Thanks so much to my dear Bilby, who sent me some goodies in our latest round of Carrier Bilby. Carrier Bilby is kind of like Secret Santa, but for carriers, and is a very cool swap indeedy.

This round I got sent a slingified wrapwhich I think is made from a Storchenwiege Vicky, dyed yellow, and then slingified. Noice.

I was also sent a crocheted bilby
and me getting this bilby is either a bit freaky, or more likely a sign that great minds think alike or that crocheter babywearers are pretty cool, since I also bought the exact same pattern from Crochetroo, and crocheted a bilby for my Bilby recipient! But the bummer is that I did not have time to take a photo before I had to wrap it and send it away, since my parcel was already running late. I have seen a photo, but since the swap was supposed to be secret, I can't ask her for permission to post her photos else the jig would be up. So imagine two bilbies in this post, mine being made from light grey alpacca yarn from the clearance table at Cassidy's. I so love the clearance table at Cassidy's!

My parcel arrived today, thanks so much Bilby :)

I have had a few dye jobs sent my way lately. Dyeing things for other people, especially dyeing expensive baby carriers for other people gives me such an adrenaline rush, after all colour is so difficult to describe, and to photograph, and usually the people that I dye for live a way away, so most communication is by email. Don't get me wrong though, I love it! I love the textiles, the patterns, the textures and most of all the colours. I love the process as well, splashing around with colour is one of my favourite things to do.

Mulberry Leo

This carrier started out as a Natural Leo Storchenweige wrap carrier.

His owner lives in Adelaide but was coming for a family holiday in Canberra, so she brought Leo with her so I could dye it while she was here. And lucky it worked out that way...

The leo was supposed to be a nice purply colour, but not to vivid, so we decided on a colour like dusky violet from Kraftkolour. I ordered the dye, and when the Leo came to Canberra (and it was so great to meet another babywearer that goes on holiday with the car boot half full of carriers!), he went for a swim.


but turned out an icky gun metal grey colour :(


His owner wasn't thrilled with his colour, and neither was I, so back he went into a magenta dyebath, and turned out a much better colour. He is now called Mulberry Leo.


I am not thrilled with Kraftkolour's mix of dusky violet. I think that I will stick to my old reliable dye supplier at dyeman.com, and stick to pure colours and play with mixing them myself.

Scarlet Vicky

Vicky was a yellow Storchenweige wrap that was living in Darwin and wrapping some gorgeous twins, and the twins were born on the same day as my Monkey 4. Vicky is yellow with yellow stripes, and the owner of the wrap really didn't do yellow so well, so she wanted Vicky to go red.

I put her in a strong bath of stock red dye from dyeman.com (see, nice and reliable!),

and she came out looking like Lego brick red, with subtle stripes. Her owner was really happy with her transformation and now calls her Scarlet.

Mulberry Osnaberg

When people see woven wraps, they seem to say "but can't you just make one out of fabric?", but up till now finding a fabric that behaves properly (ie not much horizontal or vertical stretch, but some diagonal stretch) has been a challenge. Recently the good women at TheBabyWearer.com have been going crazy for a fabric called Osnaberg. It is a roughish sort of fabric that is used for quilting and other things, but has the diagonal give that is so comfy when wrapping a baby to an adult.

Being the fabric addict I am, I decided to jump on this bandwagon and see what all the fuss is about. I sourced 3.5 metres at a local fabric store (at four times the price it is retailing in the US, what is with that???), hemmed it, gave it tapers, and gave it a burl.
Pretty comfy for a rucksack back carry tied under the bum, and doable for a reinforced rucksack carry tied at the front in the tails.

I need more practice with gradation dyeing, and wanted to know how the Osnaberg would dye, and had a whole heap of Kraftkolour dusky violet dye to use up, so I did a gradation dye with a blend of dusky violet and red. It turned out pretty nice.




and it kind of matches my bag :)

I made these gnome daddies for the annual Floriade Gnome competition.

Floriade is a flower festival that happens every year here in Canberra, and the best bit to my mind is the gnome competition. This year the theme was "Australian Icons" or something like that, but I wanted to make some babywearing gnomes (as you do). So I found some Australian flag fabric and some baby gnomes and Bob's your Uncle. Can't get more Oz than that! I have a Flickr site for more photos of the daddy gnomes.

Well, not in the traditional take your clothes off sense. I have been working on a cloth baby that is newborn sized and realistically weighted, to use when teaching people how to use a baby sling.

I started with a basic pattern from nuno doll in Japan. The instructions aren't that clear, so let me tell you what I did to sew the doll.

