Playing with baby carriers with my siblings.

Me, wearing Zoey age 4.

Tandem wearing with zoey and Patrick age 1.

Tucker, age 6 wearing Emmeline 6 months.

Aerial fabrics class.

This is OT, but here are some pictures from my first aerial basics class. This stuff is hard! I don't feel so bad when the super skinny girls struggle too lol!

My cheap curbside cabinet redo'

This looks so good in my tiny bathroom now!

Before/after laundry room

Yay for a new coat of paint!

Yuck, brown and yellow.

After, so much better

My other DIY Mei Tai

And here it is, in all its Girly wonderfulness.

Gardening? Me?

I planted this herb and I forgot which was which...but I'm actually GROWING something which is phenomenal for me...(:

My DIY Mei Tai Baby Carrier

This is  not that hard of a project. Just so you know, it seemed a lot more daunting the first time I did it, and it took a practice model to get the technique down, so I recommend practicing on cheap(er) material the first time you do this. This pattern has not been tested, nor am I promoting my pattern, I'm simply showing how I assembled this Mei Tai for personal use.

Picking your fabric: You want something heavy. I've heard denim, cotton duck, heavy canvas. I've seen tutorials with corduroy but I have also heard it can rip pretty easily. I made this Mei Tai out of cotton duck. I bought 84 inches plus a yard, so I have plenty of scrap too! I can make a bag or something...
Anyway, so first I cut all my pieces. I cut my inner and outer panels, and an inner layer of denim that I had from my previous mei tai project. 
I bought a yard of polar fleece as well, and used a high quality thread.


I also cut 9 1/2 inch pieces by 80" to make my straps, and 84 inches for my waist strap. It's pretty big and roomy, but I wanted my husband to be able to wear it comfortably and he is 6' 6".

You could really use any kind of batting for padding in my opinion, my first mei tai I used quilt batting I had laying around. This time, I bought some polar fleece. I cut two 12x20 inch pieces, folded them and stuffed them into the straps. I left enough room of fabric at the bottom to make my x-box anchors.

I cheated here and fabric glued my inner panel to my middle layer to stitch the anchors. I also rolled up my straps and tied them off to keep it from pulling.

I centered my straps and made my x-boxes on both straps. (stitching will show on the back of the mei tai if you do it the way I did it)

Then I sort of guessed on hood size. It's bigger than my last hood and more retangular. I made the hood straps from a folded over piece of fabric with a zig zag stitch, and stitched the hood together. Then I sewed it onto the mei tai before I sewed the other panel on.

 

I then sewed the other panel on, wrong side facing out, skipping over the strap parts. Then I turned it inside out and voila!

Next I cleaned up around the straps where I had skipped over stitching the third panel on..

Then I sewed another piece of polar fleece onto the bottom of the mei tai for padding. My phone died at this point, so no more pictures. I sewed the second strap leaving an opening in the middle big enough to stuff the fleece in to attach the strap. I attached the strap on the top above the padding and then I sewed the three rings into the waist. And here is my final presentation, minus hood loops because my needle broke on my machine (stupid walking foot).

LOTS of credit for inspiration and some measurements goes to Scandi's Mei Tai Tutorial.

My DIY Osnaburg Wrap baby carrier

It's been a couple months since I did this project, and I've been too busy to start my blog. But here we go.

We started with 7 yards of osnaburg, (if I had to go back, I would have gotten 8 and trimmed, but I like really really long wraps. 

Prewash in hot water.

I hung to dry. 

I then used Dylon dye in purple and pink and did a gradual dye from top rail to bottom rail by immersing different parts of wrap in dye at different lengths of time.

Wash per Dylons instructions.

I then dried the fabric and hemmed it! (I hemmed it by hand at first and went back later and hemmed with a sewing machine as mine was broken at the time)

And proceeded to wrap my little bug up. 

(Note: I was just beginning back carries in this photo.)