Mittens: Something for ME! :)

We've been in a cold snap here over the last few days. Hopefully our last one before warm weather comes to stay for good. But, of course, I had to have two lacrosse games to coach during this period. I still have the lovely thick stadium jacket that I wore on the sidelines of lacrosse games back in college in New England (now that was cold!) and a hat, but only one mitten. After dealing with cold hands on Sunday through a thrilling overtime win that took over 2 hours, I decided that it was time to sit down and sew a little something for me! :)

I got lacrosse fleece from Hancock Fabric back when I first started sewing. I keep meaning to sew up fleece pants for the kids with it, but I've just never gotten around to it. So I had plenty left to make some mittens for myself.

The pattern is Simplicity 2743, size medium. I originally bought it to sew a fleece vest for Littles, which I still plan to do for next winter (the pattern starts at child size 4), so the mittens pattern was just a bonus!

I followed the pattern pretty closely, except I used zig zag stitching for the elastic at the wrists, for a decorative effect. Also, the pattern called for a contrast piece on the front. Instead, I just put the contrast piece pattern and the main front piece pattern together and cut it as one big piece.

They were very easy to sew (maybe two hours from cutting to both finished) and turned out well! And they helped keep my hands warm at my game yesterday! (Another win! Go team!)

Yes, even more baby gifts!

Hubby knows about as many people having babies as I do. One of his co-workers has a newborn at home, and his boss's wife is due any day. They both live in Boise and are big Boise State fans, so Hubby asked me if I could make some things for their babies.

Hubby neglected to tell me that the Boise State colors are bright blue and bright orange :)

Remember how I said in my last post that the Lacrosse Girl fabric wasn't as hot pink as it might appear on your monitor? Yeah. This fabric really is just as bright as it appears on your monitor!

Hubby assures me that his friends' wives are Boise State fans, too. I hope so, because women have to stick together, and I don't want to force some poor new mom to dress her child in orange and blue!

Anyway, aside from the fabric, nothing new from a sewing perspective. For the big boss, I made a sleep sack (McCall's 4236), fleece pants (Katrina pattern), a "soft shirt" out of a onesie, and fleece booties (Mini Mocs). Since spring is just around the corner, everything is 6-12 month size, for wearing next winter.

It's hard to read, but the fleece booties say "Boise State" on the heels:

I debated over what to use for the soles. I considered using the faux suede or the anti-slip sole material that I've used on Mini Mocs for Noob and Littles. But I eventually decided that it would be cute to do more Boise State fleece on the soles, and that this would work fine since the baby likely won't be walking when he wears them (and therefore won't need a grippier sole). So, here's what the bottoms look like:

Here is another view of the onesie sleeves. The onesie is another one of the ones I picked up on clearance at Babies R Us.

Since I have so many onesies and so much fabric, I made a second onesie in 0-3 month size that just has the "Boise State" logo on it. Just so Hubby's boss doesn't have to wait quite so long to dress his baby in blue and orange!

For Hubby's co-worker, I just did a "soft shirt" onesie and a pair of fleece pants:

I'm glad I was able to finish all that without being blinded by the colors :)

Lacrosse girls

 

I help coach a high school girls lacrosse team. The other coach, "L," has two kids of her own and a third on the way (yes, yet another pregnant friend!). We both bring our kids to practices and games fairly regularly, so my kids and I know L's kids pretty well.

About a year ago, I was browsing around at Joann's when I saw a really cute "Lacrosse Girl" flannel print. It immediately made me think of Littles and of L's daughter, "J." (Note: For some reason, my pictures of this print show up super hot pink on my monitor. If they show up that way on yours, trust me, the fabric wasn't that bright in person.)

At the time, I didn't really know what I could do with flannel, but I still bought 3 yards of it, figuring I could find something! Now I'm wishing I bought a lot more, as I have tons of project ideas that could use flannel. Sadly, the fabric was on the Red Tag (clearance) shelf when I bought it, so I doubt it's ever coming back...

