Hi Mommies! I have stumbled on an article regarding making your very own baby sling. Slings and wraps are pretty expensive and the most popular ones are sometimes ‘too hot’ for tropical weather. With this guidelines, you can make your own with your choice of fabric and design. I have yet to do this myself but will post my progress. This set of instructions are for making a RING SLING. Will post some more sling-variants soon. Hope this helps!
A Simple Ring Sling
Before you Begin:
Preshrink the fabric. To ease in hemming/seaming, the short/cut ends may be torn along the straight grain before washing for an even edge. To do this, cut about 1" into the fabric, about 1.5-2" from the cut edge. Grab hold of one side of the cut with each hand and pull until the rip reaches the opposite selvage. Repeat for other cut end. To limit ravelling in the wash, clip a small triangle of fabric out of each corner before laundring. Examine the selvage edges (running the length of the 3 yards). Will these edges be suitable for the finished sling? If yes, leave them alone. If no, hem each selvage edge before sewing the sling. Hem towards the wrong side. A rolled hem foot is a quick way to do this, but a 1/4" turn and then turn again works just as well.
- Fold right sides together along the 3 yard length.
- Seam one short end.
- Fold wrong sides together. The seam just sewn will now be sandwiched inside the folded long layers.
- Hem opposite short end to the inside (wrong side) using whatever sort of hem desired. A nice wide hem looks elegant. A decorative stitch can be used to great effect here.
- Measure about 8 inches from seamed end and fold. This will have the seam exposed (away from the shoulder) with normal wear. If wished for the seam to be hidden (towards the shoulder) fold the opposite way.
- Mark the long length of fabric with pins where the seamed end stops.
- Insert the rings over the seamed end and snug them down to the fold.
- Re-align the seamed end with the pins and pin to secure.
- Seam with a strong seam. This is another place to use decorative stitches if desired.
- Enjoy wearing your baby. The sling tail may be knotted when the sail effect is not desirable. The 44 or so inches that can be unfolded from the tail end makes a wonderful nursing coverup, sun/wind/rain guard, changing pad stand in, etc.
You can attach the image here, too. After clicking on reply, just click on additional options underneath the white box you write in and you’ll find a place to attach 