Awhile back, my mom made another gift for our littlest, William. It is a bumper of sorts to put in his crib. But it wasn’t made for the reasons bumpers are usually made, it’s like a piece of soft art for him to look at while he’s stuck in his crib. She thought it would be a fun way to introduce some animals to him.
I thought I’d show it to you since the idea of it wouldn’t be hard to recreate.
For the purposes of taking pictures I hung the bumper on the outside of the crib but normally it would hang on the inside. Although, it could actually be used on the outside as well for the child to look at while they crawl around the room and learn to pull up on things. This would be especially good if there was already a bumper being used in the crib.
My mom used different background fabrics for each animal but if you wanted to keep it simple you could use just one long piece of fabric cut the width of the crib. Sandwich some batting in the middle of two pieces of fabric and you’d have your background.
As you can see the animals are basic silhouette shapes and then just sewn on with pretty stitches from a sewing machine. You could do this by googling animal silhouette images. Then just print out the shape and use it for a pattern. Another idea would be to use fabric that has images on it that you like. You could cut out those images and then sew them on.
Some of the animals also have a few details that are embroidered on. See the pictures below of the butterfly and the cat.
To attach it to the crib there is ribbon sewn into the seam of each end to tie around the rungs. I would recommend putting in at least one more in the middle as well if not a couple to keep it from drooping.
You can really do as little or as much as you want with a project like this. Even a beginner could have fun playing with the machine to see what they can do. Part of the charm of a handmade item is seeing the little imperfections and signs that it was made with love.
