How to Make Adorable Baby Onesies

So last weekend I went to my very first baby shower!  If I learned one thing from the experience, it is that I have absolutely no self control when it comes to baby-related items.  As soon as I walked into the baby section, I was like:

For reals.  I may or may not have overdone it.  No regrets though because as the saying goes "Go big or go home!" ;)

The hostess of this shower--Leah--was super nice and totally awesome.  Look at these invitations that she drew by hand!!  If you look closely, you'll notice that the blocks even spell out the baby's due date--2/18/13.  How cute is that?!

Where can you get these adorable invitations you ask?  Well, what a coincidence because she's got an Etsy store!

I got in touch with Leah early on to see if I could do anything to help with the baby shower, and in the end, I brought all of the materials that we needed to decorate onesies and bibs for "Baby H".  They turned out even better than I had hoped, and everyone loved getting to personalize something for the baby!

I did a bit of research beforehand to find the most fool-proof way to make cute-looking onesies and bibs.  Here is everything that we used:

I got a bunch of onesies in various sizes--both long-sleeved and short-sleeved as I tried to guess-timate how big Baby H would be during certain seasons of the year.  I also managed to find plain bibs, so I got some of those too just to switch things up.

We used "steam-a-seam," which is basically a thin layer of plastic (initially sandwiched between two layers of paper) that permanently adheres fabric to another piece of fabric once you iron over it.   We used it to adhere cute fabric shapes to both onesies and bibs.

I realize that not everyone likes to get in touch with their crafty creative side, so before the shower I sketched out some animal shapes onto paper and cut them out.  It kind of takes the pressure off to "come up with a design" when there are some patterns already sitting there waiting for you.  Many people chose to pick a pattern and trace around them, although some people got creative and made their own shapes!  If you're looking to skip this step, check out Etsy for some vendors that sell basic iron-on decals.  I'm not going to lie--I totally had to sketch some of these animal patterns...1...2...3...umm, well, more times than I'd like to admit to get them to resemble furry little critters!

I got several small packs of quilting fabric at my local craft store, but I also had some more in my craft stash here at home.  I tried to keep things bright and represent all of the major colors out there.

I didn't get any pictures during the baby shower because I didn't know many of the people there, and the last thing I wanted for someone's picture to be posted online without them knowing about it!

After the shower, I brought everything home and did a light zig-zag stitch over all of the edges just to make sure that nothing would start to pull off after a few (dozen) washings.  One of the employees at the craft store recommended it--she said that that's what she does when she makes quilt appliqués.  The "steam-a-seam" REALLY sticks though, so even if you didn't sew the edges like I did, I'm sure that it would take many washes for the edges to pull up (if they ever pull up, really).

I was a little nervous at first because about half of the shower invitees were guys, but everyone who came over to decorate a onesie honestly really seemed to enjoy it!

Aren't they adorable?  I wouldn't hesitate to do it again!  Everyone had a lot of fun!