Do-it-yourself maternity clothes

I hate buying maternity clothes. They seem like such a waste of money, especially considering Q is probably our last baby.

Unfortunately, even though this is my third pregnancy, I don't have a ton of usable maternity clothes. Noob was born in January, and Littles was born in June but in northern California, so a lot of my maternity clothes are long sleeved. They're not doing me much good now that it's already in the 80s in Texas! And I don't really want to hide my bump in bulky t-shirts for the next three months.

Now, cheap maternity clothes... that, I could do!

Enter Joann's clearance, and my local thrift store. (Please ignore my terrible hair and tired look in these pictures. I had to take them late on Saturday night because I'm on a business trip this week.)

The shirt is a "boyfriend T" that was on clearance at Joann's for $3, plus I had a coupon for 25% off. Not bad. I made it into a rouched maternity shirt, using the instructions on this blog. It's super easy. You basically sew elastic into the seam allowance on the sides of the shirt, which makes it more fitted around your belly.

I got a size large -- normally I wear a small or a medium. But it's still a little short on me, especially after making it rouched. It would've worked better for me earlier in this pregnancy, or with my earlier pregnancies, where my belly didn't grow as quickly. Oh well, not much money spent, and it'll probably work well postpartum!

The pants are from one of my local thrift stores. I do most of my shopping for kids' clothes there, and on a trip a few months ago, I found that they have a whole maternity section, too. Even better, they do "99 cent Mondays," every Monday, where all items with a certain tag color are 99 cents. So I got these pants for just 99 cents!

These are actually maternity pants, in my correct size, but the elastic waistband was all stretched out, so they didn't stay up. But that's easy enough to fix!

I debated a couple of different methods, and finally decided to sew in a Bella Band. Bella Bands are tubes of fabric designed to use over unbuttoned pre-pregnancy pants, so that you can get more wear out of them. I also use them to hold up maternity pants that like to fall down... so a no-sew solution to this particular problem would have been to just use the Bella Band over the pants. Done.

But I find it to be a pain to deal with two separate pieces of fabric whenever I have to go to the bathroom (which is kind of often these days). And I happened to have an extra Bella Band. I bought a khaki-colored one at a consignment store for about $5 back when I was pregnant with Noob, and liked it enough that I asked for a navy-colored one for Christmas this year. I've used the navy-colored one a lot, because it goes so well with jeans, which is what I wear most of the time. So the old khaki one has just been sitting in my drawer. I figured I'd sew it into the pants, rather than leaving it as a separate piece.

This was super easy as well. I made four evenly-spaced marks on the Bella Band, as well as the waistband of the pants. I turned the Bella Band inside out and put it over the waistband of the pants, then matched up the marks I'd made. Finally, I secured the Bella Band to the pants using a zig-zag stitch, stretching the Bella Band evenly as I sewed. (The marks helped me do this.) I could've cut off the original waistband, but I left it, just in case I messed things up sewing in the Bella Band.

The final result:

 

I looooooooooove these! The pants are so comfortable. And you can wear the Bella Band all sorts of different ways -- I actually have it folded in half in the picture above, but you can wear it all the way up over your belly, or fold it even more so it sits below your belly. Really versatile as your bump grows, and then shrinks again postpartum. No saggy maternity pants here!

Of course, Bella Bands normally retail for around $30, so it's hardly cost-effective to buy them just to sew into pants :) But as I said, I got this one for cheap at a consignment shop. And this blog also has instructions for DIY belly bands, or for converting regular pants to maternity pants. So, lots of cheap options for doing something like this.

In addition to the above, I got a couple of actual maternity shirts on clearance at Joann's as well, again for $3 minus 25% off. They fit fine as-is, but I decided to make these rouched as well, to add a nice little detail.

Love these shirts! They fit so nicely, especially rouched. I bought mediums, and they have enough length that I think they may last me till Q's birth!

By the way, the shorts I'm wearing were another "99 cent Mondays" purchase, so this whole maternity outfit cost just a little over $3. Now that, I don't mind paying!

The final stash of stupid cloth training pants (now even stupider, thanks to Noob!)

I finally finished the last two a few days ago. Here's all of them (minus one, the white one with the stars on the tabs, shown in this post -- it was still at school):

Closer up... the one on the left here is one of the two new ones, and the one on the right I made a few weeks ago. Same PUL -- you can see how it's faded with washing in the one on the right. But it doesn't look too bad when it's not side-by-side with a brand-new one :) These both have microchamois tabs and microfleece inners.

The one on the right here is another new one. "Later Gator" PUL print body, ribbed knit tabs (from Joann's), microfleece inner:

The one on the right here is the second one I sewed, but I never posted a picture of it. It's the one with crushed panne tabs/inner, before I decided crushed panne was too much of a PITA to work with :)

I've posted all of these before, but just to do close-ups...

