
My favorite part of these bibs? The snaps. If, instead of going with a pattern, I'd decided to just wing it and fashion up a bib-shaped thing, I probably would have gone with Velcro hook and loop closures. These metal snaps are a nice and substantial little touch. And that snappy sound is rather satisfying. And any sewing project that requires a hammer to finish is tops in my book. Here's the first lesson of the new decade. If you're trying to take advantage of the kids' naptime to get in some solid bib-making, perhaps jaw-rattling hammering that reverberates through the floorboards to where the kids are sleeping in the back of the house is not the best idea. You live and you learn.
To more complicate the endeavor, I decided to attach a pocket to the back of a few of the bibs, designed to tuck the goopy aftermath away and into the diaper bag at meals out. Sure, I could just toss a bunch of the bibs in a plastic baggie, as I did for The Boy three years ago. But what's the fun in plastic baggies? There is no fun, no fun at all, I say. I've been trying, trying, trying to purge the things from our storage repertoire because, yes, they are environmental evil. Of course they are. But also because ridding my cabinets of them means I get to craft up a new solution. But more on that later. Right now, I've got a baby to feed.
