Crochet for Baby

Hi, everybody. Welcome to our live crochet event. I'm Brenda Katie Anderson. Today we are going to be talking about crocheting for babies. I have been meaning to do this live for a long time because um first of all, I love crocheting for babies because it's just, you know, super quick little projects you can use up, you know, little bits of yarn here and there. It doesn't cost a lot of money. You can experiment with different things because they're such small projects. Um Plus it's just like a way of thinking about a baby that maybe you're expecting or someone else, you know, is expecting um coming into your lives at some point and it's just sort of a way to like, I don't know, think about them while you're making something, which in my opinion, that means you're just putting more love into the, into the project. And then that person can tell when, when they get it. I know they can because um when I had my kids, I had twins, um I had a baby shower and I got lots of handmade items. I was very, very lucky to receive um some little baby sweaters and some quilts, some blankets, other things that people made by hand for my babies. And I just know, I just remember how I felt when I opened up those gifts. And I was like, oh, you were thinking about us and the babies and you know, I was very hormonal also and just cried. But now even just looking back on that, I think about how happy I was to receive those, those gifts and how much it meant to me. So I know that there are a lot of people out there who start crocheting for the very first time because they're expecting a baby or because someone they know is expecting a baby and that kind of makes them feel like they wanna start making stuff with their hands and make something for the baby. So this is just sort of a natural thing to do um for a live event because so many people pick up their hook for the first time thinking about babies. So, um in this live event first, I'm going to be going through how to make this cute little knotted teether. It is just very simple and this is very approachable. Um even for total beginners. Um So I'm gonna be going through that first just to make sure I have time for the whole thing. And then the second half of this is going to be just, you know, discussion, some ideas um on what you can make all the free um patterns and ideas that we have available on the creative crochet corner website and also a couple of little things on craftsy as well. Um Just to kind of get you guys thinking about, you know, just some ideas for making stuff for babies. So what I was hoping, um if you are so inclined, I would love it if you would put in the comments, either the, the your favorite kind of go to favorite baby items that you like to make or maybe you haven't made a lot yet. But if you've um you know, if you've made some, let us know what those are because I'm just curious what you guys are making out there. And also I was hoping that you guys, if you have ideas on places to donate baby items to, I know a lot of people like to make baby items and they just like to make them and then they want to give them to somebody. Um And so a lot of people are looking for, you know, charities or other places they can donate baby items to um when they're done with them. So if you guys have ideas on that, um please put that on the chat. I would love for everybody to be able to, you know, have access to those resources too. All right. Um I see that Catherine is, has a question Catherine is asking if I could point you to some resources for lefties. So, Catherine, um, if you are able to flip flop your screen so that it's a mirror image of the way that it normally appears. If you can flip flop your screen, then it will look like I'm left handed and I would be showing you, you know how to crochet these things in the way that it would look to you. Um, as a left hander. Oh, I'm just assuming you're left-handed. Maybe you're not, maybe you're teaching someone who's left-handed. Um, but if you're not able to flip your screen, you can also um, look, watch it in a mirror. So if you just take a mirror, look in the mirror and then have that, you know, pointing at your screen so you can watch it. That's what um it would look like. I was left handed. So, um that's the, the easiest way for me to um, kind of help you out there. So that way you can watch any of our videos, any of our live tutorials, really anything. If you could just flip your screen, it'll look just like how you would do it. All right. So, um, ok, so uh back to this teether, I just wanted to talk about this for a minute. Um, when my babies were little, they love chewing on washcloth and I found, I think I was just on the internet or something. I'm not sure if someone told me this. I, you know, somehow II I heard that if you soak a washcloth in water and put it in the freezer for about 15 minutes or so that babies really like to chew on that when they're teething. And so I tried that and they loved it and what I noticed was they actually really liked chewing on, like the handmade, um, washcloth that I had and I don't know if it's just because they were nuber than the other kind, um, that I had gotten at the store. Um But then that, that made me think, oh, I should just make a pattern for this because this is such an easy, fast like fun gift to give people. It's kind of like a present for the parents too because when they start teething, I mean, you, you need, you need help then at that point. Um but this is just a great little project to make. Basically, it's just kind of a funny shaped rectangle. Let me untie that little knot. So this is what it looks like. And then you just tie the thinner area just in an overhand knot and then you can get it wet, soak the top of it. You don't have to soak the whole thing actually because if you leave the bottom of the tee, they're dry and you don't put any water in the bottom, then the baby can hold on to it with their little hands and it's not cold for them to hold on to. But if you soak the knot in water and then um put that in, in like a little Ziploc baby ba baggie and put it in the freezer. Then it gets nice and cold and then the baby can chew on this knot. They can chew on this and this. So it's just a fun little easy project. And we're gonna go through all the steps you need to know in order to make that. So. Oh, and Jill likes to make crochet baby hats and Haley likes to make burp cloths using soft absorbent yarn. Awesome. I love making crochet baby hats and you'll see that in a little bit. Um, and I, I have some things to say about burp class, but I'm gonna save that for later. Burp. Burp class are awesome. II I appreciated those when I had my babies. All right. So to begin this, this little t there, we're going to chain 31. So we're just gonna make a slip knot and you can make a slip knot in any way that you like to. I, I make my slipknots like this when I'm teaching, I just make the little loop, flip that loop over onto the strand, connect it to the ball. Then I put my hook underneath that strand and tighten that up. OK. And it should be tight enough that it doesn't fall off your hook, but still, um, you should be able to easily pull it back and forth. All right. So we're gonna chain 31. So we just wrap the yarn around the back of our hook and pull it through. That's one chain 1011 1213, 14, 1516, 1718, 1920 21. 