But I did make a little drawstring backpack for Littles a few months ago. I use it to keep coloring books, dolls, and other little things for her to amuse herself with when she's on the sidelines at lacrosse games. And with J's birthday approaching, I pulled the fabric out again to see what else I could do with it.

I decided to make her some pajamas. I didn't have quite enough fabric to make pajama pants, but with spring right around the corner, I figured that short-sleeve pajamas were perfectly appropriate.

The pattern is a kids pajamas pattern that I bought ages ago. It's Simplicity It's So Easy 2738.

I had to totally guess on J's size. She is turning 6, so I went ahead and made a size 7. I figure that baggy pajamas are OK, and besides, for kids stuff, they can always grow in to something that is too big, but they can't shrink to fit into something too small! Also, sizes 3-6 were on one part of the pattern paper and sizes 7-12 were on another, so by making a size 7 for J, I'm able to use the same pattern envelope to make stuff for Littles in a smaller size :)

A couple of modifications I made:

• I did french seams to prevent the flannel from fraying along the raw edges.
  How I did it: The pattern called for a 5/8" seam allowance. For each seam, I put the fabric with right sides facing out, rather than wrong sides, like you usually do when sewing. I sewed with a 1/4" seam allowance. Then I turned the fabric inside out, so now I had wrong sides together, as usual. I sewed with a 3/8" seam allowance, enclosing the previous seam allowance (and its raw edges) inside. The result was a 5/8" seam (only 3/8" visible) with no raw edges.
• I did a drawstring waist instead of elastic, since I don't know how big J's waist is and I didn't want them falling off her.
  How I did it: For the drawstring, I cut a long strip about 1.5 inches wide. I folded it in half and ironed it down, then turned in a little bit (about 1/4") on the raw edges and ironed those down as well. I did a straight stitch seam to sew the two sides together. I left the edges unfinished until later.
• The drawstring waist meant that I needed holes on the casing at the waist where I wanted the drawstring to come out.
  How I did it: Just before sewing down the casing at the waist, I marked where I wanted the holes. Since flannel frays easily, I didn't want to leave the holes unfinished, so I did buttonholes, using the automatic buttonhole feature of my sewing machine (a Kenmore). It took me a few tries practicing on scrap flannel, but once I got the hang of it, it was easy, and the holes turned out nicely! Once the holes were sewn, I sewed down the casing all the way around (following the original directions), then used a safety pin to thread the drawstring through the holes and around the casing.
  Here's a close-up of the finished drawstring and holes:
  
• The pattern includes a matching top, but I didn't have enough fabric for that, so I decided to just embellish a plain t-shirt instead. I really wanted a white t-shirt, but I couldn't find one in J's size in time, so I grabbed a hot pink one instead. It actually worked nicely with the flannel's colors.
  How I did it: I cut out a piece of the flannel and pressed the edges under, then sewed around. This left neatly finished edges that won't fray.
  
  Hubby asked if it was upside down. Haha. No! The lacrosse sticks are right side up, and there is a smaller "Lacrosse Girl" at the top that is also right side up.

With J's birthday present finished, I decided to work on a gift for the new baby, who is due in July. L just found out that it's a girl! So she clearly needs matching Lacrosse Girl gear!

The pants are from Simplicity 2291. I wasn't thrilled with the way they turned out. They are huge! I was debating over whether to make small (3-6 month size) or medium (6-12 month size), given that we do live in Texas, so the new baby may not need pants until she's past 6 months old :) I decided to make the small size, but they turned out to be closer to 6-12 month size anyway! Here they are on a real live 1-year-old :) Noob is solidly in 12 month size pants, and these fit him pretty well:

Aside from being larger than I expected, the pattern did work well for pajama pants, but I wouldn't use them to make actual pants (which is what the pattern was really intended for). They're too baggy.

