Space Ghost Baby Sleeper

As a long time reader of This Mama Makes Stuff, I knew that I wanted to try my hand at her T-shirt to Newborn Gown tutorial.

This used to be my husband's Space Ghost t-shirt. He wore it so often that it was starting to get holes in it, and yet he refused to part with it.

When I suggested that maybe I could bring some new life to the shirt by making it into something for the baby, he was more than happy to donate the shirt.

The tutorial is fairly straight forward, but it does require some techniques that might be a little scary to new sewers.

Once you actually start putting the gown together, it's actually a pretty easy pattern- but if you're twitchy about inserting elastic or zig zag stitching a collar that's probably going to get wavy (meaning, it won't lie flat as you sew), this might not be a tutorial for you.

Now that I've used the pattern once, I'm hoping to put one or two sleepers together before the baby arrives- we definitely have some more shirts we love that won't work for us, but have plenty of material for a baby sleeper.

In case you're wondering: this was a men's sized L shirt previously, and I had way more than enough fabric to work with for the pattern.

(Apologies for the not so great picture quality, all I had on hand was my iPhone- the camera's in the hospital bag already.)

Super Mario Brothers Nursery

I know, I know it's been ages since I've posted anything. I've been doing things it's just that none of those things have been very original in the crafts or baking department. I apologize.

But, I'm back! With two projects that I had so much fun doing, I had to share.

Months ago, when my husband and I started talking about what we wanted to do with the nursery my goal was to choose something that wasn't sold as a set in Babies 'R Us. There's nothing wrong with that, but there also aren't a lot of gender neutral options (and we don't know our baby's gender).

I offered up two choices to my husband "Under the Sea" or "Super Mario Brothers." Being the gamer and technology lover that he is, he chose Super Mario Brothers and then asked my why I'd even bothered to come

up with a second idea.

Originally, I thought we were going to have to hand paint most of the decor in the room. We had a lot of time before the baby's arrival so I figured it would be no problem. When I told my sister about our idea, she found something even easier. Re-positionable wall stickers from Blik (found over at Think Geek). We ultimately decided to go with the New Super Mario Brothers stickers (because I wanted to include some of the newer characters that weren't around in the Classic game).

A lot of people have looked at me like I'm crazy when I tell them how we've decorated the nursery. I've also often been told that this is a "boy" room and now we're sure to have a girl. I politely mention that I happen to be a girl and I love playing Super Mario Brothers. Besides, take a look at a few other pictures and tell me this room isn't awesome.

The flying Goomba and Koopa protecting coins were a perfect fit for our Cape Cod ceiling.

Mario grabbing a coin before getting the extra life.

A "?" block and some bricks over the crib (my husband says these are here to protect the baby from anything Lakitu might drop). That awesome blanket came from Target.

Now, you might be wondering where the DIY portion of this room is. Don't loose your overalls- because there are definitely a few things in this room that were custom made.

What do you do, you might be wondering, when you create a very unique nursery theme and you can't find matching curtains? Well, you could just go with a plain coordinating color for your curtains. Or...you could make your own!

I searched for a very long time for Super Mario fabric. I failed, hopelessly. So, originally I was thinking I would make blue curtains and maybe putting appliquéd invincibility stars or piranha plants onto them.

But then, a good friend of mine mentioned that she'd seen Super Mario sheets for sale at Target. Sure, they're actually Mario Kart sheets, but good enough for me!

Curtains are probably one of the easiest sewing projects, in my opinion. You are basically just taking the fabric and finishing it in rectangles, with a loop at the top for the curtain rod.

In this instance, I used three different fabrics to make the curtains- a yellow for the curtain rod loop, the flat sheet for the smaller characters, and the pillow case (cut in half) for the larger characters. I also backed the curtains with blackout material- since the sheets were more sheer than your typical curtain fabric. (If you look in the lower right corner of the photo, you can see the lamp from Ikea that was my inspiration for the room- it reminded me of the tree tops in Super Mario Brothers).

Unfortunately, neither the wall stickers nor the sheets had any female characters included. Well, that simply will not do. So, I used a tutorial from How About Orange to create some additional artwork.

I knew I wanted to include Princess Peach, Birdo, and Yoshi. My husband requested Toadette and Bowser.

I love the way these came out- we have more bad guys, some rocking female characters, and original artwork. Hooray!

I'm still hoping to get a laundry bag made from the fitted sheet (from the Mario Kart sheet set) before the baby arrives. If/when that happens, I will post about that as well.