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...

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!

More cloth diapering stuff

I sent the wet/dry bag that I made the other night to Noob's sitter today, and it worked well! I sewed up a second one tonight:

I got both zippers going the same direction this time :) But I goofed on the handle again. I decided to make it with a layer of the printed woven cotton, backed with a layer of denim, to make it more durable. I thought I cut enough woven cotton to be able to fold it over, hiding the denim. But I didn't. So now the denim is visible on the back of the handle, and it looks a little funny. But it's not too bad, and it does make the handle feel a lot less flimsy.

We're also sending lots of cloth wipes over to Noob's sitter, so I made some more for us to use at home:

Cloth wipes are super easy. This page gives a couple of options for how to make them. I do the "Tricky" way, which is really not all that tricky. In the past, I've made wipes out of old flannel receiving blankets or t-shirts, but I got fancy this time and used a cute flannel print -- from the Joann's remnant bin, of course. They came out great!

I love cloth wipes because they save so much money. For less than $10 in materials and an afternoon's worth of work, you can easily sew up a stash of cloth wipes that will last you for years.

Soft shirts

About this time last year, when I sewed my first few pairs of fleece PJ pants for Littles, I had to figure out a way to make matching shirts. I had the idea to take plain t-shirts and embellish them appropriately, but I couldn't find reasonably priced long-sleeve t-shirts, and it didn't make sense to pair those nice warm fleece PJ pants with a short-sleeve shirt.

One night, I got the idea to make a long-sleeve shirt by sewing fleece "sleeves" onto a short sleeve shirt. The result...

Cute? Hideous? I'm still not entirely sure. But certainly, these shirts were fast and easy to make, cheap (I used leftover fleece scraps and standard Hanes boys underwear shirts, which I bought at Wal-mart for around $6 for a 5-pack), and very soft and warm!

I ended up making three shirts in this way last winter. We pulled them out again a few months ago as the weather started to cool off, and Littles has worn one of them just about every night since. A few nights ago, they were all in the wash, and Littles was very upset begging for a "soft shirt." We tried giving her some other shirts that are soft, but no, no. She wanted a cute/hideous fleece-sleeved "soft shirt."

So I got to work. And I took pictures this time to show how I put these together.

I start by taking a few key measurements. First, I need to know what length the sleeves must be. I do this by measuring an existing shirt -- or, in this case, one of Noob's onesies. It's about 7" from the shoulder seam to the cuff.

Since the sleeves of the short sleeve shirt will stay somewhat intact, I need to get some measurements from it, too. This is hard to see, but it's the sleeve of the short sleeve shirt. It's about 1.5" from shoulder seam to cuff, and the hem is about 0.5".

Now I can calculate how long my fleece sleeves have to be. They must be (total sleeve length) - (short sleeve shirt's shoulder seam to cuff length) + (short sleeve shirt's hem length * 2) + (desired hem length for fleece sleeve). Here, that was 7" - 1.5" + 0.5" *2 + 1" = 7.5"

As for how wide, the fleece sleeve needs to match the width of the short sleeve shirt's sleeve, so I need to measure that. Here, it's about 3.5". I'm going to use a 0.25" seam allowance, so that means that the fleece sleeve needs to be 3.5" * 2 + 0.5" = 7.5" wide.

So I cut two pieces of fleece with those dimensions. I folded each piece in half to create a tube.

I also prepared an embellishment. This shirt will go along with Noob's Dallas Cowboys PJ pants, so I cut a Cowboys helmet out of some fleece. (The same thing I used to embellish his sleep sack.) I've also used t-shirt transfers in the past, but they get all cracked and yucky-looking over time. Fleece is much more durable.

The shirt is a Gerber size 18 months shirt. Gerber stuff runs really small, so Noob has been wearing this since he was about 3 months old. I got it at a thrift store for about 50 cents. I've been looking and looking for plain white short-sleeve infant shirts like this in regular stores, but I haven't found any! Too bad. They are so versatile.

I started by sewing the helmet on to the front of the t-shirt. Then I started to work on the sleeves.

I folded the fleece in half, right sides together, and sewed up the open side. Fleece is much stretchier in one direction, so I made sure that the stretchiness was going across the width of the sleeve. That is, the open ends of the fleece tubes stretch more than the side I sewed up.

I turned the tube/sleeve right side out and the t-shirt inside out. I inserted the fleece into the t-shirt sleeve, right side to right side, and pinned it into place:

Then I sewed the sleeve into place. I think it looks best to sew right around the original seam line on the shirt sleeve. That way, you don't see the original hem line just above the new seam when you're done.