So of course, now that I'm done sewing these, Noob has stayed completely dry at school for much of this week! LOL! That is why I didn't buy these suckers at retail prices! I'll keep some around for naps/nighttime, for sure, and I'm just trying to decide if I should save the rest for Q (since it's a pretty boyish stash, and Q may or may not be a boy) or sell them off...

Noob's nap mat

One of my earliest posts on this blog was about a nap mat that I made for Littles to take to preschool  It worked perfectly! She ended up using it until just a few months ago, when we stopped having her nap at school.

Between first trimester fatigue, the holidays, our China travels, and sewing Noob's training pants stash, I didn't have time to make a nap mat for Noob before he started preschool, so he's been sleeping on Littles' mat. But pink ballerinas aren't really "him," so I always planned to make him a new mat as soon as I had some time.

Let the record show that I originally planned to make this using a bunch of fleece from the great Joann's remnant bin sale of about a year ago, since I really need to use it up! But Noob is obsessed with trains as of late, so just before I started sewing the mat, my husband said, "Hey, why don't you do a train theme?"  That meant scrapping the remnant bin fleece I had gotten for cheap and had around the house in favor of buying expensive licensed Thomas the Tank Engine fleece (since, oddly, it's very hard to find train fleece that does not feature Thomas) -- but what can I say. My husband made me do it!

I made this in basically the same way that I did Littles' nap mat (documented extensively in the other post), with a few minor changes, which I'll get to later. The end result...

Bottom of the nap mat and straps: Royal blue fleece (I was able to use some from the great remnant bin sale here)

Top of the nap mat: Flannel

Pillowcase: Thomas the Tank Engine woven cotton. (I got this a while back as part of a bigger fabric order, figuring I'd find some use for it!) I used my serger on this, rather than doing French seams like I had to do on Littles' nap mat in my pre-serger days -- sooooooooo much faster.

Blanket: Thomas the Tank Engine fleece, from Joann's

Here's a close-up of the pillow and top of the blanket. I made the blanket a little longer than I did with Littles', so it can come up and over the pillow a bit. But I didn't attach it to the side of the nap mat at the top, so it can fold down, as shown here (and above).

Rolled up...

The light blue piece is a shoulder strap -- a new feature I added on this one. It's just a single layer of fleece, about a yard long. I thought that might be too short, but if anything, it's too long. It's very thin, by design: It lies under the mat when it's unrolled, so I didn't want there to be a big bump when Noob lay down. I don't love it, but it works OK for now, and it'll be easy enough to cut off in the future if I decide I really hate it.

Close-up of the name tag:

The light blue is fleece again. Gahhhh, this picture makes it look like the edges are really crooked -- I promise they're not that bad in person. For the tag itself, I used printable fabric that I got on clearance at Joann's a while back. It's canvas material that you can stick in your inkjet printer and print on directly. It's not supposed to be washed, so we'll see if we remember to always unsnap the tag before washing :) If not, no big deal, it's easy enough to make another one of these.

By the way, the picture is of Noob riding on a high-speed train from Shanghai to Beijing :)

Overall, not my best work. You can't really tell from the pictures, but I had serious trouble sewing straight lines, for some reason! So there are a lot of places where the mat is kinda cockeyed. But it's definitely usable, and most importantly, Noob loves it. OK, he might not look like he's loving it in these action shots, but trust me, he was super excited about his new "choo-choos."

More stupid cloth training pants :)

(See previous post for more information about these, including why I think they're stupid and why I'm sewing them anyway :)

On the left:
Outer: PUL (wazoodle.com)
Tabs: camouflage polyester knit (fabric.com)
Inner: microchamois (purchased from a coop)

On the right:
Outer: PUL (purchased directly from another sewing mom)
Tabs: cotton rib knit (Joann's remnant bin)
Inner: microfleece (wazoodle.com)

Some action shots of the one on the right, which is one of my very favorites (love that shark print PUL!) and whoa, some serious bedhead:

A few more...

Left:
Outer: PUL (purchased directly from another sewing mom) -- this is a "happy tools" print that I've seen in a number of places, and I will note that it has faded slightly
Tabs: microchamois (purchased from a coop)
Inner: microfleece (wazoodle.com)

Middle:
Outer: PUL (purchased directly from another sewing mom)
Tabs: Cotton rib knit (Joann's remnant bin)
Inner: microfleece (wazoodle.com)

Right:
Outer: PUL (purchased from the Swaddlebees outlet -- not available anymore)
Tabs: Cotton rib knit (Joann's remnant bin)
Inner: microfleece (wazoodle.com)

For the inserts, I did three layers of heavy bamboo fleece (purchased from a coop) again, but this time, I busted out some "fancy" multicolored serger thread. This is Gutermann brand bulky nylon, readily available at Joann's, and it looks awesome! I love it. It makes the inserts really easy to pick out in the dryer, too -- handy when I'm in a rush to get the diapers stuffed and ready for school in the morning. You only really need the fancy thread in the upper and lower looper; I used plain white thread for the left and right needle.