22. 23. Oops 24. 25. 2627. 28 29 30 31. Um, so I am using a worsted weight, a dishcloth cotton. Um It's just, it's a number four, but this is a little bit softer than most of the dishcloth cottons that I find in the big box stores just to just a little heads up. So if you're using a different kind of dishcloth cotton and it's a little bit bigger, a little bit thicker um or not quite as drap, you may find that you wanna go up hook size from what I suggested um just to keep your stitches a little bit looser, make it a little bit easier to tie that knot. Um But you can certainly do it with a different kind of dishcloth cotton. That's no problem. And I should mention this pattern. Let me show you what it looks like. This is called the knotted baby teether and this is what the front of it looks like here. And um this is part of the download for, for today. So if you just check out in the description, there is a link to the download the download includes four baby patterns and I will be kind of talking about the other three after we create this. Um but this is not a baby tea. There is inside the download. It's uh yeah, it's included. All right. So we've got 31 stitches or 31 chains. Sorry. And if you take a look at your chains, there's a whole bunch of vs all stacked up on one side. And if you roll it over onto the table, you see a bunch of little horizontal dashes in the back. So we're gonna be working underneath those horizontal dashes. When we work across this chain, we are going to start by making 20 single crochets. Let me just pull out my pattern and double check here. Yep. So we're gonna make 20 single crochets starting with the second chain from the hook. So here's the first chain right there. There's a second chain. So we're gonna insert our hook here yarn over, pull up a loop, yarn over and pull through two. That's a single crochet or let's do that. Uh 19 more times. Insert yarn over, pull up a loop, yarn over and pull through two. So if you're brand new to crocheting, there are videos on the single crochet and the half, double crochet and the double crochet. These are all things that I'm going to be going through in this pattern. They're all separate videos on the creative crochet corner website um available to watch if you need a little extra help with these stitches. So let me count up my digits here. 12345678. Hm. Nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 and 20. Now we're going to switch to the half, double crochet stitch. So to do a half, double crochet, you're gonna yarn over and then you're gonna insert your hook into that bump, yarn over, pull up a loop. Now you have three loops on your hook. Then you're gonna yarn over and pull through all three for a half, double crochet. So we're gonna do four more of those for a total of five. That's two, three for and five. And then we're gonna do five double crochets. So you're an over insert, you're an over, pull up a loop. You're an over pull through two, yarn over, pull through two. There's the first double crochet. We're gonna do four more of those yarn over insert. You're an over, pull up a loop. You're an over pull through two, you're an over pull through two. All right, three more times. One, two and three. Ok. So we got to the end of our row and you can see what's happening here. It's getting a little taller as we get to this end. That's how we shape this piece there. There aren't any increases or decreases or anything. We just work back and forth and we're making a rectangle and all the stitches on this side are shorter and all the stitches on this side are taller. So it makes that shape that's um, makes it easier for us to tie the knot. So we're gonna chain two and we're gonna turn our work just like we're turning a page in a book like that. And now we're gonna work um, the opposite. So we're gonna do five double crochets, then five half, double crochets and then 20 single crochets to the top. So we're going to, we're not going to work into either of these two chains. Those are just turning chains, but we are gonna work into the top of that last stitch we made because we are not counting a turning chain as a stitch. This is just a kind of a ladder to get up to the next row. We're gonna yarn over, insert yarn over, pull up a loop. You're an over pull through two, yarn over, pull through two. Let's do that four more times. You're an over insert, you're an over, pull a loop, you're an over, pull through two, you're an over pull through two. Here's the third one, fourth one and the fifth one. And now we're going to switch to the half, double crochet. So we yarn over, insert yarn over, pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through all three. Here's the second one. Third, four and fifth. OK. And now we're going to switch to our single crochets the shorter stitches. So we're gonna insert yarn over, pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through two, insert yarn over, pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through two. So if you are brand new to crochet, um the place where we normally insert our hook under is underneath each of these, vs if you look at the top edge of your stitch, you'll see all these little vs going in this direction. You place your hook underneath both of those loops. Normally there's lots and lots of different variations in crochet for all the stitches. So, but this is the most basic stitch really the single crochet and working underneath both loops of that stitch from the row before. So, all right, got a few more stitches to go two more one and the very last stitch you can see that little V right there. We