Here are both sleeves finished. You can see the navy blue thread that I used, right near the original seam line. On the bottom sleeve, I've also trimmed the seam allowance:

Then I hemmed the bottoms of the sleeves. You could actually leave the raw edges if you wanted; fleece doesn't fray.

All done!

Here's how it looks! (Please ignore the strawberry yogurt all over the front. I should have done the photo session before breakfast.)

(Yes, he's wearing his Mini Mocs. They go well with these PJs!)

Here is Littles modeling another "soft shirt."

I got the t-shirt for this one through a co-op that I'm part of. The co-op organizer found an amazing deal on toddler t-shirts -- it worked out to be about $1.50 a shirt including shipping and everything, so basically the same cost as the underwear shirts at Wal-mart. But these shirts are much higher quality and come in colors. I had this yellow shirt in mind specifically to match these yellow Pooh PJ pants. I also picked up a bunch of pink and blue shirts so that I have them on hand for future projects!

(Yes, those are Mini Mocs on her feet, too! That's a pair that I made a while ago. They are made entirely out of pink fleece, no other materials.)

Littles loves her new "soft shirts." I'll probably make more of these before winter is through!

More Mini Mocs: Soft soled shoes

 

Noob took his first steps about two weeks ago and is now toddling all over the place. He does really well in the playroom upstairs, which is carpeted, but he was having a lot of trouble walking downstairs, on our hardwood floors. Socks or pajama bottoms are just too slippery, and since it's chilly in our house these days, I hate to see him walking around barefoot. So I used the Sew Darling Mini Mocs pattern (the same one I used for Littles' Silvermist slippers) to sew a pair of soft soled shoes for him.

As with Littles' slippers, I cut the pattern a little bit wider -- Noob hasn't gotten fitted for real shoes yet, but from working with this pattern, it looks like he has also inherited his daddy's wide feet. I used the 6-12 month length but the 12-18 month width.

I made this pair out of scrap fleece (left over from sewing his sleep sack) for the tops and faux suede for the soles. The "suede" is actually 100% polyester, from Joann's home décor section. I often see small pieces of it in the remnants bin, which works well, because you don't need much of it to make these shoes. It comes in all sorts of different colors. It is not very thick, so I don't think it would work well for outdoor use, but it's great around the house. It does fray, and the pattern leaves unfinished edges, so I'll have to see if it holds up OK over time. But if it doesn't, I'll just sew another pair of shoes :)

I suppose I could have used the same anti-slip sole fabric that I used on the soles of the Silvermist slippers, but I wanted these to look less like slippers and more like real shoes.

Here are some action shots! You can see our hardwood floors in the pictures. The shoes do a great job of staying put on Noob's feet and keeping him from sliding around on the floor.

I'm definitely going to sew some more pairs of these for Noob to wear this winter, including some with real leather soles for more heavy-duty usage.

Toddler soft book: Do not attempt this project :)

Just kidding, it wasn't that bad. But this project took significantly longer to put together than most of what I do. I usually sew after the kids are in bed, and I can finish most projects in one or two nights of dedicated sewing. This one? Took the better part of a week. It wasn't particularly hard to sew, but there were just a lot of steps.

As with the tutu, this came from one of the project idea sheets that you can pick up for free in any Joann's store. They are also available online. Here is the link.

This particular project was for a toddler soft "book" made out of fabric. Noob already has some store-purchased soft books, and they are great! They hold up to everything a baby can dish out -- chewing, pulling, folding, you name it.

The original project called for a shapes book, featuring a different shape on each page. But, well, you can buy books about shapes anywhere. Even before I started, I could tell that this project was going to take a lot of work, so I wanted to do something truly unique.

The original project suggested printing out the names of each shape onto special fabric paper that you can put into your inkjet printer. That gave me an idea: Rather than just printing words, why not print pictures as well?

And that's how "Noob's Book of Family" was born. Each page features pictures of Noob's close family members (parents, sister, grandparents, and aunt): Here are two pages:

Here are the changes I made from the original project:

1. Obviously, I used photos, instead of shapes.
2. Rather than using inkjet fabric paper, which allows printing directly to fabric from an inkjet printer, I used inkjet t-shirt transfer paper. Then I transferred the printed images to plain white muslin. I did this because I wasn't sure whether the inkjet fabric paper was washable -- and anything intended for use by a baby needs to be washable! This solution was also a little cheaper than the inkjet fabric paper.
   
   Here is a picture of the muslin with some of the pictures transferred onto it. You can also see the Heat n Bond on the back of the pictures:
   
3. I only made 5 pages, rather than 6. This was not intentional. I didn't read the directions carefully when I was buying fabric, and only bought five colors of flannel :) It worked out for the best, though, since 5 pages was more than enough work!
4. I wanted each page to make that "crinkly" noise, because Noob loves toys that do that. To accomplish this, I added two pieces of cellophane for each page, I got the cellophane at Joann's -- it's designed for use in wrapping gift baskets. I cut the cellophane to be the same size as the flannel/batting for each page, and inserted it in between the batting and one of the pieces of flannel.

