A baby nest < with my hands

As a soon-to-be auntie I was asked to make a baby nest for my nephew or niece. I had already seen some pictures of baby nests online, but they did not exist when my children were babies. Luckily there are plenty of free patterns available, so I was happy to make one.

It’s a know fact that the babies love large contrasts since their eyesight is poor. I remember vividly how much my babies used to enjoy staring our living room curtains with graphic black and white print. For this reason, I decided to ditch the traditional baby colours and prints and went for this floral Finlayson cotton fabric.

I chose to follow this swedish pattern even if I modified it a bit. If I had to make another one I’d make the “feet” of the pattern 1 or 2 cm longer since closing the ends takes away some of the length. I would also make sure that the mattress wadding goes properly under the stitching line that forms the “sausage” since otherwise it moves. My wadding was moving away from one of the bottom corner, so I fixed it by addind a second stitching line about 5 cm away from the first one.

I thought a 1 m would be enough but for anyone else making a similar project I’r recommend buying at least 1,20 m. Initially my pattern was too long, not even taking account the fact that the fabric shrunk in the wash for 5 cm. Furthermore, I needed 2 m of wadding that was about 15 mm thick, 2,5 m bias binding and 3 m of cord and a spring lock for the cords.

The baby nest takes up a surprising amount of wadding. You’d better cut the mattress bits so that you can use as much 2 m width as you can to make the sausage firm. I settled for 2 layers of wadding for the mattress part.

I was afraid that it would be super difficult to get the wadding all the way around the sausage length but it was surprisingly easy. The sausage was thick enough for me to thread my whole arm through the whole thing and I was able to pull the sausage roll neatly in. The only thing I had to be careful about was not to rip the fabric at the inner angles. Again for anyone else doing this I recommend cutting the inner ends a bit rounded and neatening then up only after the wadding is in place. The ripping sound is not a nice thing to hear when you are pulling the wadding into place! My sausage was 2 m long and I did not need to shorten it at all.

I added the spring lock to hold the cords in place. It is not strong enough to hold the cords by itself but it does make tying the cords much easier.

S’s doll is testing the baby nest. The size should fit for at least 3 months, perhaps longer. Also, it looks like a good thing if you want your baby napping on a couch, since it will prevent him/her from falling.