don't wanna skip that. So I would recommend if you're newer to crochet, um use a stitch marker to mark the first and last, you know, stitches of your row. So as soon as you do the first, you know, stitch of that row, just put a stitch marker in the top of it. Here, I'll show you when I turn, um when you get to the single crochet end, this is a single crochet on the shorter end, then you're just gonna yarn over and make just one chain right there on the end and then you're gonna turn your work that counts as a turning chain on this end, we chain two because it's a taller stitch on this end, we just chain one because it's a shorter stitch. So then we would work right here underneath that first stitch because we're skipping our turning chain, which is right there. So that's our first stitch. And after we make that first stitch, we can go ahead and mark it in this way, it helps you keep your ends nice. And even it's easy to tell where your last stitch is going to be. When you work back across this way, you can see that it's marked. It just makes things a little bit easier for a newer crochet. If you've been crocheting for a while, you can, you know, if you can recognize your stitches, obviously, you don't need to put those stitch markers in. This is a very, very simple project, but it just helps when you're first starting out. Ok. So you're gonna work back and forth in those two rows. So the next row, we start out with the 20 single crochet, five half, doubles and then five doubles. And then the following row, we do five doubles, five half, double crochets and 20 single crochets. You're gonna work back and forth like that until you've worked nine rows. Hm. Um, and then the way you can count your rows here, I'm gonna turn it this way because it's a little easier to see if you're having trouble figuring out if this, like where your first row is just flip your piece over. It makes it easier to count your rows when you have these sort of uniform places where the grooves are between your stitches. Because if you can see this little line here, that means you've done two rows. So this would be 12, 345678 and nine. We've worked through row nine and now we're gonna do row 10, which is a repeat of row number two. So we're gonna chain 21 and two. We're just going to repeat that same row one more time and we're gonna end at the, the narrower edge up here. So we start out with those five, double crochet 123 for and five. And then we switch to half, double crochets, one two, three, four five. And then we're gonna switch to single crochets and work those all the way to the end. There will be 20 of those. So in the pattern download today, there is an additional page that I wrote up, just giving some extra tips um on like crocheting for babies. Just things to think about as you're choosing your projects, choosing your yarns, your materials and that type of thing. So there's some helpful tips in there. Um As well as the 44 patterns which I'll be talking about. This is one of the patterns this teether. Um But there's a hat and some booties and then a little, uh, a little toy that's also included. All right. So we made it to the end now in order to make this, I mean, and you could just fasten off and call it good and that's perfectly fine. But I wanted to make it look just a little bit more polished by adding an edging across the ends of the rows because they always look just a little bit bumpy like that. Um So I am going to, this is where the last row I worked. I worked right across here. So I'm just rotating my work 90 degrees and then I'm gonna work across the top here. This the, the, the ends of our single crochet rows here and I'm gonna do eight single crochets across, but really the number of single crochets doesn't really matter. It's more just like how it looks as you work across. Um And if you've never stitched into the ends of your rows before you're not looking for, uh, it's not, you don't need to put your hook in a very specific spot, but you wanna put your hook under. Usually I aim for underneath two bits of yarn instead of just under one because sometimes that gets a little stretched out. Um But it's kind of more like trial and error, just put your hook in there and make a stitch and then see if it looks, ok, if there's a hole that just happens when you do that then back up, you know, you can pull that stitch out and then try putting your hook in a different place and you wanna make sure it isn't cinching your, your, um, the width of it tighter you, it doesn't wanna, um, constrict this edge here. Uh, you also don't want it to be kind of ruffling. That means you have too many stitches if it's constricting it, that means you don't have enough stitches or you could go up a hook size if that helps too. There's lots of different ways to fix things and crochet lots of adjustments you can make. Let's see. I've got 123456 and you might think, oh, there's a big hole there. I'll just go right in there. Uh, which is fine. But sometimes if there's a hole and you think you're gonna fill it up with a stitch, sometimes it stretches that hole out and makes it look worse. So I am going to go just underneath these two stitches in the back instead of where that hole was so that it doesn't make it quite so obvious, but it's just sort of a little bit of a, you know, trial and error kind of thing as you're working your way across. Now, we have reached the opposite edge and we're gonna work underneath each of these stitches and we're gonna be working in that same stitch pattern we have been working in. So we're gonna do 20 single crochets, five half, double crochets and five double crochets along this edge here. And that just helps us get to the opposite edge and then we can do one more little row of edging and then fast enough. So these are a great way to use up little scraps. You know, it might not even be quite enough for a dishcloth. Um, you know, you could even do them striped would be kind of cool. Too little vertical stripes would be fun. You could change, change color every other row and you could just, um bring the nonworking yarn or just keep pulling it up the edge. What am I trying to say? Uh carrying the nonworking yarn up the edge of um, of your piece. And then when you, because you are going to be stitching across the top of it like we, we just did here and across the bottom, you would cover any, any floats that would happen there. So you wouldn't need to uh weave in a bunch of ends. 123456789, 1011, 1213, 1415, 1617, 18, 