The Hanging Cradle
Building a macramed, baby cradle for only a few dollars.
Tired of awkwardly designed, overpriced nursery goods? "You
don't have to put up with them," says Mark White of Kodiak,
Alaska. And Mark should know. Because he (and wife Karen)
designed and made the beautiful cradle you see here... at
as cost of little more than a couple of dollars.
RELATED CONTENT
Building a wooden cradle....
A look at several ways to nurture tender spring seedlings, including Mother tests the seed starters...
Dark, cheap, seedy: Group explores the kitschy, inexpensive pleasures of the dive bar...
An improvised kettle grill using an old basketball hoop, two c-clamps, and a piece of one-inch stee...
The months-long waiting period prior to the birth of our
first child was a joyful time for us . . . and part of its
magic lay in the many preparations we made for our baby's
arrival. Among the first of those preparations was our
construction of a macramed, hanging baby cradle.
We'd looked at some of the space-eating monstrosities
offered by the makers of mass-produced cribs . . .
and—sad to say—we found their wares entirely
impractical. For what we wanted was a cradle that'd be [1]
lightweight, [2] compact, and [3] collapsible for easy
storage . . . and we certainly hadn't found these qualities
in any of the items we'd seen.
Then too, we wanted our firstborn's bed to be soft and warm
and comfortable, to give the child a feeling of security.
Somehow, plywood headboards and prison-like bars didn't
give us that feeling.
Our thinking on cradles was influenced by something else,
too: We wanted our baby to sleep as close to our bed as
possible, so Karen could—if need
be—respond to the infant's cries by lifting him/her
right into bed with us.
In the end, we decided to make our own cradle . . . a
macramed, hanging cradle that we could suspend
over the foot of our bed!
CRADLE COMPONENTS
As you can see from the accompanying illustration, our
baby's hanging bed consists of three components: [1] an
open, rectangular, wooden "upper frame", [2] a one-piece
hardboard bottom, and [3] interwoven nylon twine sides.
The upper frame measures 20" X 28" (a bit on the small
side, we've found) and consists of four pieces of scrap
two-inch lumber joined together by five-inch-long No. 12
wood screws. Along the length of each framing member I
drilled pairs of holes—1/4" in diameter and spaced
3/4" apart-every two inches, to accommodate the strands of
twine. (Altogether, then, I made ten pairs of holes in each
28" framing member and six pairs along each 20" piece.)
Naturally, for our child's safety I sanded each piece of
wood carefully after drilling, to eliminate splinters.
Page: 1 |
2 |
3 |
Next >>