The one modification I made to the pattern was to do french seams, as I did on J's shorts. I didn't like that J's shorts ended up with a somewhat bulky 3/8" seam allowance that couldn't be trimmed, so on these pants, I first sewed with a 3/8" seam allowance, then trimmed it down, then turned the fabric and sewed with a 1/4" seam allowance. This still gave me the required 5/8" seam allowance, but the seams weren't as bulky.

I paired the pants with an embellished onesie. One of our nearby Babies R Us stores is moving locations, so they put the whole store on sale for the last few weeks to clear out their inventory before the move. I bought a bunch of plain white onesies in a variety of sizes at 50-75% off, so I can do embellished onesies for all of my pregnant friends and any more who turn up in the future :)

As on J's shirt, I embellished using a scrap from the flannel. I used a much smaller scrap for the onesie, since it's much smaller than J's shirt :) I also accidentally cut the scrap without a whole lot extra around the edges, so rather than folding under the raw edges, as I did on J's shirt, I secured the scrap to the shirt using Heat n Bond Lite, then used a satin stitch all around the edges. This should do a good job of preventing fraying.

I'm pretty proud of these two sets! I think they turned out really well, and they weren't at all hard to put together (just a little more than one night of work).

New baby gifts

I have an obscene number of friends expecting babies right now. Seriously, it’s out of control... seems like half my Facebook friends list is pregnant or married to someone who is! Maybe I need to defriend Hubby on Facebook, so that his wife doesn’t turn up pregnant :) Anyway, it means I’ve been busy in my sewing room, working on gifts for all the new arrivals!

First up was yet another sleep sack using McCall's 4236.

I made this one for B, who is one of my very best friends in the whole world. He was the one who first introduced Hubby and me, nearly 9 years ago! Sadly, he lives in Los Angeles now, so I don't see him anywhere near as often as I'd like. But he is a huge basketball fan, so when I saw this fabric (in the Joann's remnant bin, of course), I immediately thought of him.

He and his wife are expecting their second son later this month, so that gave me a good excuse to use up the fabric. I figured that it's already too warm for fleece sleep sacks in Los Angeles, so I made it in a size medium (6-12 months), so they can hopefully use it next winter.

More baby gifts coming in future posts...

My first paid project :)

My friend T is expecting her second baby this month, and is planning to cloth diaper, so she asked if she could pay me to make her some wet/dry bags for her to send with her baby to daycare, like the ones I made for Noob's sitter. I warned her that I'm really not very good at sewing, but she was still up for it!

So, off I went to Joann's. I took a bunch of pictures of fabric and sent them to T, for her to choose what she wanted. She picked out a really cute dots print for the exterior, and I found some coordinating fabric for the lining of the wet and dry pockets. The dark blue is broadcloth (cotton) for the dry pocket, and the turquoise is PUL for the wet pocket:

Right before I started cutting and sewing, the PUL delaminated on my own wet/dry bags :( Basically, PUL is made by laminating a waterproof layer of plastic-y material to polyester fabric. When it delaminates, the waterproof layer separates from the fabric. This definitely isn't good, but even worse is if you then throw it in the dryer, the laminate melts slightly and sticks to itself, often causing a hole when you try to separate it later.

Not good if you want your bag to stay waterproof! And once it happens, there's nothing you can do about it.

Luckily, I was able to return the PUL I had bought from Joann's (yeah, I am not using Joann's PUL ever again!) and order some from fabric.com instead. Hopefully it will hold up better...

Another problem I had with my own wet/dry bags is that on one of them, the fabric pulled through the stitching on one edge of the dry pocket, probably because my stitching was so close to the edge of the fabric. Anyway, this created a small hole. In the dry pocket, a hole is mostly a cosmetic problem, but it is certainly one I wanted to avoid on T's bags. So I sewed hers with a 1/2" seam allowance, rather than the 1/4" seam allowance that I used on my own. That gave me a slightly larger margin for error when sewing. I was also very careful to match up edges of all of the layers of fabric, to ensure a decent-sized seam allowance on each layer. This was tricky for the exterior layers, since there are four separate layers that need to match up (the two exterior layers plus the two layers making up the lining of the dry pocket), but I checked carefully after sewing and it looked like I did a good job.