19 and 20. And now we're going to switch to half, double crochets, one to three for five and we'll switch to our double crochets one to three, four and five. And now we are going to work across the bottom edge and you can do anywhere between like 18 to 20 stitches across here. So it may help you to just divide this in half like this and then focus on putting about nine or 10 here and then about nine or 10 here, that kind of helps you space them out a little. But again, it doesn't really matter exactly how many stitches you have on, you know, across the bottom, as long as it looks nice and it lays flat. That's the, that's the main thing. So you don't even have to count them if you don't want to, you can just kind of work your way across. And if it starts cupping or pulling tight, then you got to back it up a little bit and add some more stitches and if it starts to ripple, um then you will have to back it up and do some, do fewer stitches next time. But the more you work into these row ends, the more practice you get, you'll just start getting a feel for how to make your stitches, um, how close together they should be. And you can see, I'm, I'm actually crocheting over this yarn tail here. So I don't have so much weaving in to do at the end. But I think at this point I'm gonna drop, let it drop back behind. All right. I've just got a few more stitches here. There we go. And then we will just cut our yarn and pull it through to fasten off. All right. So we've got two little yarn tails. Um, you can block it if you want to, like, if you were gonna sell these or something, you wanted them to look nice and crisp, you could block it before you tie it into a knot. Um, I don't really bother blocking them because I feel like once you tie that little knot, it's a little, roughly. I, I just didn't feel like it was necessary. Um, but like I said, if you're, if you're gonna sell some of these, um, or something like that, you might want them to look very polished. So you could give it a little steam block or iron it. Um Since it's 100% cotton, you can actually iron it if you want or you could wet block it if you prefer. And I would definitely recommend sticking with uh a cotton or something that is not going to be very, feel very wooly in your mouth or have little fibers that might come off. Um That's why I chose cotton because it was nice. It would be nice to uh chew on and not get a bunch of lint in your mouth. So that's something to think about when you're choosing the yarn for this project. I would not recommend using acrylic for that reason because acrylic, chewing on acrylic might end up kind of um letting it get kind of fuzzy and then little particles could come off in the baby's mouth and that would be kind of gross. All right. So I'm just weaving in those yarn tails. I can cut them off. And then the last step is just to tie it in an overhand knot. So you can just kind of grab it in the middle and kind of scrunch it together and tuck that end through the middle of your. You're not there. Let's see. Where's the other end here? I'm gonna back this up and make this not a little bit lower. There we go. Now we have a little more space. It would be easier. Here we go. So there's the little top, there's the knot and there's the bottom. So this is nice because it, it's a little bit spongy, but it's something that the baby can really, you know, put their gums on and help, help break those teeth through that little knot. Plus it's really cute. All right. Um It just is kind of like reminiscent of the umbilical cord situation a little bit. I think that's why those little top knot hats are so popular with that little knot up there. All right. So that's it for the, the tee there. So let's talk about some other baby accessories and ideas. All right. So one thing to note is that we have lots of free patterns on the creative Crochet corner website. I really love making hats. I have noticed as I looked through all the patterns that are available in the free patterns page. Um There's lots of hats and almost all the hats have sizing from baby to adults. So if you are looking at a picture of a hat, even if it's showing an adult size hat, um, like the Glacier cable beanie. That's this one. It has size, it's, it is size for baby as well. So, um, just note that if you're looking for, you know, hat patterns just click on it and see if you can. Um, And then just take a look at the sizing because most likely it's for babies as well. So there's more than what I have brought here on the website. So it's worth looking through that free pattern page just to see um if there's anything that catches your eye. But like I said, this is the Glacier Cable beanie on the adult size, which was modeled by me for the, I think the main picture. Um It was like a turquoise color, but it has this really awesome cable. It's simple, especially, you know, like if you never worked um crochet cables before, this is a good one to start out with. This is easy enough for a beginner cable person. Plus there is a um a live video tutorial that walks you through the whole process of making the hat. Um If you're interested in that, we also have this super cute hat that's got um little sequins all over it. This is called the celebration beanie. And this is something that I made um for like a New Year's New Year's vibes. Um I made it in an adult size and then I in like a light blue color and then I put a bunch of different colored sequins on it, but then I thought it would be super cute just to have like a little, the little silver silver holographic sequence on the top of the beanie. Um and then make it in a cute little pink. So this is constructed with two strands of sock white yarn held together and one strand you place all of the sequins on in like all of them for the whole hat and you just kind of push them down out of, out of the way or you don't have to do the whole hat at once. If that's driving you nuts, you can always break your yarn and add some more later. It's not like that's your only chance to put them on. Um But you put a lot of sequins on and then you hold two strands of yarn together and you crochet them together. So it really has more of a decay weight. Um maybe even like a worsted weight um feel to the yarn when you're holding them both together like that. But I use the two thinner yarns so that way you can thread the sequins on. So you don't have to sew any of them on. They're already just part of the hat. So it's a, it's a very fun way to kind of, um, dip