Make your own teething pads for Ergo baby carrier

Recently I was asked to make a pair of ‘teething pads’ to fit around the straps of an Ergo baby carrier, with a loop at the top for hanging toys from.  In case you want to know how to make something similar, I’m writing a brief tutorial!

My friend carrying her baby in the Ergo carrier, with my teething pads attached

The dimensions I was given to work from were width 8cm, length 12cm, with an overlap of 3cm.

You will need:

• 2 pieces of soft 100% cotton (main fabric), cut to a rectangle measuring twice the given width + overlap + seam allowance
• 2 pieces of fleece or light quilt batting (same measurements)
• 2 pieces soft backing fabric such as thick cotton jersey or towelling (same measurements)
• about 5 inches ribbon (no wider than 5/8″)
• popper tape – around 12″
• thread

What to do:

Lay the main fabric wrong sides together with the fleece or batting and baste around the edge or serge together.

Cut a 2.5″ length of ribbon, fold it in half and place along the longer, top edge of the main fabric/fleece piece, having right sides together and raw edges even, approximately 2″ in from the top right hand corner.  Now lay your chosen backing fabric on top, right sides together, sandwiching the ribbon between the layers.  Pin in place.

Starting 1/3 of the way along the bottom edge, sew towards the bottom left corner, then up to the top left corner, continuing to sew all around the edge of the rectangle until you reach 1/3 of the way along the bottom edge on the right hand side.  Backstitch to reinforce.  You should be left with a gap at the centre bottom.

Remove pins and clip the corners as shown above, then turn right sides out through the gap.  Press, then topstitch into place around all edges, securing the opening closed as you do so.

Now sew your popper tape on.  You can overlap, but I found it to be very bulky this way, so I sewed both sides of the popper tape to the wrong side of the pads (i.e. the jersey side), so they would just close like a book.

Pop them onto your baby carrier and you’re good to go!

Thank you to my friend for the photos 🙂