Recently my husband and I have been acquiring a few more baby items ;)
On our student budget we have been needing to lean towards used toys and clothes. Craigslist is our friend. Usually baby accessories don't get beat up much by one baby's use anyway, so this hasn't been a big deal. But every once in a while I like to spiff up what we've bought so our kid will have something with a little more 'mother-love'.
Our latest purchase was a bassinet we found online for $5. My husband picked it up and brought it home and I was ecstatic that it is so small and portable and will fit great in our little apartment. I cleaned it up as best I could, including making a new quilted mat for the bottom, but I felt quite limited as to how clean I could get the velcro toy attachments. You know the type with squeakers and rattles inside? Although the base of the bassinet was quite clean, there was cat hair on the attachments.
Ew.
Now I'm not really sure how you clean these types of things. Hand-washing I suppose. I didn't want to ruin the squeaking mechanism or the rattle though, so I decided to rip out the heart of the toys and make my own.
And here is how its done:
(I never liked the bright colors of these store-bought ones anyway)
Cut open and rip out the heart of the toy.
And don't feel bad, you're giving it a new life.
Just be careful not to cut the squeaker.
Betcha always wondered what these looked like.
Cut out the shapes for the new toys. I won't go into too much explanation for this. You are basically making little pillows. So two pieces for each side of the pillow, and make sure to sew them right sides together before turning them inside out to stuff.
Now here is where I left out a step, and you can see my mistake below. Make sure you sew in a small tab of velcro to the top of the toy. Insert it between the two right sides of the pillow as you are sewing it together, so that it sticks out of the top when you turn it right side out.
If you forget this step (like me), you'll have to unpick the top and sew it in by hand.
Or I suppose you could just leave it off and have a new rattle that doesn't attach...
Stuff the toy slightly, and insert the rattle or squeaker. Then finish stuffing it so it is nice and soft.
Sew the bottom up using a ladder stitch.
For the little ribbon guy I just laid out a row of ribbons between the two pieces of the pillow as I was sewing it up. It might help to use a small piece of tape to hold them in place while sewing. Make sure not to use too much tape because you don't want it to get in the way as you are sewing and gum up your needle.
And yay! You're done. Three new velcro toy attachments that are clean, sweet, and simple.
Link it up!
that is a really cute idea, i think i might make this sometime.
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