This week, one of the Calico Laine team, Alex has just given birth to a beautiful baby boy. Her and her husband Andy have named the little bundle of joy Zachary James who is now a little brother for their other son, Josh. With the announcement of the safe arrival of Zachary, we have been thinking of all the different things that you could buy from our Fabric Shop for a new member of the family. Although most people would automatically just think of buying material from a Fabric Shop, there are plenty more haberdashery and craft items that you can buy which would be useful when you have a new baby to celebrate. We have a lot of customers who love to knit and in both our Neston and Liscard Fabric Shop we have a great selection of knitting wools that would be perfect for creating a newborn clothing. Our wondersoft double knitting wool is always very popular for making baby booties, matinee coats and cardigans as well as baby blankets for the cot or pram. To finish the garment off, we offer a huge range of buttons to choose as well as ribbons to be added to bonnets and to be used as trimming on blankets. Our best selling ribbons for baby items is our satin ribbon in 7mm, 10mm and 15mm in white, pale pink and pale blue. If you want to decorate the nursery for the little one, a Fabric Shop is the idea place to visit as you can use cotton and polycotton fabrics to create some bunting which can then be hung across the room to add some colour and pattern to the walls. Bunting works really well when you mix pattern and plain fabrics together. Using cotton plain fabric along with polka dot prints, striped prints and animal prints you can make a stunning decoration for the nursery without spending lots of money. Simply cut out triangles from the fabric and sew them together with a bias binding or cotton tape to hang it up. If you are a little more skilled with your sewing, you can also visit your local Fabric Shop to buy material to make some new outfits for your baby. Something else that can be found in our Liscard Fabric Shop is our range of toy components which can be used to make a teddy bear or animal toy for the arrival to keep for years to come. It is probably best to give the toy to the baby when they are slightly older due to health and safety issues but it is a project that can be made with love and kept in the nursery until the baby is old enough to use it. Toy components that are available in store include safety eyes and joints which can be used to make a teddy bear or ragdoll that the baby can treasure for a lifetime.