In South Australia,
CYHWS organises a Mother's Group for people who have had their first child, usually with the babies being around the same age. For six weeks you go to a local outlet and talk about various things with a facilitator and the other Mums or caregivers. We covered settling, feeding, growth, creative play, discipline and so on. I learnt a fair bit, but the best aspect was meeting other first mum's. D and I don't have too many friends with children so it was great to make some new one's.
I wanted to make something for all of the babies as a gift for the last formal meeting we would have and eventually settled on a patchwork ball. My
mum had the pattern in a 1960s pattern book, and rather than just use bought fabrics, I thought I'd do some gocco patches also. I settled on the kids name's, printing some patches with all of their names and other's with the individual baby's name. I also used some of
Lara Cameron's fabric I bought at the
Stitches and Craft Show.
I was very pleased with the end result, and by the end of the 10th one I was a pro!
I was going to make a pdf pattern of the ball, but I stumbled across a very similar pattern whilst on flickr
here. The main difference is that I machine stitched mine and added a bell. If anyone wants tips on a machine stitched ball, let me know and I'll make the pattern up.
A big thank you to the women in my Mums'n'Bubs group, Nat, Sue, Natalie, Kerry, Kate, Sam, Deanna, Sarah and Rebecca! We're now meeting fortnightly
here in the Rugby Building, and the other week at various cafe's/parks/pubs about the place.
