Lobolita

What do you do when you have a non-standard-sized cradle for your quickly approaching baby? Well, if you’re me, you make a custom-sized mattress and sheets for it. If you’re me, you also photograph said process, with the intent of putting up a tutorial on your blog. If you’re me, you also forget to photograph the difficult and/or interesting parts of said process, because you are nine months pregnant, and can hardly remember your own name anymore. If you’re me, you also decided to abandon referring to yourself in the third (second?) person, because you just can’t hack it anymore.

So yeah, I made a mattress and sheets, but I’m not sure if I can call this a tutorial, because I’m not sure that somebody who doesn’t know what they’re doing would be able to take these directions and use them to make anything worthwhile.  Well, anyway, here goes.

Materials for the Mattress
2″ thick firm foam, cut to the measurements of your cradle, in this case 18.5″ x 36.5″
Upholstery lining fabric (Any sturdy fabric will do)
Waterproof fabric (I used vinyl tablecloth fabric from Joann)
Thread, needles, pins, etc.

1. Cut the necessary fabrics to size. Since my cradle measures 18.5″ x 36.5″, I cut the foam to that size using sharp scissors, and cut the waterproof fabric and lining fabric to measure 21″ x 39″. The formula I used was surface measurement+ 1/2 height measurement+1/4″ seam allowance. Since this is 2″ foam, that resulted in 21″ x 39″.

2. Right sides together, pin waterproof fabric to lining fabric and sew fabric into a pocket, leaving most of one short side unsewn. Make sure to sew around all four corners, though, so that you can box them in the next step.

3. Box the corners. This blog shows you how I did it. Isn’t the internet wonderful?

4. Turn the pocket right-side out and stuff in the foam, being careful to fit the corners neatly into the corners of the casing. Hand-stitch the remaining opening. Voila.

Tomorrow I’ll show you how I made the sheets. They’re cute. They have dogs and monkeys.