A Baby Book for my Big Boy

This project has been over a year in the making, or rather, in the planning. It was started as a first birthday gift for Colin, and then languished in my sewing box for the next year and a half. It's only now, when I've been on maternity leave for a week and still have Colin in day care full time, that I've been able to finish it. And it's been the perfect little project to put me in the right headspace for having another baby. I mean, who wouldn't want to have another baby after looking at those chubby baby cheeks and that single dimple for hours at a time?!

The pattern comes from Amy Butler's wonderful book, Little Stitches for Little Ones, although I made a few modifications of my own: such as the last-minute felt and embroidery on the cover. The fabric is "My Happy Garden" from Cloud9 Fabrics, with some Japanese import fabric for the cover--which happened to match the "mushroom" motif perfectly. (You might remember my crazy obsession with mushrooms from last year.) However, all the fabrics were just remnants from Colin's baby quilt, which I *did* finish in time for his first birthday.


Although it may look a little complicated, the only tricky part was editing and printing the photos to scale on the photo fabric (and at $5 an sheet, it was also the most expensive part of the project). But Colin gets such a kick out of seeing pictures of himself and those he knows that I knew it would be worth it. I started this little photo album so that, from his infancy, he would be familiar with everyone in our family--even though they may live thousands of miles away. But now that he is a toddler, and has seen everyone many times and talks to them all regularly on Skype, he's the one telling us about all the people in the photos: his Mae Mae and Pops, his Nan and Grampa, Mama and Daddy, and uncle Stark.

He's also started telling us little stories about the people in the pictures: "Mae Mae has a big hat, but here she has no hat. Why?" or "That's a happy Mama and happy Daddy and happy Colin, and all wear stripes." My favourite story is: "That baby in the crib wants his mama to pick him up." So far the book has been a wonderful insight into that growing little brain of his--something that was definitely worth the wait.