A couple of tips that I want to remember if I'm ever crazy enough to do something like this again :)

• Leave about 1" on the border of each page for the grommets. I centered the pictures on each page, and so the grommets ended up going through some of the pictures. You can see it in the "Mom and Dad" sign on the red page above, as well as on the picture of Noob and me on the left of the yellow page. It doesn't look too bad, but it would have been nice to avoid it.
• I used a pinking rotary cutter to cut out the name signs, and it was really hard to cut straight. For the last few that I did, I added a dotted border in Publisher before I printed, and then cut along the dotted border. That helped a lot. Here's a close up of one in progress, showing the dotted border:
  
• I had a really hard time getting the pictures lined up straight on the page, relative to the seams that I ended up sewing. You can see how crooked the "Book of Family" sign is on the cover! I think it would have helped to draw the seam lines on the flannel, line up the pictures relative to those lines, and then sew along those lines.
• The instructions call for half a yard of Warm and Natural batting. I think Joann's just wants to sell more batting :) You only need 8" -- the batting for all the pages can easily fit into the width of batting by-the-yard, with enough left over in case you mess up.
• I had to do a lot of ironing! Ironing to transfer pictures to the muslin, then ironing to bond the Heat n Bond to the muslin, then ironing to fuse the Heat n Bond + muslin to the flannel. Eventually, I figured out the easiest way to do this:
1. Transfer the pictures to the muslin.
2. Before peeling the paper off the picture transfer, bond the Heat n Bond to the muslin. I used a big piece of Heat n Bond to bond to a bunch of pictures all at once, and that worked well.
3. Wait for everything to cool off.
4. Remove the transfer paper from the muslin. Save it!
5. Cut out the shape.
6. Remove the paper from the Heat n Bond. Place the picture in the desired spot on the flannel. Place the original transfer paper on top of the picture. (This keeps it from sticking to the iron!) Iron to fuse the picture to the flannel. Remove the original transfer paper from the picture.
• Don't do this project on a deadline! e.g. Christmas :) I'm pretty sure Hubby wanted to kill me by Christmas Eve, because I left this project to the last minute and had to spend soooooooo much time working on it, rather than helping him with Christmas preparations! It's not hard, but it does take a lot of time, so plan accordingly.
• This would actually be a really good "travel project" (a project to do while on the road), because you don't need a sewing machine for a lot of it. You can get all the pictures done and pages assembled with just scissors and an iron. Once that is done, the sewing goes pretty quickly.

Despite this being a big pain to put together, I'm really pleased with the way it turned out. Of course, Noob is much more interested in stealing his big sister's Christmas presents than playing with his, this one included. Sigh. But hopefully he'll appreciate it in the months/years to come!

(Back cover of the book :)

Fleece sleep sack (again)

The nights are getting chilly here, and the fleece sleep sack that I sewed for Noob a few weeks ago is working out beautifully. On a recent trip to Joann's, I saw some Texas A&M University fleece in the remnant bin. One of our friends is a proud Aggie and she has a baby boy just a few months younger than Noob, so I got the idea to sew another sleep sack for them.

It took some careful planning to line up the plaid correctly across the zipper in the front, but I think I did a pretty decent job. This shot also shows how the zipper ends about an inch or two below the neckline, so that it doesn't jab into the baby's throat:

Hopefully this keeps little D warm this winter! I plan to sew up a few more of these for Noob, because they are super easy to sew and handy to have around.

Fleece sleep sack: I finally finished a project!

This is one of the projects I mentioned that I've been working on in my last post. I finally finished! It's a fleece sleep sack to help keep Noob warm this winter.

The pattern is McCall's 4236. It's great! Just two pattern pieces to cut out, and then it's pretty easy to sew. This was one of my first attempts sewing a zipper, as well as finished armholes/neckholes -- both are little tricky at first, but I'm getting the hang of them.

This is a size medium. I compared it to a size medium Halo SleepSack, and it appears to be practically the same size/shape.

I made it out of navy fleece just because that was the first piece of fleece I pulled out of my stash that had enough yardage :) But as I started sewing it up, I thought it might look cute with some Dallas Cowboys decoration on it. The football helmet applique is from some Dallas Cowboys fleece that I've been using to make pajama pants for the kids. It was easy to sew on, and I think it makes the sleep sack look less plain.

I finished this after Noob went to sleep tonight, so he'll have to wait till tomorrow to wear it. But it definitely suits him better than the hand-me-down sleep sack he's been wearing :)