Fleece: Are you ready for some football?

 

Ah, fleece. If you've been following my blog from the beginning, you know that "fleece" was the most-used tag in my tag cloud for quite a while. Then summer in Texas hit... and fleece is not exactly my fabric of choice after 64 days (and counting) of temperatures over 100 degrees.

But we've been preparing our house to put it on the market, which has entailed a major clean-up of my sewing room. And oh my goodness, I have a lot of fleece. Mostly from the great Joann's remnant bin sale late last year. So, my goal over the next few months is to sew a lot of it up.

With football season right around the corner, I figured I'd start with some football-themed items. Starting with the fleece shorties shown above on Noob. Here's the back:

As I've mentioned previously, I'm an Eagles fan and Hubby is a Cowboys fan. Not surprisingly, Cowboys fabric is easy to find here in Dallas, but I had to order this Eagles fleece online. Well worth it, though. I love how these shorties turned out.

I put in a "hammock-style" extra layer in the wetzone, which allows me to use these directly over non-waterproof diapers, such as prefolds. The extra layer is just a strip of fleece, to provide extra protection from wetness. It makes for really easy diaper changes when we're hanging out at home. Here's what the inside looks like:

I didn't make this shirt -- my parents bought it for Noob. But it makes for a nice set!

Of course, Hubby would never let me get away with sewing Eagles stuff but not Cowboys stuff. And anyway, I have Cowboys fleece coming out my ears. So I sewed not one but two Cowboys soakers. Again, these are intended for use directly over a non-waterproof diaper, such as a prefold -- but they are also just cute and fun for wearing around the house!

I used embroidered fleece on the first one and it turned out OK, but I don't really like the partial star on the back:

 

The second one turned out just about perfect! I thought I had some action shots of Noob wearing it, but I guess not. Too bad, because it's so cute! And that is a high compliment coming from an Eagles fan :)

 

Finally, a soaker that Hubby and I can both approve of:

 

A couple of specifics for these projects:

• I used the Katrina longies pattern to make the shorties, and the Katrina soaker pattern for fleece to make the soakers. They are all size large.
• As I mentioned, I did a hammock-style extra layer in the shorties. For the soakers, I used an extra wetzone layer.
• I tried one of the soakers a few nights ago over a fitted diaper, and it held up great!
• The contrasting waistbands and leg cuffs all came from fleece from Joann's remnants bin. The remnants bin is a perfect place to look for contrasting fleece, because you only need a small amount (about 4") to make waistbands/leg cuffs. So it's easy to find for super-cheap in the remnants bin.
• These sew up fast. Less than an hour from cutting to done. And I am not a fast sewer, by any stretch of the imagination.

I'm sure there will be many more fleece projects to come, so stay tuned :)