Homemade Friday: Baby Doll Mei Tai for Adele

I'm not entirely sure what possessed me.  I mean, I have a million things to do before Adele's 3rd birthday party this Saturday, not the least of which is get over the Mom Guilt that I'm not giving her the detail-oriented, homemade paper mache pinata birthday party that her brother had.  But I do try to alleviate some of this guilt by telling myself that I didn't really go to much real trouble for the party until Sebastian turned 4.  So next year.

For Adele's birthday we bought her a baby doll with accessories like a diaper bag, bottle, baby stroller, and I found a little vintage wooden doll bed online that I love.

So are you sensing a theme?  She wasn't much for dolls when she was littler, but I think that had more to do with her brother not playing with dolls than anything else.  She just wants whatever he has, you know?  But in the last few months she's been playing pretty hard with the one Cabbage Patch doll she has.  She tucks it in at night and gives it blankie and a paci.  She sings to it.  She puts it on the potty and wipes it's behind.  So I've been wanting an excuse to buy her a new doll and everything that goes with it.

I may have gone a bit overboard.

(Here she is with a mouth full of candy, wild hair, and in pajamas at 4 in the afternoon.  Winning at parenthood, right?)

For some reason yesterday I decided that she had to have a carrier to hold her baby with her at all times.  Like she had to.  Like I had no choice but to make one for her right away.

I'm not one to ignore my sewing feelings, so I got to work.

I searched online, trying to find a pattern or tutorial for what I wanted, but I couldn't.  So, as usual, I just decided to make it up myself.

It's an easy pattern, a square with straps attached to it.  The material is some that I filched from my Mom years ago.  I figured if I was going to try to make my daughter into a hippie baby-doll wearer I should follow through and use hippie fabric.  Do you recognize the butterfly fabric?  Maybe from here?  Or here?  The brown fabric is corduroy.

There are things I would change about it if I did it over - like I would probably try to make it slip on over her head instead of having to be tied.  And I would make the bottom thinner than the top so the baby would fit in better.  And maybe make the edges curvier.

But for a quick, one-day project, it's not too bad. 

Of course, it would be much better if my daughter actually wanted to wear it.  But I suspect that has more to do with her knowing that I want her to wear it rather than a statement on how she feels about the carrier itself.

I've been thinking about making a few for my Etsy shop, so look for that at some point in the next year or so!

And one of my favorite things about the carrier - it's reversible: