Yuki Clothing

plain and simple

Category Archives: Baby


by 1 Comment

Amish Puzzle Ball

It’s been a while since I did any crocheting but I rediscovered it when my daughter was born. Pretty much all she wanted to do was eat and sleep, and my lap was the only bed she wanted to sleep in during day time. In the beginning it was quite relaxing to sit and watch Netflix all day long. However, after watching good TV shows, bad TV shows, good movies, good B-movies (Sharknado 1, 2 and 3 :)) and bad movies, I wanted to do something more creative with my time. The end result was this amish puzzle ball!

It’s a great baby toy since it’s so easy for them to hold (and eat if you ask my daughter). You can also make it in many different colour to make it even more fun and interesting. An extra feature that the baby might like when it gets older is that you can actually disassemble it into 3 parts! There are a lot of patterns where you can’t take the ball apart but that kind of defeats the purpose if you ask me…

The amish puzzle ball made with a cotton yarn that called for a 4½mm hook but I used a 2,5mm hook to make it tighter. This resulted in a ball with a diameter of ~9,5cm. The free pattern is available here at Look at what I made – Crochet Amish Puzzle Ball


by Leave a comment

New cover for a baby bouncer

When I told my mum that we were thinking about buying a BabyBjörn bouncer for Charlie, she said that there was no need for that since she had actually saved my old bouncer! The bouncer looked great but I wanted to upgrade it and give it a more modern look so I made a new cover (I think the old cover was made in West-Germany ;) ).

The baby bouncer from the 80s!

I made the pattern based on the old cover and lavender-blue fabric was something that’s been lying in my fabric stash for ~10 years or so. I remember buying it because I fell in love with the colour :) It’s some kind of furniture fabric and I found out that it’s actually a bit water-repellent. A great feature when you’ve got a baby that drinks a lot of milk and burps a lot.

I can’t believe I’ve been trying to write this post for 5 months now. Charlie looks so tiny when she was trying the baby bouncer for the first time! And that horrible Frejka pillow she was wearing, I’d almost forgotten about it… Time flies, doesn’t it.


by 140 Comments

Baby nest

Baby nests have become very popular nowadays (at least in Sweden) and pretty much all parents either buy one or make one themselves. It’s a fun and easy project that everyone can make! In addition to the baby nest, I made two sheets  to use inside the nest. In case an accident would happen, the sheets were lined with waterproof terry with an exception for where the baby’s head would be. The terry’s supposed to be “breathing” but I’m not taking any chances. That part of the sheets is instead lined with a mint cotton fabric.

For this project, I bought:

  • 1m mint/green cotton
  • ~1,2m cotton fabric with a harlequin pattern
  • ~1m cotton fabric with sleeping owls
  • ~1m waterproof white terry
  • ~2,2m x 2,2m wadding
  • ~3m mint/green bias binding
  • light grey cord
  • 1 cord stopper

This baby nest is suitable for a baby 0-4 months old.

The pattern for the baby nest is rather simple and you need to cut two pieces (A), one for the front and one for the back. Also cut 2-3 pieces of (B) wadding, depending on how thick your wadding is. Baste the pieces of wadding together so that they will keep their shape even when put in the washing machine. Trace 20 cm from the border on the back piece (A). This is where you will sew the back and front pieces together with the wadding in between.Pin right sides together (A) and leave an opening on both small half circles. Turn it right sides out and press the seam.Pin the bias binding around the baby nest, from the center of the first half circle to the other one. Sew it carefully in place. A good top stitching is what makes something look awesome instead of just ‘ok’. Use a safety-pin to pull the cord through the tunnel that the bias binding creates.

Put the wadding inside and baste it in place before sewing. I pinned it in place but it was difficult to get a good result and I had to re-do the seam. I would highly recommend basting instead of pinning. Fold the rest of the wadding to a long sausage and stuff it inside the opening on one of the sides. Sew the openings shut. Also sew the opening for the first wadding (B) shut and add some bias binding for a nice finish.

The sheets are pretty much the same size as (B) and if you want to make it only out of cotton fabric follow these instructions. Cut two pieces of the B pattern. With a seam allowance of 1cm, sew them face sides together but leave a small opening. Turn it right sides out. Give it a good press with the iron and then top stitch 2mm from the edge all the way around the sheet, now closing the opening.

If you want to use waterproof terry you need to make sure that you don’t put the plastic where the baby’s head will be. If you look at the picture below, the white is plastic terry and the mint is regular cotton fabric. In this case you cut one B piece for the front. Then cut the B pattern in two parts and add 1cm seam allowance to both pieces. Cut the top piece in cotton and the bottom in terry. Put the cotton and plastic facing each other and sew them together. Press the seam allowance to one side with your nails. Don’t use an iron for this or the plastic will melt! Top stitch the seam allowance in place. Then put the front fabric (in this case owl fabric) and plastic facing each other and sew them together but leave an opening. Turn it right sides out and top stitch to close the opening.

To finish of this quick guide, here’s the finished baby nest!

I planned on making a baby nest + sheets before the baby arrived and I was halfway through this “2 day” project when it was time to go to bed. Quite pleased with my progress, I said to my husband “The baby nest will be finished tomorrow and afterwards we can just sit back, relax and wait for her arrival”. This totally jinxed it as my water broke 2 hours later and our daughter Charlie was born the next morning. Let’s just say it took me more than two days to finish the baby nest. :)


by 2 Comments

Changing Pad

As my life changes, so will the content on my blog. In my last blog post I told you that I’m about to become a mother so maybe it doesn’t come as a big surprise that from now on, you’ll see a bit of baby stuff here as well :). The first thing I decided to make for the baby was a changing pad that would fit the changing table we got from IKEA.

I got both the fabric and the foam base for the changing pad from a store called “Stoff & Stil”. The goal was to make a pad that would be easy to clean but still nice and cosy for the baby. With that in mind, I decided it would be a good idea to make two covers for the foam pad. The first cover would be made out of a pastel green oil cloth with some geometric shapes on it. Since oil cloth is water proof, this would be the “easy to clean layer”. For the second cover (that’s was supposed to go over the first one), I got a soft cotton satin with grey and yellow raindrops on it. I thought the yellow raindrops was quite befitting a changing pad :)

Stoff & Stil also had a pattern for the changing pad but since the shape of the thing was so simple, I didn’t really see the point in spending money on something I could make myself in 30min. To begin with, I measured the sides and made a pattern for that. After the sides were finished, I measured the circumference of the pattern and the length of the foam base. With those measurements I had a rectangle that would go around the pad. Last but not least, a 1cm seam allowance was added. When the pattern was done it was time to start pattern matching and cutting out the pieces. Because of the very symmetrical geometrical shapes on the oil cloth, this turned out to be a walk in the park! To make the sewing a bit easier, I used a pencil to draw where the seam should go on both side pieces.

Assembling the whole thing was a bit trickier than usual because you obviously can’t use pins on a plastic oil cloth. That would just leave ugly puncture marks all over the place. Instead, I got to use these handy little clips from Clover that I got from Okadaya in Tokyo. The first step was to attach the invisible zipper. I can highly recommend inserting the zipper as soon as possible. It’s just so much easier to attach it to a garment/cushion/etc. when the fabric lies flat. Next, I continued sewing around the side where the zipper was attached. One stretch at a time was “clipped” together and sewn. When reaching the corners, I had to cut the oil cloth in order to continue with the next stretch without the fabric bulging into weird shapes. The same procedure was repeated for the other side and last but not least, the side seam on the large rectangle was sewn.

Half of the zipper is in place.
“Clip” and sew one stretch at a time (red clips). The pink clip to the right just keeps the oil cloth in place.

Yay, the first cover was done! At this point I had no idea that I would spend the coming 15min sweating and cursing while I was wrestling the foam base into the cover. Have you ever touched and eel and gotten surprised at just how slippery it is? Well, that pretty much describes my experience with the foam, only that the foam was the exact opposite of slippery. After I won the wrestling match, I decided that I wouldn’t be making a second cover. There is just no way I’m putting a cover on/off of that changing pad on a regular basis. Instead, I’ll probably make something like a towel/blanket to put on top of the changing pad. That way it would still be nice and cosy for the baby and easy to remove and throw in the laundry.

The invisible zipper at the back is pretty invisible :)
The finished changing pad on top of the changing table!