your toe in the water of placing beads or sequins or other things like that on your hat. Um, working with that in crochet. It's really fun. All right. And then, um, another thing I wanted to talk about was, oh, actually let's just talk about what's in your pattern download. So, the, these two hats are available on the Creative Crochet Corner website. They're free patterns. They both have complete live video video tutorials. Um If you're interested in making these. Um So you have, you can have access to that. That's all free. And then in your download from today, we have the little, this little beanie and these little booties. So this, let's see. I wanna get the name right. I shouldn't name things, tricky things because I always forget what um what to call them later. Let's see. Oh, this is the baby bean e bean because this is made with the bean stitch down here. The bottom section of the hat. This is all the bean stitch, which is just a fun little um texture kind of looks like a bunch of beans kind of or interwoven little um just little textured bits and then they have little matching booties. So these are the baby bean booties. Um And these come in sizes newborn all the way up to 12 months and the sizing is done by the thickness of the yarn. So there's just one set of instructions to work from, no matter what size you're making, you'll either be using a worsted weight or I think a decay or a sport if I, I think that's how it works. Um, and that, that creates, you know, the size of the hat that, um, the three different sizes of the hat, the thickness of the yarn and the, the size of your hook will dictate what size these come out as. But these are both really fun to work up. It makes, you know, a really cute little companion piece here. The two of them together. Plus, I mean, you guys, what is cuter than little baby booties? I mean, what? They're so cute. I love baby booties. And also the other thing, you know, there's always the struggle of losing the one booty somewhere and so I made these cuffs extra super long so you could pull it up on their legs if you wanted to. But also just having that double layer of the cuff, it does help them keep their booties on. I'm not saying they can't possibly kick them off. You know, they get their little feet working and they can do all kinds of things, but um they do stay on better than a lot of the other booties that I had um for my babies when they were little. So, um, so there's that and then another thing um that's on our creative Crochet corner website, Mary Beth Temple has a really awesome video on how to make a granny square Hexagon sweater. I'm not exactly sure the title of the video, but it came out recently. There's a little tiny pink sweater, um, in the picture, but it's, if you've never done this before, if you've never made a Hexagon sweater before, it's like magic because basically what you're making is a granny square that has six facets around and it kind of ruffles as you're working on it and you start your granny square. Let me just show you what this looks like. You start your granny square right here in the armpit of the sweater and you work your way around and then it just magically forms this shape. So you make one um hexagonal granny square over here and then you make a second one over here and in her video, she just puts these two together, she seams them together on the back. But I wanted to make my sweater a little bit wider. So what I did was I used exactly her same instructions to get the two sides. Oh, and the extra cool thing about this making your sweater in this way is you can use any thickness of yarn you want with any size hook that gets you a fabric that you like. Um, and you just keep going until it is like the size of half your sweater that you want it to be. So you don't, you know, you don't need to be, um, doing a gauge swatch. You don't need it to be a certain size gauge to make the sweater correctly. You just start going, you make fabric, you like, you keep going till it's the size that you want and then you make the other half. And then if you wanted a little bit of a wider sweater, what I did was I made these little tiny granny squares so they just look like this. So I made three of these for the center back. So you can see there's one here, two and three and I stitched it between, you know, this half of the, this, this granny square and this granny square. So I just sewed them together here and then stitched them right in between. And then after I had that together, then I did one round of this contrasting pink color. So I went all the way around this after it's been seam. Oh, I should mention, OK, so when you're making these pieces, there is a seam right along the top of the shoulder that probably would have helped if I had mentioned that before, but this needs to get seam here. Um Before you continue with the sweater and then you can put your little edging all the way around and then what I did for this collar, this is just the simplest thing ever is I made a little strip of ribbing here, let me unfold it here. It's just a strip, it's just a rectangle. There's no shaping or anything. Just made a strip of ribbing where I worked half double crochets through the back loop only. And I made it as long as it needed to be to fit across the front, across the little back of the neck and down here. Um And then I stitched it on and then I just steam blacked it so that it would, you know, the collar would kind of lay back like that. So to figure out the width of your ribbing that you wanna make, think about. If you want the sweater to actually close and overlap at the front, then you'll want the width of your ribbing to be about the same as the width of your granny square. So that way it kind of fills in the little gap, um, that was caused when you stitched the granny squares in between those two pieces. Um, the, the two sides of the sweater if that makes sense. But this is just such a fun way to make a baby sweater. And honestly, you can make an adult sweater this way too. You can absolutely make one of these for yourself. Um, but it is just, um, I don't know, there's just something about being able to just get going, not doing a gauge swatch. You can use any yarn you want to, there's just a lot of freedom in that and being able to make something without thinking very hard. I mean, you're just repeating those rounds around and around and around until you're pretty much halfway done with your sweater and then you start over and