Every nursery needs a growth chart to record the height of the child as he grows. So, I knew I wanted to buy one or make my own in a teddy bear theme. I looked around and didn't see one that really took my fancy, but I did find a DIY growth chart here that I knew I could adapt. I liked the jute webbing she used, because it's very suited to the colors I'm using as well as looking masculine. I couldn't find any locally though, so I had to order it from an Etsy seller.
My first step was to measure and cut it to the length I wanted. Since 6 feet seems to be the standard, that's what I went with, but I left 6" off the bottom for clearance of a baseboard, etc. Then I turned the top and bottom under and glued them, again using my favorite Aleene's Fabric Fusion. I bought a curtain grommet and added it to the top for hanging the growth chart. Once I had that done, I started marking feet and inches on the jute with a blue sharpie.
Instead of using stencils for the numbers as was done in the tutorial, I found some red felt numbers with adhesive backs. These were so easy to attach.
Since I wanted to have a teddy bear chart, I was fortunate to find a roller at Hobby Lobby that has paw prints on it. I knew I could use paint on the roller to add some bear tracks to the growth chart in between the numbers.
Adding the bear tracks was a little tricky. I tried not to make more than four tracks each time, since that was how many paws were on the roller, but I did go over a little several times. And sometimes I had to go over the paint again with my sponge brush to fill in gaps where the paint was thin. Actually, it struck me while I was doing this that I could have used two different size of the round sponge brushes to make the paws instead of buying the roller, one for the foot and a smaller one for the toes.
When I finished the paws, I added some appliques. There's a bear in a baseball cap at the top and a baseball at the bottom. And although the baby can't be measured yet, I have some bear safety pins and key tags on which his height can be recorded whenever he gets to that point.