Noob has been at school for two weeks now and these are working out well. The fit seems to be decent, as I've been home for five of the days he's been in school (I was out of town on business all last week) and he's only leaked one of those days. And that was actually because the insert was soaked, not due to fit. But I don't think that will be too much of an issue, as a single insert does seem to be plenty of absorbency for him as long as his teachers stay on top of diaper changes. Most of the time, he soaks less than half of the insert. (I can tell when I go to unstuff the trainers at night.)

I'm now up to 10 trainers, which is baaaaaaaaaarely enough for two full days -- he's there between 8-9 hours/day, and I typically send him over in one pair of training pants and then he gets 3-4 diaper changes during the day. I have two trainers more cut out and ready to sew, which should give me a little more breathing room in case he has an extra-poopy day or something.

Cloth training pants

Let me preface this post by stating that I think that training pants (cloth or disposable pull-ups) are the stupidest thing ever. LOL.

The idea behind them is that they provide a transition from diapers to underwear, allowing kids to use the potty but preventing messes when they don't. Which sounds great in theory. Problem is, at least with my kids, avoiding a mess is the reason that they use the potty. If they're in training pants, there's no motivation to use the potty. And so training pants are really no better than diapers.

For that reason, Littles went straight from diapers to underwear. And for that reason, when I work on potty training with Noob right now, he's bottomless.

Another thing that's stupid about cloth training pants in particular is that they are designed to be used for a limited period of time, when the child is transitioning from diapers to underwear. Presumably, the child should either "get" the concept of using the potty and transition to underwear, or not "get" it and go back to diapers. Either way, that eliminates the need for training pants. I can see how it might make sense to use a pack or two of disposable pullups during that transition period. But spending hundreds of dollars on a full stash of cloth training pants? That makes no sense to me.

So, why on earth am I sewing a full stash of cloth training pants? Well, Noob is starting at preschool this week, and his preschool requires pullups -- no diapers. So, I have to buy super-expensive disposable pullups, or spend hundreds of dollars on cloth training pants... or sew my own. Clearly, the last option won out :)

(If you're wondering what I did for Littles when she started at this preschool? Since I didn't know how to sew at the time, I found some cheap side-snapping diapers, and pre-snapped them so that they could be pulled on. After a few months, her teachers complained that she wasn't able to pull them up/down easily enough. Which was true. Luckily, she was on the verge of potty training anyway, so we switched her into underwear at that point and that was that. But given that Noob will have the same lead teacher, I knew that the side-snapping diapers wouldn't be an option this time around.)

Without further ado/ranting, here is my collection of stupid cloth training pants :) All are done using the Trimsies Trainer pattern, overnight style, size small, with a pocket.

Outer: PUL (purchased directly from another sewing mom)
Tabs: Cotton rib knit (Joann's)
Inner: Microfleece (wazoodle.com)

I did just a slit pocket on this one. Very easy -- basically, I cut a hole in the inner fabric using my rotary cutter, before sewing the outer and inner together. But I don't like the way it looks. It kinda "flips up," exposing the Lastin elastic at the back. Still, it's very serviceable.

Noob wasn't really cooperating for action shots, but here are a few. For these, I was using a two-layer Zorb II soaker that I made a while back. It fit OK, but these trainers are really trim through the crotch/front panel, so I knew they'd look better if I sewed up some soakers from the pattern itself. Which I've done now... I'll get to those in a little bit. Anyway, you'll see a little bit of poofiness in the front because the soaker that's in there isn't the best fit.

I wasn't quite sure that the side tabs were stretchy enough to be easy to pull up/down, and I thought it might be the microfleece inner limiting the stretch. So for the second pair I made, I used crushed panne velour for both the inner and the tabs, since it's super thin and stretchy. No pictures of this one, unfortunately :(

I found that the final product was just about as stretchy as my first version. And crushed panne is a maaaaaaaaajor pain in the butt to work with, because it's so thin and stretchy and slippery. It took me a lot longer to make, and since I have a lot of these to sew up in a short period of time, I decided to go back to microfleece inners.