you make one that matches with the same amount of rounds and it's just really, really fun. So I highly recommend this. Um So another thing I wanted to talk about was making um making toys for, for babies. So I brought in this little example of this mushroom that I made here. This is also in your download. So this is the fourth pattern, the one I hadn't talked about yet. Um This is the mushroom backpack charm. So when I originally designed this, I meant for it to be a little smaller and it has a little chain at the top and it hooks onto your backpack. It's just like a little bit of flair, a little bit of, you know, just a little toy you can clip onto things. Um, super cute, but it's a lot smaller than this. Um And so I was worried a little bit about, I, I mean, I don't think it could be a choking hazard the size that it was before. But if a baby was to, to get the stem ripped off of the, the mushroom, it just made me a little nervous. So I thought, ok, I'm gonna make a new version of this toy for a baby so I can make it much larger. Um And then I took out the ball chain at the top so that we don't have to worry about that. Um, because that would be, you know, that's not something that we want to be. Um, we don't want babies to be chewing on that ball chain because it could come apart and then they could accidentally swallow it. So the main thing to keep in mind when you are just, if you take a look at a toy and you're like, oh, I wanna, maybe I can make that for a baby. Um, just think about if there are lots of little pieces and parts that are sewn together, if you are, especially if you're not, you know, super used to sewing things together. You might want to avoid the types of amaga roomy projects that have a lot, lot of little bits sewn on. You also want to avoid safety eyes. And I know for a lot of people they're like what safety eyes they have the little backing on it. So you can't pull them out and they're called safety eyes, right? But unfortunately, safety eyes aren't really safe for kids under three because the backing can pop off and also they can accidentally kind of chew. Like if they're chewing on the eye, it could pop through the fabric, the whole thing, including the backing could pop through the fabric, it could break through the fabric and that would be a choking hazard. So avoid any using any safety eyes, avoid using any buttons. Um And so instead you're gonna want to embroider the features. And so I just wanted to show you this little, this little guy. So this the original pattern here. This did use embroidery. Um And, and so I didn't have to change anything up. The only thing that I did differently was instead of using embroidery floss, I actually used uh like a, I think it was between a worsted weight and a chunky weight yarn. Um Actually, oh, I know what I use. So this little, this brown yarn, this was left over from last week. I did a live event where I made this little hot chocolate. Um and marshmallows thing. It was like a little amaga roomy that I specifically geared towards beginners that um that tutorial is on the craftsy website. But I use a little bit of the brown yarn from that, which is like a, it's got a nice knitted tube construction. And what I liked about that is, it's very smooth, doesn't have the fuzziness of, you know, like an acrylic yarn or wool yarn or um you know, even a cotton yarn. It doesn't have the Plies at all. So that made it really nice for embroidery because I think sometimes when you have a, those plies going on, it kind of can distract a little bit from what you're trying to do if you're doing just kind of a small little embroidered face. Um So these were little French knots and then these were just little stitches that I made and I made the mouth in the same way that I made the mouth for um the original mushroom. But also for the little hot chocolate mug. If you guys are interested in seeing how I, how I do the mouth, but it's very easy. Um And simple. And so another thing about toys that I wanted to mention too is if you're making a toy for a baby, it is kind of fun to add some stuff to it, to make it a little bit more interactive. For example, you can get these little, these are rattle inserts, there's different kinds and they have like a little bit of different sounds to them like this one. Um It's a little bit quieter. It's more like less like a bell and more just like little pellets in there kind of sound. And then these are kind of more like a jingle bell kind of sound. Um But I did put a link for the round ones. I think I put a link in the download. Um because these are sometimes hard to find. I don't think I've ever seen them at a, at a regular craft store before I bought these on Amazon. You can also, the first time I bought them I found them on Etsy. Um I think they're getting a little bit more easy to find. But um I, yeah, I've never seen them in a craft store. So I put a little link in your download so that in case you guys are interested in adding these. So just make sure because of course this would be a choking hazard if it came out of the toy, just make sure it's whatever you're putting it inside is very securely stitched. You know, the parts are securely stitched together. You just wanna make sure that it is um not something that's going to come apart and let this pop out, right. Um The especially this one because it's so small, you know, you wanna make sure your stitches are nice and tight so it can't wiggle its way out of any loose stitches or anything like that. Another thing that I like adding to baby toys, oh, looks like I just wanna check in here and make sure I'm not missing stuff. Ok. Um Oh, Belinda likes making booties. Yes, booties are so cute. Um Another thing I like adding to toys is this crinkle paper. I know it's like transparent. So maybe you guys can't even see it but it's pretty loud, quite loud. So it is made just for this purpose. Um I put a link in your download for this crinkle paper as well because that's a little bit tricky to find. I do know that a lot of people, um, they like to use the plastic. Um, so like when you get cereal, the plastic bag that's inside of the cardboard box. It makes a nice crinkly sound. So some people will put that in their toys. I, and I think that would work just fine. I shy away from that, especially if I'm giving my toys as a gift to people just because it's not, that's not what it's made for. So it hasn't been tested for that purpose. But also, um, you probably can't put that in the