A poncho and shoes for a baby

A friend from church recently had a baby girl (who is completely adorable! ~ Probably because she looks a lot like my babies did! :-) and I wanted to give her something homemade for the shower. It has been a very cool summer here and so I started thinking about warm and cozy things.
I had seen a cute tutorial on how to make baby shoes/slippers so I thought that would be fun to try and then I thought a hooded poncho might be a nice easy way to cuddle up a baby so I figured out how to make one of those. I am just curious, have any of you had a poncho for a baby? I haven't, but it seems to me they might be very handy but I am just not sure.

For a cute and simple shoe tutorial you can visit Stardust Shoes.

And now for how I made the poncho:

First you want to figure out how big you want it. (You could make these for any size person.) If you have the person available you can measure them from fingertip to fingertip and get a pretty good size idea, if the person is not available you will have to be like me and guess.

You can make ponchos round or square but I chose to make mine round. I fold up the fabric in quarters (like you would fold a washcloth) and then cut it like pictured above. Mine had a diameter of about 30 inches. After cutting the rounded bottom I cut a circle out in the middle for the head to go through. You don't want to make this to big but it definitely shouldn't be to small either! ( I am sure that was very helpful!) I also cut out a piece of fabric for the hood. The picture above shows the round piece all laid out and the hood fabric folded in half. The hood is twice as long as it is wide. This one is around 9x18 inches. I then sewed the hood fabric together up the back. Then as I didn't want it coming to a point in the back, I pinched a triangle and sewed a seam across that and then cut the triangle off. (I don't know how to explain it very well but hopefully you can look at the picture and understand. And if you don't understand, don't worry about it as it isn't an essential step.)

Next I folded the face edge of the hood under and sewed it- making a casing for elastic to go through. I inserted the elastic and then I pinned the poncho on the hood. I had to put in a couple of pleats to make it fit as the hole and the hood weren't perfect matches.

After sewing the seam, I went over it again with a top stitch to make sure it was sturdy and there weren't any lose edges.

The final step was to hem the poncho and I also added a trim of ric-rac. It was a very fun and simple project!
Here is Megan, my 3 year old, trying it on. It looks rather snug because I designed it for a 6 month old not a 3 year old.

If you have any questions please ask away in the comments. I will try to answer to the best of my ability.
Just now the project I am working on is Pannier bags for our bicycles. We are planning a family biking trip and we need to be able to haul our camping stuff. I am having lots of fun and can't wait to tell you about them- especially if they end up working well! :-) If you have any advice on making pannier bags or biking trips with young children I would love to hear it!

What projects do you have going on at your houses?