Nursing Cover 'Tutorial'

As I mentioned in this post, I was supposed to post my wee 'tutorial' on how I made my nursing cover. There's not much to it but here it is anyhow!

Here's the inspiration:

Dria Cover - The Mama Maven

I wanted to buy the real deal and save myself from making one as I was busy in the middle of creating the Master's nursery (which was a crash-makeover done in under a month), but alas, I don't think they even ship to little ol' New Zealand. Boo.

I did look at buying other nursing covers but for some reason they all look like aprons and even the tutorials online for making nursing covers are all of the apron variety. No, I wanted something that could pass as a regular top. And the bonus of this particular nursing cover is that it covers all around the back so there's no fear of accidentally exposing some back muffin top sweetness.

Double bonus: it's multi-purpose, so you can you use it as a stroller cover or capsule cover as well.

Materials:

• stretchy lightweight knit fabric (I bought 1.5m from Lincraft - see pic below)
• sewing machine
• thread to match
• tape measure or super wicked long ruler
• sharp scissors that haven't been near sticky tape
• pins - a crap load

Same range of fabric just different colour to mine (which is grey)

Instructions:

The best way to describe this poncho nursing cover thing is that it's a big ass rectangle with a neck hole in the middle. 

The End.

Just kidding. Here's a helpful little picture I whipped up Paint. If you couldn't tell, I'm Picasso reincarnated. 

Sorry if it's a little hard to read - just click on it and BOOM it'll be big. 

As for the raw edges, I just roared through it with my little Singer sewing machine. If you've got some fabric scraps left, I highly suggest you do a practise run. 

Put the setting to zigzag (a MUST when you're working with stretchy fabric - otherwise there's no give), fiddle with the stitch length as well as the width. Keep running it through until you hit the magic combination. Stretchy fabrics are notoriously difficult to work with, but I found it ridiculously easy once I'd found my sweet spot with the combination. It took me 1 minute max to figure out what worked well for my fabric and I ended up whizzing around all the raw edges in no time. 

Just fold the edges over a little, pin down and whiz through. 

Yup. My sewing skills are totally pro. Of course I read the instruction manual what are you talking about. o_o;;

Anyway, lousy finished product photos!!

Tada!

Almost 6 months preggo here - seriously tiny baby bump

Here it is on the capsule - because it's stretchy, you can tie it up!

I wrote about our Maxi-Cosi capsule and how handy it was for us during the infancy stage in this post. (And actually it would have been handy if I'd used this pic for that post! I only just found this deep in the dusty crevices of old Picasa collages).

Sadly, the master refused to nurse so I can't speak from experience about it's nursing-covering abilities BUT I did use it when the Master went through a particularly bad growth spurt and the only way I could get him to nap was to carry him for the entirety of the nap. The cover helped block out visual distractions while he tried to sleep. (This is before we read that when sleep regression happens, you've just gotta enforce nap times no matter the amount of screaming - within reason of course). 

Sleeping bub

Hangin' from his sling - my arms got too sore carrying him so the sling was awesome

View from the top

As for how this performed in the wash, I just threw it in a delicates wash bag and let it go for a quick 30min cold wash and let it line dry (despite the fabric instructions. I'm a rebel!).

And as for how I got the small fart to go back to napping at his usual times, I just put him down, tucked him in, ignored the screaming for 30mins, went back in, picked him up and consoled him. Rinse and repeat. If after 1.5hrs he was still up, I just brought him downstairs to try again for the next nap. After just 1.5 days, he went back to napping no probs. It may have helped that I'd previously done sleep-training with him twice before. So this was our 2nd refresher course.

His sleep pattern has changed once again since (rises later in the morning, later naps that are shorter) but it was nowhere near as difficult as that sleep regression phase. He still goes down happily and lies in his crib till he falls asleep. Or if he's not tired, he just plays in his crib until I get him. 

(Every baby is different. I personally chose a more 'tough love' approach, but don't let others tell you what to do. You know your baby best, you do what suits you and your baby best!).

A.V.