dryer. And so sometimes, you know, even if you give someone a toy and you're like, don't put this in the dryer, parents are tired. Parents who have little babies are tired and they might put it in the dryer. So it might do some, it might fall apart, it might melt a little in there. Who knows what it's gonna do. That's not what it's meant for. But this crinkle paper is OK to put to machine wash and machine dry. So that's why I bought this and then I use this. You don't really even need that much. So a little goes a long way. But I use this in my baby toys because I know that it's gonna be safe, you know, in case the parent puts it in the dryer. So I um yeah, so I use that. I, I teach a class on craftsy that is um just making baby accessories and this is what you'll be learning how to make in that class if you guys are interested. There is, I think it's also available on the crochet corner website too, the creative crochet corner website. Um But it's got these super cute little bunny hats, just adorable. Look at these little ears and then a very generous brim um which can be folded up and you can, you might be saying, well, that's a very large baby hat. And I just wanted to point out that you can do a little family matching because I couldn't resist. I thought, oh my gosh, what's, what would be so cute is if you had some family photos with the whole family and these little bunny hats, um maybe around Easter, maybe just spring time, maybe just any time. Um But I made, you know, it's focused on the baby sizes, but it also goes all the way up through adult sizes as well. So then the little companion piece to these cute little bunny hats is this carrot teether that I designed. Um This is made with the same yarn that I used in the teether that I just showed you today and I'm gonna be talking about that in just a minute. Um But you can hear there's crinkle paper inside the carrot which makes it a little bit more fun for them to hang on to and probably chew on. Um And then I also looped this little green stuff. I looped it around a wooden ring um which babies love chewing on. I know when I, when I first had my babies I thought, why do they want to chew on wood? They don't really want it. They don't really chew on that, do they? And they totally do. They totally chew on the wood because they're trying to work those little teeth through their gums, you know. So they need something to, hard to bite on to and that just helps them feel a little bit better. So, um, they love these. So this is just a plain wooden ring. It's not treated with anything, it's just wood and it's safe for babies to chew on. Um, it's nice and smooth and then you can take this off. You can pull this all the way through your carrots and then pull the ring off in order to or you can even just pull it this way too. You can pull it off over the ring like that. So if you need to get a new ring, like if they chew on it so much that they crack through the wood, which happened to my kids a couple of times, um, you can get a new ring and put it on or if you need to throw this through the laundry, you can do that, you know, pull the ring off of it. Um But yeah, it makes it a really nice, um, really nice gift is to have a little toy that has something attached to a little wooden ring for babies to chew on. So I mentioned I wanted to talk about this yarn for a second here. So I did put a little note in your download about um a certain kind of certification that some companies are looking for now um for some of their yarn lines and I don't know how to pronounce this. I've only seen this written, I've never heard anyone say this, but it's, it's right here on this little. Um I don't know if you guys can see this but it's a capital Oeko and then it says text underneath it. And so this is a, a standard that um basically means that the yarn was produced without, you know, a certain list of harmful chemicals. Um So of course babies chew on everything and I'm not here to tell you you shouldn't let your baby chew on, you know, other kinds of yarn or whatever it is that you have. I'm not saying that at all. Um I'm just saying if you are, if you're making this for someone who, where you think the parents are gonna be more concerned or if you're more concerned about what your baby is putting in their mouth, um then you can look for this little um certification on certain yarns will have this on there so that, you know, that, you know, it's not gonna have certain harmful substances in it. So, um I did put a link in the download about that and I gave you like some links to some of the um like uh online yarn stores that offer this or that have this on their, some of their yarn lines. Um, the yarn that I chose for this, the teether that I taught you today and also for this um this has that kind of standardization um or certification rather sorry. Um So that makes it, you know, makes me feel like it's a little bit safer for babies to be chewing on that. Ok. And let's see, there was one more thing I wanted to talk about. Ok. Oh, ok. So one thing to think about and maybe this just seems obvious, um is that when you are, um, when you're crocheting something for a baby, you have to think about not just like what you want to make, I mean, you can just think about what you want to make for that baby, but also think about like who the parents are if you know who they are. Um maybe you're making this to donate and that's fine. But think about, you know, if you know them, if they're gonna be able or if they're going to want to walk this in a certain way, whatever you're giving them. So maybe you're a person who normally uses hand wash fibers. This might be a time where you try something else like you could use a super wash wool or you could use um acrylic or cotton or whatever it is, you know, that makes sense for your project. But just think about like, how someone's going to take care of it because I know for me when I had my kids, you know, before that I was like, oh, yeah, I can totally hand wash all my pretty wool sweaters. And then when I had my kids, I was like, nope, I'm never gonna put them in that because I know I'm gonna have to hand wash that. Nope. That's just gonna be a pretty thing that doesn't get used. So, you know, you want these things to be used, you want them to be, you know, loved by the baby and the parents. So just that's something to think about is what, you know, just give that a little bit of extra consideration. Another thing of course and maybe this seems