My sister just had a baby, her third baby. I have been a bit giddy about it, possibly because my youngest child just turned 5, and I am feeling that the baby years are truly, solidly (finally?!) behind me. With no one at home in diapers, I really enjoy holding, rocking, cuddling my littlest niece.

I also have an excuse to make a few baby presents. I decided to start with embroidering something. Since this baby has two older siblings, I knew my sister to be well stocked in towels, burp cloths, onsies and more. So I settled on a generic white cotton zipper bag. Hopefully it will be useful for storing changes of clothing, extra diapers, who knows what else babies need these days.

I drew a little sketch – three little birds in a nest, and traced it on vellum with heat transfer marker, as instructed on Sublime Stitching. Ironing the design onto the fabric could not have been more satisfying. I almost wanted to stop there and I am now hankering to buy myself some colored transfer markers.

Then came the stitching. I used stem stitch for the nest, chain stitch and lazy daisy stitch for the foliage, and then struggled with stitching the birds. I tried a couple of different stitches but none seemed right. In the end, I just left it with a long and short stitch also from Aimee Ray’s book, Doodle stitching.

There seems to be something a little off about yellow baby chicks in a nest in a tree, but those were the colors I wanted and sometimes you just have to throw in the towel. After all, it’s just a baby present and we all know how quickly they grow up.