Tutu pajamas

In my diaper-sewing posts, I've mentioned a couple of times that I've also been working on non-diaper projects. This was one of them:

I finished this back in May, I think. It's a pair of pajama shorts for Littles. Pattern is Simplicity It's So Easy 2738. As I've done on similar projects, I did french seams on the legs and crotch to prevent raw edges. (This was pre-serger; I'm sure I'll end up making stuff like this again, and when I do, I'll use the serger to sew and finish the edges all at once!)

The flannel is from Joann's. It's the same stuff I used to make the pillow for Littles' nap mat.

I thought Littles would love them because of the ballerinas, but alas, like just about everything I sew for her, she had no interest in wearing them. To be fair, she refuses to wear shorts in general, not just the ones I make. But a month or so after sewing these shorts, I came across this tutorial for a "tutu t-shirt." Since Littles loves tutus, I thought it might be the perfect top to revive her interest in these shorts.

The end result:

I made one semi-major goof while sewing this. When it came time to sew the tulle onto the bottom of the shirt, I lost my mind for a minute and thought that you sew fabric with wrong sides together. So I turned the shirt inside out to sew the tutu on. Of course, that's not correct; you usually sew with right sides together. Oops! The result is that the hem of the shirt turns up slightly, and also, the basting seam I used to gather the tulle is slightly visible. Here's a close-up:

Of course, the seam looks much better from the inside (i.e. what was supposed to be the right side). Here, the seam you see above the tulle is just the original hem seam from the t-shirt, so that wouldn't be visible had I sewn it the right way. See how much smoother the seam looks in this picture?

I could have ripped out the seam and sewn it again, but that would've taken quite a bit of time -- and, well, these are pajamas, so who cares if the seam is less than perfect? I'll wait and see if Littles actually wears this before investing that kind of time into fixing it :)

The complete set:

Littles was super excited about the shirt, but not so excited about the shorts. Still, she humored me:

Ugh, that turned-up seam is driving me a little bit nuts, but I'm trying to quell my inner perfectionist.

Birthday gifts

On Saturday, we attended a joint birthday party for "J," age 3, and "D," age 1. Two different families, but we (along with many of the other invitees) are very close with both of them, so it was wonderful being able to celebrate together!

Both families also happen to have a place of significance in my sewing "life." I wanted to sew gifts for both boys to commemorate that.

J's mom was the one who lent, and eventually sold, her sewing machine to me when I first got started. For J, I made a crayon wallet. I first heard of crayon wallets back in May, from one of my other friends, who had purchased some off Etsy for her kids and nieces. It seemed like the kind of thing that someone would write a tutorial for, and sure enough, some quick web searching turned up this tutorial.

It seemed a little tricky, but the blogger insisted over and over that it really wasn't that hard, so I took her word for it. Indeed, it really isn't hard at all! Once you get started, it quickly becomes clear how it all fits together.

I know that J loves anything with wheels, so I chose a Cars print for him. I actually got both types of fabric (the blue Cars fabric and the contrasting red fabric) at Walmart, of all places! My Walmart recently got rid of their bolts of fabric, but they do have an entire wall of precut 2 yard cotton pieces, including lots of Disney licensed stuff, for fairly reasonable prices ($6 for solids, $8 for licensed prints). I didn't have time to make it out to Joann's, so this worked out well.

The finished product:

The outside, unfolded:

Inside. The pad of paper is from Target, and then I taped on a cover that I made using Cars clip art that I found online:

I love how this turned out and will probably make more of these for future birthdays and other events.

On to D's gift. D's mom is a Texas A&M grad (yes, this is the same D for whom I made an A&M sleep sack as a Christmas present), and D is also the only other cloth diapered baby I know. Now, early last year, immediately following Noob's birth, I really wasn't doing a lot of sewing. I just wasn't into it, with everything else going on. But when D's baby shower rolled around, I decided to sew some A&M wetbags as a gift. That project is what really got me started on sewing again -- and I haven't stopped since :) I recently came across the leftover A&M fabric from the wetbags and decided to use it to sew -- what else? -- a diaper!

