Cover up!

I’ve already been asked to post that baby gear I’ve been talking about last time.. well here it is:

I’ve never been too fond of standard changing mats – although there actually are some beautiful ones (that just don’t fit in the „standard“ – category). So the thought of making didn’t seem entirely off and now came the best occasion ever as my sister’s expecting. They have a very small nursery and are making multi-function use of an antique dresser – it’s going to serve as storage and changing table at the same time. That dresser used to be part of our great-grandparent’s bedroom furniture which is now scattered amongst the family. The armoire hold’s my children’s clothing as well as some of mine (that thing is huge!), and the bed frames now sit unused in my parent’s attic. Anyway, back to the dresser: It features a grand oval mirror and a marble top and called for something special as a changing mat, aside from the fact that a standard-sized mat just wouldn’t fit. Therefore I went ahead and bought some rubber foam about 2 inches thick, molleton fabric to cover it and oilcloth for the outside.

Here’s what it looks like:

Changing mat

Turtle made it into this post, too!

I cut the foam to a square sized 24 x 31“, and covered that in molleton. I followed the method I used for making bags before – leaving one side open. Then I slipped the foam square in and closed the open side by hand (rather untidily, but it’ll be covered and unseen 99.9% of the time. Then I made the top of the cover from the beautiful, sort of vintage-looking olive oilcloth and spend quite some time figuring out how to make the corners. I then adapted a method I’ve previously used for tablecloth, but I didn’t think of taking pictures while I did that and I’m not quite sure I’d be able to legitimately explain what I did. Anyway I did this twice – boxing the corners and leaving .75 inches of the cover fabric for sewing on the backing. For that I used two peaces of black fabric I already had around, I left them overlapping a bit and added some velcro tape to hold them together. That way the cover can be removed in case it should ever get too filthy for a simple wipe-down. Eventually I put drops of ABS latex milk on the back to keep the mat from sliding of the marble dresser-top.

Another picture of the ensemble – don’t you just love the elephants my sister painted on the wall?

Wall with elephants

Another thing I’ve been planning to re-cover for a long time, and now finally did is my old nursing pillow. It went from yellow with flowers and lions to a more livingroom-friendly cream with tiny blue dots and brown piping. Let’s face it – nursing pillows do tend to end up on sofas or chairs, so why shouldn’t they have a sophisticated look to themselves, too?

Nursing pillow

I used the old cover as my pattern and hid a zipper under the piping (of which I am rather proud).

Nursing pillow close

I’m curious – have you re-covered anything lately?