obvious but um think about the season that the baby is going to be born in and what size to make based on that. So maybe you're like, oh, I want to make a little baby sweater. I'm gonna make a little baby sweater, but maybe when they're born it's going to be, you know, the middle of the summer and super hot and the parents are never gonna put them in that little baby sweater maybe for the photo and that, that would be it. So you might want to think about just making something that's a little bit bigger, you know, maybe you want to make a six month size or a nine month size or something just to make sure that it's gonna fit when the weather is cooler. So that's just another thing, another thing to think about, um, when you're trying to figure out what, you know, what you want to make and, um, yeah, just to make sure that it fits. So, let me just check in here real quick. Oh, Debbie is saying that the crinkle paper would be great for cat toys. Yes. Or dog toys too. I know some dogs really like that. My cat loves the crinkle. As soon as I get this out from working on a project, he just comes right in and he's like give it to me, give it to me. Yep. All right. It looks like I've answered or responded. Oh, I did want to talk about the burp cloth thing real quick. Um So, and this would not really be complete without talking about baby blankets for a second as well. So, um I don't have a specific baby blanket pattern, but I did make a square like AAA blanket pattern. It was called the gallery throw that's made up of a bunch of different squares and any of those squares could be, I mean, you could make the gallery throw as is and just choose some colors that you like for the baby or you can take any one of those squares and make that square into a blanket. So for some of those squares, you start at the center and work your way out and you could just keep going till it's the size of a baby blanket for others. You work back and forth in turn row. So you could decide. Ok. Well, this, this, um, blanket square measures, you know, eight inches wide. I can't remember if that's true. So however wide it measures. And then you can think how wide you want your blanket to be. And then you could take the width of your blanket, divide it by however wide that um square is in my pattern. And then you could just chain that amount of stitches to have the full width of the blanket. You can make a whole blanket out of any of those stitch patterns. So there are some resources there for you as well. Um And I did write up um sort of instructions on how to make any stitch pattern into a blanket. So that will be coming, coming to the website hopefully soon. Um Because I know that that would be a really nice resource for people to have because sometimes you just, you really wanna make something with a certain stitch pattern, but you can't find a written up blanket pattern for that. Um So this would take the guesswork out of it for you. So that's gonna be so watch for that. That's gonna be coming soon and back to circling around, back to the burp cloth. Um So I used to think like before I had my kids, I was, like, burp cloth. Like, can't you just use a towel or a washcloth? And one of the two, like, do you really need a separate thing? Like, do you really need another thing? Yeah. And then it turned out, yes, I did. It was so, I, I just was not fully prepared for how much laundry that was about to happen at my house once I had those babies and it was really nice having exactly the right size to throw over my shoulder and it wasn't a whole big towel hanging off the edge and then, you know, they burp up on it and then you have to wash a lot more laundry. Right. So, it's nice to have those burp cloths. That is a really nice gift to give someone. Um, because I mean, I don't know if other people think the way that I do but other people might not think, oh, maybe I don't, I don't really need to buy burp cloths. Right. I could just get some cute little baby towels and I'm just focusing more on the cute little clothes. Um, but it is a really nice thing to give somebody because, you know, once that baby is born and maybe some babies aren't as earthy as my babies were. But it really helps to just have the right things. A nice stack of them so you can throw them in the laundry, have some going through the laundry while you still have a stack of them sitting on the dresser ready for you. And the last thing I wanted to mention um for ideas for, oh, we have a little comment here. Eleanor is saying my friends and I made one for a baby in our church with ridged squares in different colors and sewed them together. Awesome. I I'm guessing you're talking about, I, I wonder if you're talking about the gallery throw or maybe you're just talking about a blanket, made, made a blanket for a baby. Oh, that's so cute. That's fun. Um, so the last thing I wanted to mention and this kind of goes along with the cleaning of the babies is that a really awesome gift to give new parents is a little bundle of washcloth. So I've got a couple of them on the Creative Crochet corner website. There is the Mini Meadow, mini Meadow washcloths I think is what it's called, but it's like a little basket. It's about this big and then there's this little flower shaped, small little washcloths in there and, and you make a big stack of them or there's also um, a pattern, there's a couple of patterns that John Lucas did, I think for washcloths that are free patterns on the website as well as there's a download for a trio of dishcloths that all kind of go together. They all have like, um, when I designed those washcloth, I wanted them to be reversible a little bit nibbly but not um, thin enough that they would dry quick enough. Um, not so thick and heavy. So that would also be a really great option too because, and I mean, maybe you're thinking washcloth, like that's not as exciting as a baby sweater. But I super appreciated having a whole bunch of wash class. I just was not prepared. I was not prepared for how messy the babies were gonna be. So that was very much appreciated and then you can, I mean, I'm still using them and my kids were born a long time ago so you can, you know, that's like a gift that just keeps on giving. Um, and people will really appreciate that, that handmade touch. So, all right. Well, I hope that you guys have gotten some inspiration from this live tutorial and I hope you have some fun making some baby stuff. Thank you so much. I'll see you at my next live. Bye.