Messy Eaters

Do you have a messy eater in your family? I can ask this as I am one myself! This is largely borne by our slovenly ways of eating our tea from lap trays in front of the TV rather than sitting at the table.  To resolve this problem, instead of making us eat at the table, I made myself a bib.  I got my pattern from the website shown at the end however, since Craftsy ceased a few months ago, it’s no longer available.  The shape is fairly simple though so it’d be easy to draught yourself.  This is my original.

I made this one for my sister (we’re a family of messy eaters, apart from my Mum!) for a funny birthday gift – she had asked for one so I was confident she wouldn’t be offended.  Like me, she is a big cat fan so cat-themed fabric had to be used.   After washing and drying the fabrics to pre-shrink them, I started by cutting out a front, some quilt wadding (extra absorbency!) and a backing (cut out the opposite was to the front).

After attaching the wadding to the back piece, I sewed the front and back together, leaving a gap at the bottom.  I graded the seam allowance and snipped the curves before turning the right way out through the gap and pressing the edges.

Next, I top stitched all around the edge of the bib before marking up quilting lines.  This step is entirely optional but I think it looks nice.  I use a heat erasable pen called Pilot Frixion (from Amazon, of course!) to draw my lines.  After sewing the quilting lines, I ran the iron over the bib and all the pen marks disappeared, like magic!

The last job was to attach some Velcro for fastening, although snaps or press studs would work equally well.

And here’s the finished article!

To make it look a bit nicer as a gift, I folded it and wrapped with a ribbon and a fun tag. Have I given you a top Christmas gift idea??!