Hello friends. This is a project that I have wanted to get back to for some time now. It all began with an outward facing, slobbering baby in a baby bjorn, my first-born, Jet.  Day after day my baby boy would suck and gum the life out of this thing that he so loved to hang out in. I would wash it fairly frequently, but still, I couldn’t help thinking how unsanitary it was that he was re-wetting the same spot over and over.  Kinda gross.  And then I saw it, at the park, a mom with a slip-cover for her bjorn!  Brilliant!  I ventured over to her, still kind of shy as a new mama, and asked her where in the world did she get that bjorn cover?  “Etsy”, she replied.  What was that?  I had never heard of Etsy (4 years ago!). 

Well, since I am one of the “I-can-do-that” types, I decided to figure out my own bjorn-cozy.  My first attempt (two years after the incident at the park, and now with a second slobbering baby) turned out pretty good:

This is the only photo documentation I have of it; we weren’t blogging quite yet! Say hi to my husband, Pei!  Though I was proud of this construction, and my first self-designed pattern, I knew it could be improved.   My chance to try it again came recently, as our big sister Erika had her first baby boy in May.  Baby Sean is just now facing out in his bjorn and so I set to work:

I was dying to use this fabric that I purchased a couple of years ago from our local fabric boutique Les Fabriques, but I could not find any fabric to match it!  I brought it back to Les Fabriques and the sales woman remembered the fabric, though we both cannot recall the designer, and we scoured the place for something that could work.  Only in the fat quarter section did we spot something that came remotely close…

Halleluja! My “inside” pattern fit the size of the fat quarter!  This is great news for me because I tend to be something of a fat quarter hoarder.  Okay, that’s gotta be the name of someone’s blog somewhere- Fat Quarter Hoarder! 

I created a little pocket with the inside fabric, if you can see it.  It will capture the tail of the bjorn, but still leaves room for the snap connections to be made.   Now, the tricky part…

stuffing it in.  I think I should probably expand the pattern another quarter of an inch around.  A bit snug.

Hey wait, how’d that get in there?  Okay, let’s be honest, when Mommy gets wrapped up in a photo shoot for the blog,  neglected children get wrapped up in other things!  AVERY!  Eh hem, where was I?

Ah yes, snug as a bug in a rug.  Ready to be gifted to the ridiculously adorable, super slobbery Baby Sean!

Is he cute or what?  I am looking forward to making many more of these fun cozies (I’ve got the fat-quarters to use up!).  Considering my own little Etsy shop full of them.  What do you think?

~Caroline