Stuff I used

• pattern from nuno doll
• some fleecy tracksuit kind of material from the op shop
• some soft t shirt kind of material also from the op shop
• sewing machine
• pen
• pencil
• pins
• thread
• hand needle
• doll needle
• about 4.5 kg of wheat. I got mine from a produce shop, cost about $12 for 25 kg. What I don't use in dolls I will feed to the chickens.
• a cotton ball
• a cotton ear cleaner bud thingy cut in half
  
• funnel
• chopstick
• tiny bit of doll stuffing
• craft glue
  

What I did

1. after much fiddling around with the pattern sizing and making a baby that is more premmie than newborn sized, I saved all of the patterns from nuno doll to my computer, and then pasted each one of them into a new word document. Then I set up the document to print on A4 paper. If you are reading this and you don't use A4 paper, then I suggest you lobby your government to adopt the standard that most of the world uses. Then I cut out the patterns and stuck them together with sticky tape. Took me back to my preschool teacher days!
2. I dyed the white t shirt fabric with tea to make it look like caucasian skin. Next time I do it I will leave it for longer, but this was the first time I have dyed with tea so it turned out ok considering.
   
3. after much fiddling around with cutting out the fabric and making a huge mess, I figured the tracing and cutting out. I traced out with pen two arms, two legs, one front head, one back head, then one of each head piece reversed and one body onto the unfuzzy side of the fleece fabric, leaving enough space between each shape for a 1cm seam allowance.
   
4. then with pencil traced onto folded tshirt fabric two leg skins, and one head skin.
5. made a sandwich of the arms and body with the traced fabric on the table (fuzzy side up), then one layer of tshirt fabric right side up, then tshirt fabric wrong side up, then another layer of fleecy (unfuzzy side up). Flipped it all over so I could see the traced shapes, then pinned all 4 layers together and cut them out adding seam allowance.
6. sandwiched the traced leg pieces and head fronts and backs with another layer of fleece, fuzzy sides together. Pinned the 2 layers together and cut out adding seam allowance.
7. Using size 1 stitches I sewed around the 2 arms on tracing line, ditto for legs, body, head skin and leg skins as per pattern markings.
8. put the head together as per instructions on nuno doll. or more instructions here
   
9. trimmed all seam allowances and then turned all the bits inside out.
10. filled the legs, arms,head and body with wheat using the funnel and a chopstick to poke it all through. Paid particular attention to stuff wheat hard into each individual finger, and to make each limb feel babylike. It helped to fill the part up to the top, then pinch the top closed hard and swing the limb around. This settled the wheat down harder, and made more room to fill it up with more wheat for maximum weight.
    
11. Sewed up each limb with the sewing machine, triple sewed the top of each one. I am really not interested in any of the wheat escaping. I used size 1 stitches to make sure.
12. Using a doll needle, I put a few stitches through the knee in each leg from the front to the back to make the leg likely to bend a bit at the knee. Gave a nice dimple! Ditto for the arms at the elbow.
13. Covered the legs with the leg skin, and the head with the head skin as per instuctions for legs and head. I made a nose with the ear bud, glue and cotton wool as per head instructions. I decided not to do any more face work, I kind of like the surreal face of the baby with just a nose and ears. I might embroider a few stitches to look like sleeping eyes, might not. My leg skins look a bit wrinkly, but a newborn baby is a bit wrinkly so I am not really worried. My head skin looks better than the original pattern, so I am not going to bother putting hair on my baby. I might add a groovy beannie if I feel like making the baby look wintery.
14. traced with pencil the ear pattern onto the tshirt fabric doubled over (right sides together). And then did another one. I then sewed right around the ears, cut a hole in the back of each ear, turned the ears in the right way and stuffed them with a tiny bit of doll stuffing. I sewed the hole up, then sewed the ears to the sde of the head.
    
15. Poked the neck into the head, added enough wheat to podge the body out and fill the shoulders, and then hand sewed the head to the body with tiny little stitches, making sure that the shoulders are all sewed up as well. I did 3 or 4 laps around the baby's neck with doubled thread and little stitches that went through the body and the neck, and then for added security I did some big hefty stitches right through the body and neck to the other side with doubled thread and a doll needle. Maybe this is overkill, but the head is heavy and I really really don't want this baby springing a leak or decapitating, especially if I am using this baby to demonstrate one of my slings. It wouldn't be a good look.
16. Held the arm to the shoulder and sewed it on as per the head. Repeated for other arm.
17. Attached the legs to the front of the body so that the baby will cradle nicely in a sling, and to give it a bit of a bum. See the position on the nuno baby instructions.
18. I might give the baby a belly button just for fun. Wait and see!

This baby weighs a little under 4kg, roughly the same as my daughter's birthweight.

When I make another baby (I am going to need quite a few for our upcoming babywearing classes, stay posted!), I will make the head slightly bigger and the body slightly smaller.