The fabric is cotton, so I didn't want to use it directly over a layer of PUL (to prevent wicking issues) and I also knew that D's parents don't use fitteds. I decided to try a pocket with embellished tabs, as I've heard that even cotton works fine on those tabs, since they don't really get wet.

I used the Darling Diapers Unlimited pattern, size medium. I've shown off embellished-tab diapers I've made using this pattern in the past, but here are some pictures for how I actually altered the pattern to do it. I took the idea from this Diaper Sewing Divas tutorial (free registration required), but that uses the La Di Da pattern. For DDU, I followed the same directions to cut off the wings at the line connecting the elastic endpoints (marked by stars):

And I did the same for the wings:

The LDD tutorial talks about trimming the little "tail" that you get when you put the tab pattern on top of the body pattern. For DDU, there are two little "tails" that need to be trimmed, one on top and one on the bottom. See them here?

Final tab pattern with both tails trimmed:

I traced the tab pattern onto vinyl. This allowed me to position the pattern just right on the fabric, because I could see through the pattern. Do you see the shiny vinyl on top in the picture below? The blue dots mark the snap placements (for both a single row and double row of snaps):

Once I have the tabs cut out, I sew them to the body, then proceed with diaper construction as usual.

The final product:

I didn't get the logos placed on the tabs quite as well as I would have liked, but I think it looks OK still!

Inner is suedecloth with a modified welt pocket:

Insert is a Zorb II trifold with serged edges:

Folded up for stuffing into the pocket:

I hope the recipients enjoy these gifts as much as I enjoyed making them!

Purple tutu

Ages ago, I got a bunch of pink and purple tulle to make tutus for Littles. I sewed a pink tutu way back in December, and it was enough of a pain that I wasn't exactly jumping to sew the purple one. But Littles found the purple tulle in my sewing room one day, and has been begging me to make her a purple tutu. And I can't turn down my little girl :)

I didn't love the way that the pink tutu turned out, so for this one, I used these instructions from fabric.com. The one slight modification I made was that rather than sewing the layers of tulle to a piece of scrap ribbon one at a time, I sewed them all together, using a basting stitch (long thread length/loose tension), and then gathered them together.

I also had Littles "help" me with this project, which she absolutely loved. Just simple stuff like holding the tulle while I cut it.

The end result is... better. But still not great. Since I suspect I'll be making a tutu again (Littles loves to dance), here are the modifications I would make:

1. Don't wait for your overeager preschooler to find the neatly folded tulle in your sewing room. She will unfold it all, making it much harder to cut later! The Joann's cutting counter gave me the tulle folded in half, so all I would have had to do is cut along the foldline... had Littles not gotten to it first :)
2. Possibly use just 3 layers of tulle for a child's tutu, rather than 4. It's pretty poofy.
3. You typically don't backstitch when doing a basting seam, but it's very helpful to backstitch one side of the basting seam holding the layers together. Then you can gather from the other side, without worrying about the gathered fabric slipping off the end.
4. Don't cut the waistband ribbon to length. Leave a lot of extra. You can cut it down to the right length when you fold it over. (With this one, I did cut it to length plus a little extra, and it ended up being way too short so I had to fold over part of the tutu itself. It looks a little funny.)
5. When sewing the waistband ribbon to the tulle, sew with the tulle up, the ribbon down. I didn't do this, and accidentally caught lower pieces of the tulle in my stitching a couple of times because I couldn't see it.

That said, I do like this method a lot. And Littles loves the results, which is all that really matters!

Still more baby gifts

As I mentioned previously, I had an insane number of friends expecting babies. I think there have been four new arrivals just since the beginning of June! Now I have a few months off before another mini-boom coming in December/January...

