bibs and pillows or things I made to deal with baby drool

Clio has reached an age where she almost constantly has a big string of drool pouring out of her mouth.  It doesn't really bother me that she gets everything she wears wet but it does the lovely women at her daycare, where she goes three days a week.  

They will change her multiple times a day due to her geyser of secretions and so I figured I should send her with some bibs more often to help make their lives a bit easier.  

But have you ever seen most baby bibs that are readily available for purchase?  Not so cute most of the time and I almost across the board refuse to put Clio in anything that has things written on it like, "Diva,"Princess," or "Daddy's Little Angel."  Just not something I am into.

So I made my own.

Here they are in all their novice glory, sans the snaps.  Look pretty good right?

Look closer.
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Still, how awesome is a faux bois bib?  Even if it is kind of sloppily done. 

I was going to make a tutorial on how to make these but I realized that the one I followed here, at purl soho, was much better than I would do.  Plus they are all done in Liberty Prints which are nice to look at.  

On to my next project...

Last week I bought two yards of River Shine from Amy Butler's line Lark and decided to make some pillows for the Brown Beast (our large and very brown couch).  

I don't have a zipper foot for the machine I've been using and I wanted to make sure these cases were easily removed so they could be tossed in the washer due to the very drooly above-mentioned baby so I made an envelope cover.  

This, "10 Minute Envelope Back Pillow Tutorial" was what I used and it was nearly as easy as was claimed.  Only, "10 minutes" was a fat lie.

This is how they turned out.

But if I am being honest, this is how it really looks...

Laundry hanging around all over, a coffee mug on the dining room table
and that dark cord in the back is to my breast pump.

Overall not bad but the second one turned out better, which means it will drive me cah-ray-zee that they don't look exactly the same and I will eventually cave to my neuroses and remake the first one.

See what I mean?  The one on the left side is much baggier.
I prefer the one on the right.

Brown Beast, thou hast been made less brown.

If I can do these projects with a fair degree of success anybody with a sewing machine could do them.  Seriously.  

Learn From My Mistakes:

When making the pillow cases it is not necessary to cut out pieces quite as big as are done in the tutorial I linked to.  My pillows were 20x20 and I should have cut the piece as 20 x 44 not as 21 x 46.
It is better to make it a bit smaller than the actual dimensions of the pillow so that the form fills out the cover more fully.