Nursery-Labor of Love: Part 7

Growing up, my mom did a decent amount of sewing.  She sewed clothes for my siblings and I as well as curtains and other home decor.  I remember her doing a lot of it when I was little and she taught my sister and I as we were growing up.  In the recent years, I have not done any sewing at all.  When we found out we were pregnant and decided that we were not going to find out the sex of our baby I decided I wanted to make all the bedding, curtains and throw pillows for the nursery. Because it had been years since I had sewn, I really needed the help of my mom to re-teach me this trade.  I was excited about doing this project but overwhelmed all at the same time wondering if I had bit off more than I could chew.  :)

This past fall, I spent a couple of weekends at mom and dads sewing away.  Mom was such a great help at getting me re-acquainted with the sewing machine and did a great job of making sure I was in charge of the project and making me do the things that I hate the most about sewing....which includes threading the sewing machine.  I am happy she didn't step in every time I needed a bobbin refilled or the machine re-threaded because I would never really learn that way.  It was frustrating at times, but we had some good laughs along the way.

Be warned, this will be a longer post as this was a big project for me and it took time.  I have so many pictures of the progression of this project and I do not want to overwhelm you but it's also fun to look back at all the steps.  I hope you enjoy!

Bumper:

Lets start with the bumper.  This was the part of the project I was most concerned about initially. We decided to buy an old bumper from a used clothing store and recover it.  A few posts back I showed you samples of the fabric we chose for the nursery.  For the bumper I did one side gray and the other in a pattern.  See pictures below. 

Mom and I cutting out our pieces for the bumper.

There was a lot of ironing needed throughout this project.  This helped me sew cleaner lines for an nicer looking end result.  Very time consuming but worth it.

The sewing begins and check out that concentration by mom and I.....LOL.

Sewing the bumper cover together.

It's DONE! You will notice we sewed it inside out to hide the seams.

Mom and Michael pulling the old bumper into it's new cover.

I was sewing seams into the bumper and things got jammed up so I needed mom's help :). 

Pillows:

I decided to make some throw pillows to go in the window seat.  These were really fun and simple.  Have you noticed how expensive throw pillows can be in the store?  Wheww.  I'm always surprised how much you have to pay for them.  Making your own is so much more affordable and it's so easy. Here are some pictures of this project coming together. 

Mom sewing on the ties for the bumper while I start cutting out the throw pillows.

One done!  I like it!

Sheila came over to help get things finished that night.  Thanks She!

Picture of a hard days work :). 

I do not have any good pictures to show you of the curtain and crib skirt being made because I forgot my camera when I was working on the crib skirt at mom's and I made the curtain at home by myself and didn't have anyone to take any action shots.  Below are pictures of everything we made for the room.  You will notice we have a pad for the window seat.  I did not make this.  This was something that both my mom and I felt was above our pay scale so we had a family friend do this for us and she did an amazing job.  :)

 Pillows with the new window seat cushion.

I'm a big believer that curtains finish off a room.  This just makes the window seat look so much cuter than it looked in the picture above.

 Close up of the seat cushion.

Bumper and crib skirt in the new crib which was a gift from Grandpa and Grandma Kahlstorf

 Starting to see the vision coming together!

I hope you enjoyed seeing the progression of this come together.  This was a lot of work and we ran into some obstacles along the way but I learned a lot and had a lot of fun working on this.  Thanks to my mom and sister for their help and to my mother in law for letting me use her sewing machine for this project!