Sewing: DIY Ring Sling – For Babywearing

Need your hands free to get things done around the house? To wrangle your toddlers while keeping your baby happy? Or do you just want to keep your little one close to you but not spend a fortune? This was my very first ever sewing project, so you can do it too!

I’ve wanted to learn to sew ever since I was in grade 9, but just never got the motivation to learn. When I got married my desire to learn to sew grew even more, but we’ve done 5 international moves (with only our suitcases!) in our 7 years of marriage, so a sewing machine just wasn’t practical. As we are now finally settling into Australia, and I’ve got some spare time in the evenings, I decided it was time.

Another thing nudging me to take the plunge into sewing, is my new-found interest in babywearing since the birth of my third child. This started out of necessity: needing to have my hands free so that I could cook, clean, and run around after my 2 and 5 year olds. But it quickly became an obsession. I love having her close to me, and I love the wide variety of different carriers.

After purchasing my fourth baby carrier, my husband said no more. BUT in order to learn to sew, you need to actually sew something, and I’ve had my eye out for a ring sling for a while – thus began my first sewing project!

What you will need:

Sewing machine
Thread
Scissors
Iron
Rings – I use slingrings, they are currently the industry standard for Ring Slings
Fabric (2-2.5 m – the one I made was 2 meters)

The type of fabric you buy is very important when making any baby carrier – any fabric that isn’t strong enough could result in your baby falling, and no one wants that! This blog post is a great resource for baby carrier fabrics (and making your own baby carrier)

I decided to use “drill” for my fabric. Primarily I just really wanted a chevron pattern, and it was also on sale at Spotlight. With ring slings ideally you want a fabric that shows the pattern on both sides, as you will see the “wrong” side in the tail that hangs down from the rings, but I’m happy with how mine turned out.

Alright, so you will need 2-2.5 meters of fabric depending on your size, baby’s size, and your desired length of tail. It’s probably best to go longer, as you can always cut the excess fabric off (or you fold up and sew the excess to use as a pocket on the tail)

Cut the fabric so it’s approx 76 cm (30 inches) wide.
Hem along the length on both sides, and along one of the short ends (this will be the tail)
There are several different shoulder styles for ring slings: I did a basic “gathered” shoulder using this video from Sleeping Baby Productions
Get your baby and wear them! (and use the TICKS guidelines to make sure you are wearing them safely)

If you’ve never used a ring sling before, here’s a video showing you how to thread the ring sling and another showing how to get bubs into the ring sling and comfy.

Originally posted 2013-11-17 22:52:01.