Anyway, I've been working on the stuff above for quite a while, and finally got around to finishing it up. It's for Hubby's friend D and his wife, who just welcomed their first baby, a little girl. D's wife went to Oklahoma University (OU), hence the fabric choice :)

Nothing super exciting here, all stuff I've done before...

• Sleep sack: McCall's 4236, size medium
• Pants: Simplicity 2291, size small
• Onesie: From the Babies R Us clearance back in March, with one of the fleece squares sewn onto it.

Yes, it felt pretty funny sewing a bunch of fleece with temperatures well over 100 degrees these days, but that's why I made everything in 6-12 month size!

Kitchen laundry bag

About two years ago, we switched over to using mostly washcloths to clean up spills, hands/faces, etc. around the kitchen. It really cut down on our paper towel usage, and washcloths are so much sturdier for cleaning up the big messes that kids tend to make!

I had been putting the dirty washcloths, along with bibs, dish towels, and other kitchen "laundry," in our regular laundry hamper. But this hasn't been working well. For starters, a lot of kitchen laundry is covered in food, so it attracts ants in our laundry hamper -- gross! Also, a lot of it is wet, so it starts to get stinky after a few days -- again, gross! And when it comes time to wash it, because it's stinky, I prefer to use Tide on it -- I feel like it cleans better than Country Save, which is what I usually use on our clothes. Unfortunately, Noob breaks out in a rash if he wears clothes washed in Tide, so I usually end up washing everything in Country Save, rather than having to pick wet, stinky, food-covered washcloths out of the hamper to launder separately.

I finally got tired of this and decided to make a wetbag just for our kitchen laundry:

Sorry, that's not the greatest picture, but nothing super exciting here. I made this in the same way I make wetbags for use with cloth diapers, following this tutorial. I used a food-themed woven cotton print (from the remnants bin at Joann's) for the outer and white PUL for the inner. The zipper is from my eBay zipper stash. I made the handle snapping so that it could hang from a doorknob or snap around the handle of the oven, refrigerator, etc.

Simple, easy, and very effective! I've been using it all day today and I love it already. It should do a much better job of keeping the stink contained and the ants away!

Diapers for traveling: More serging practice

We're on our long-awaited vacation to Panama! I wanted to bring mostly Best Bottoms along on this trip, because they take up a lot less space than the diapers we usually use. Here are four Best Bottoms diaper changes (a shell with an insert + 3 additional inserts) on the left, next to four of our normal BumGenius diapers on the right:

I have one Best Bottoms shell (the brown one shown above) and had worked out a trade for two more, but unfortunately,the woman I was trading with goofed, and didn't send out the other two shells until just this week -- too late for this trip. Oh well, I'll have them for our next vacation, to Florida in September. In the meantime, I really needed at least one more shell for this trip, so I made one, using the Darling Diapers Unlimited pattern, size medium. The exterior is a 100% polyester print, and the interior is PUL, sewed so that the "shiny" side is exposed so that it can be wiped clean if it gets dirty:

I added snaps to the interior to secure the Best Bottoms inserts. I meant to do it before sewing the diaper together so that I could hide the snaps, but I forgot, so I had to do them so that they're exposed on the diaper exterior, as you see above. Here is a shot of the interior, alone and then with a large size insert:

The sizing of the shell isn't quite right: It's a little too long for medium size inserts, and a little too short for large size inserts. It's also a little wider than it needs to be. I doubt I'll sew another one of these, but if I do, I'll either shorten or lengthen the rise slightly (depending on whether I want to use medium or large inserts with it), and I'll use the DDU pattern without color sides, rather than the pattern with color sides. But we've been using this shell for the past few days on our trip and it is perfectly functional. And really cute, and soft! I have tons more of that dino print (I got 2 yards of it for just $3, from a destash at Top Shelf Fabrics!), so I'm excited to make some other stuff with it.