Finally, I did a better job on the handles than I did on either of my bags. I cut the handles out of one piece of the dots fabric and one piece of the dark blue broadcloth. Each piece was roughly 12" x 4". I sewed the two pieces together, turned them inside out, folded in half, and topstitched the entire thing. The result is a handle that matches the bag perfectly and is not at all flimsy. As with my own bags, I added a snap on the handle, so that it can either hang (e.g. from a doorknob) or snap around something (like the handle of a stroller).

It was a lot of work... I spent a lot longer on these than I did on my own bags, really trying to get them as close to perfect as I could for T. I love how they turned out :)

I used light blue zippers, which look really nice with the blue dots:

Unzipped, showing the interior layers:

When I was done, I had some leftover scraps. I also had a 7" zipper that I purchased ages ago and never used. So I decided to surprise T by making a small wetbag for wipes.

After sewing so many wet/dry bags, making a simple wetbag was sooooooo easy :) Here's a shot of the inside, showing that same turquoise PUL.

Then I figured, well, what is a wipes bag without wipes? I have a yard of flannel that I purchased almost a year ago for a project that I ended up abandoning, so I decided to use it to make some wipes. Since the wipes bag I made is pretty narrow (I typically use a 9" zipper for my wipes bags, rather than 7"), I made the wipes narrow as well. I cut rectangles of flannel approximately 4.5" x 8.5". This size fits well in the wipes bag and also fits perfectly in an old disposable wipes container (which is what I use at home to store my cloth wipes). I put aside 10 wipes for T, but kept a few for myself, too :) Hey, Noob has had a runny nose for the last week or two (teething, I think?) and cloth wipes make excellent Kleenex's, so I like having lots on hand!

While I was working on all this, I got to talking to T about the wonders of wool as a diaper cover. She bought one of Noob's newborn wool sets from me to try out, and I figured I'd throw in a bonus pair of recycled wool longies. The legs came from the sleeves of a sweater in that big box of wool sweaters I bought for cheap, and the waistband came from an old turtleneck sweater of mine that no longer fits, as it has become a little too felted over the years. I used the Katrina pattern (same one I used for Noob's longies) in newborn size.

These look really itty-bitty, so I'm not sure they'll even fit T's baby. But I was just glad to get rid of a little more fabric out of my stash!

T got it all yesterday and she says she loves it! I hope she's not just being nice!

Sewing for a paying customer is a little stressful for me, but it was a good experience overall. I might do it again in the future if the opportunity presents itself!

Footie pajamas

Lately, I've been working on some cool but top-secret stuff that I'll show off soon! But in between those projects, I finished up a pair of footie pajamas that I had started for Noob way back in December. The pattern is McCall's 5963:

These didn't turn out as well as I had hoped :( Part of it is that I don't really like footie PJs anymore. Back in December, they worked great, but now that Noob is walking, he tends to trip over the fabric on his feet, and he doesn't have enough grip on our non-carpeted floors. A pair of pants (like his wool longies) with either bare feet or grippy soft soled shoes (like his various pairs of Mini Mocs) work much better.

But even putting that aside, the PJs themselves just didn't turn out well. They just fit really oddly. See how wide the neckhole is, and how baggy the body is?

I think they actually look worse in person than they do in these pictures...

Oh well! The fleece was cheap, and I got good practice with sewing zippers (this was my first project that involved sewing a zipper into a garment like this) and with using bias tape on the neckline.

Also, I really like the way that this pattern does the sleeves. They are cut at an angle towards the neck, rather than straight around the shoulder, like in the sleepsack with sleeves that I made. It makes them much easier to sew! This same envelope includes a pattern for a sleepsack with sleeves, so if I ever have the need to make one of those again, I'll probably try this pattern, rather than the sleeved version of McCall's 4236. Bagginess isn't such a big deal with sleepsacks!