I love to make and sell baby slings. It seems that all babies are happier if they are carried, but sometimes mama's arms get tired (amazing how heavy those tiny babies get!) Most of the time, though, I prefer to tell people how to make their own if they sew because they are so incredibly simple. Plus, if I tell you how to do it then I don't have to spend extra time sewing, packing, printing wearing instructions, and shipping them off.
Here for you today I am sharing how I make a baby sling. Granted, there are lots of other tutorials out there for making baby slings, but I'm not any good at following directions, so here is the way I do it.
1. Hem the long sides of a piece of fabric that is 42-45 inches wide by 2 and 1/2 yards using a narrow hem. The fabric I like best for slings is a slightly stretchy woven cotton poplin.
2. Hem one of the short sides.
3. Fold the unhemmed short side with pleating it across the width so that it ends up about 4 to 6 inches wide. Replace your needle with a size 14 or 16 sharp needle. Baste the pleating down. Serge across the end to neaten it up if you want.
4. Stuff that end into two welded stainless steel rings (get them at Lowes in the hardware aisle for $0.79 each, fold over and sew down with three lines of stitching. Go slow because there is a LOT of fabric under the needles here. You may consider wearing safety glasses. (Actually, my sewing machine manual recommends that I wear safety glasses anyway). Make sure everything is all smooth so that you don't sew extra tucks on the right side of the fabric.
So there you are. Put it on (there are some great sling wearing instructions here, as well as different ways to make other baby carriers) and then you're done!
4 comments:
I LOOVE baby slings! There are some great no-sew directions here at Jan Andrea's Sleeping Baby productions http://sleepingbaby.net/jan/Baby/no_sew.html
if you love this idea but can't sew. (Like, if you're me!)
I always use rings from slingrings.com, they're light and strong and baby safe!
Great subject! (Man I wish my baby wasn't so big!)
That's a great idea to make my own baby sling.. Your method is fast and easy too.. And most important is safety. I'm Moon Loh from Singapore and I name my baby BabyMoon too. Hope you visit her @ http://Coolestbabymoon.com =)
Thanks for the tutorial. What size rings do you use? The largest ones I found at Lowes were 2".
I use those 2" ones from Lowes the most. If you use a 100% cotton like the Kona cotton, that can be a tight squeeze and hard to adjust, so an easy solution is to trim 8-12 inches from ONE long side of the sling. Bigger rings are available from slingrings.com that work great (I like the 3" aluminum ones).
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