I also needed more inserts to go with the shells, so I got a lot more practice serging. I'm really starting to love it! It is so much faster than sewing. I made all of these inserts the night before we left, after the kids went to bed, and while packing for the trip -- that's how quickly they come together, thanks to the serger:

The top four are regular inserts and the bottom four are overnight inserts (with snaps on both sides). There is one medium size and three large size inserts of each type. The regular inserts are 3 layers of either bamboo fleece or bamboo/hemp fleece topped with 1 layer of bamboo velour. The overnight inserts are four layers of hemp fleece. All the fabric is from Nature's Fabrics. I made one more the night before the trip, which isn't pictured -- it's 3 layers of bamboo/hemp fleece topped with a layer of suedecloth for a stay-dry feel.

With that number of layers, the regular inserts aren't quite as absorbent as I'd like on their own. They do last about 1-2 hours on Noob, and it's nice having the option to add an overnight insert underneath if I need more absorbency.

These aren't the greatest pictures, but here are some action shots of the shell with a large size insert inside. It's not as trim as the real Best Bottoms shell, but it's fine:

Thanks to all this work, I'm feeling a lot more comfortable with my new serger now. Maybe even comfortable enough to try some "real" serged projects when we get home!

Adventures of a rookie... serger?

My birthday was last week and my parents got me a serger! (A Brother 1034D, to be specific, which comes highly recommended at the lower end of the serger price range.) It's a fancy type of sewing machine that cuts, sews, and finishes edges, all in one step, so it can really make sewing a lot faster!

The timing could not have been better, as I need to make a bunch of inserts for Noob's Best Bottoms shells in preparation for an upcoming trip, and inserts are way faster to sew with a serger. As it turns out, inserts are also a perfect first serging project. They sew up quickly, so if you totally mess up, it's not like you've wasted a ton of time. You don't have to be super-precise about sewing the exact right shape; you just have to get in the ballpark. And since the Best Bottoms inserts have contoured edges, rather than being perfectly straight, it gave me some excellent practice sewing some (very gentle) curves, which is definitely tricky on a serger.

Bonus: They actually turned out usable. Here is the first batch I made.

They are five layers of flannel, which is not a whole lot. But I got this flannel for cheap, and it was great practice. Here is one of the inserts inside a Best Bottoms shell. I love how trim this system is. If you haven't seen it before, definitely check out this page, which explains what it's all about. It's pretty clever, easy to use and very economical.

Then I moved on to using old t-shirts. Even cheaper! And I took pictures.

First, I folded the shirt into fourths. This gave me a total of eight layers:

I laid an insert on the t-shirt, making sure that it wasn't covering the shoulder or neck seams. Then I traced it, using a disappearing ink marker so that I wouldn't ruin the original insert:

When I was done tracing, I pushed down on the snaps on the insert. This left little indentations on the shirt, so I would know where to add snaps:

I cut around the inset. This doesn't have to be precise, because as you'll see, the serger will take care of any excess. You can also see here that I've circled where the snaps need to go:

I added the snaps, through the bottom two layers of the insert. I wanted to make this one into an "overnight" insert, which has snaps on the bottom (to snap into the shell) and on the top (to snap in a regular insert, giving double absorbency). So I flipped all the layers over and circled where the other snaps are:

Then I added the snaps. I did sockets on one side (to allow the regular insert, which has studs, to snap in) and studs on the other side (to snap into the shell). Here are my layers with the snaps added... ready to serge!

All done serging! Ready to use! You can see that the serger cut off all the excess fabric -- so easy! This took all of about 15 minutes from start to finish, including taking pictures :)

Here's how it looks with the shell. Overnight insert (with snaps on both sides) on the bottom, regular insert on top. I made the regular insert out of a t-shirt as well and accidentally left a layer with some writing on it on top... oops! Still works fine, just looks funny :)

Here's how it looks on! Still pretty trim considering this is a full 12 layers of fabric.

I love my new toy :) Hopefully by the time I'm done sewing all the inserts I need, I'll feel confident to try it out on some "real" projects!