Here are the next three that I made:

Inserts: These are made from the soaker pattern included with the trainer pattern. They fit great! They are three layers of heavy bamboo fleece (purchased from a coop). I originally thought I'd double them up, but I'm finding that just one is plenty absorbent! I'm loving this heavy bamboo fleece!

Top trainer outer: PUL (purchased from another sewing mom)
Tabs: Jersey cotton (from an old sheet set we have around the house, same one I used for the fitted diaper in this post)
Inner: Microfleece (wazoodle.com)

Middle trainer outer: PUL (fabric.com)
Tabs: Cotton interlock (naturesfabrics.com)
Inner: Microfleece (wazoodle.com)

Bottom trainer outer: PUL (purchased from another sewing mom)
Tabs and inner: Microchamois (purchased from a coop)

These all turned out really really well! We've been on vacation in China for the last ~2.5 weeks (which is why I haven't been sewing...) and I've used them all quite a bit and they've been working great. I especially love the bottom one with the microchamois tabs/inner -- microchamois is a type of microfleece that is slightly thinner and stretchier, and it really makes for a nice fit.

Oh! One thing I did on some of these trainers was sew a small patch of t-shirt fabric into the crotch. This is a feel-wet fabric (microfleece/microchamois are stay-dry), so hopefully that will help Noob with potty training. Here's what it looks like. Not real pretty on this trainer (it's obviously less visible on the trainers with white inners), but you can't see it once the trainer is on.

No action shots because I've been lazy, but I'm really happy with this pattern and these trainers. I have six now, which should be enough for one day at preschool... I'll be doing a lot of laundry at night until I can sew up a few more to add to the stash!

Completed Kindle cover

Here's what it looks like with the elastic (and Kindle!) on the inside:

The elastic pieces are about 2.5" long, and they're placed about 1.5" from each edge. As soon as I sewed them on, my husband pointed out that the lower right elastic slightly blocks the power switch. Doh. Maybe about 1" from each edge (adjusting the length accordingly) would work better.

Christmas gifts: Getting back on the wagon

I know, it's been way too long! But I've been busy... growing a person :) That's right, we're expecting our third baby in July! First trimester fatigue has hit hard this time around, and so my prime sewing time (after the kids are in bed) has become my prime sleeping time. But I'm getting out of the first trimester now and getting a little more energy, so I'm ready to get back on the sewing wagon!

This past week, I worked on a couple of Christmas gifts for my husband. The first one was a no-sew fleece blanket:

I found the front panel on the red tag shelf at Joann's. The back is plain black fleece. These blankets are technically easy to make (and truly require no sewing), but they're somewhat time-consuming. You cut out a 4" x 4" piece from each corner, and then cut a 4" x 1" fringe all around the blanket. Then you tie a knot on each piece of fringe. That's the part that takes a while. My sewing room now doubles as my office (I guess it really should be the other way around, haha! :) so this was a perfect project to work on while I was stuck on conference calls!

Really, this panel would have worked better as a sewn blanket, if I had left on some of the fleece that originally bordered the design, as a seam allowance. See how the Longhorn logo in each corner gets kinda cut off in the no-sew version? I could have avoided that if I had sewn it. But I didn't realize that until after I had cut off the bordering fleece, and anyway, the Joann's lady cut the solid black fleece just big enough to match the panel, so I didn't really have any extra to work with on the back side. Oh well! It turned out fine anyway.

The second project was a cover for my husband's Kindle:

Since I don't use a Kindle myself, I started off by asking some of my friends who have one what they liked about their covers. There were two big features that most of them liked:

1. A pocket on the inside
2. A cover that opens like a book and allows for reading without removing the Kindle (as opposed to a pouch/slipcover style)

I did some searching and came up with a bunch of tutorials. I ended up finding inspiration in this tutorial: http://sewlostforyou.blogspot.com/2011/01/kindle-cover-tutorial.html

But it used leather, while I wanted to use Cowboys flannel (left over from making Hubby's pajama shorts for Fathers Day). Leather is a lot thicker/stiffer than flannel, and it doesn't fray, so I had to make quite a few modifications to make my flannel "behave" more like leather.

I started with the closure strap. I used two layers of flannel for this, and put some lightweight interfacing on the wrong side of one layer for stability. Then I sewed the two layers together, turned, and topstitched. Finally, I added a small strip of velcro to the strap. Here's what it looked like when completed:

As it turns out, it was way too long -- I'll get to that in a minute.

Then I did the inside pocket. For this one, I folded the flannel and cut an appropriately-sized piece, then added interfacing to the entire piece of flannel. So when I was done, I had two layers of flannel and two layers of interfacing. I cut it on a diagonal -- I totally eyeballed this, but it worked out well. If I were doing it again, I'd make the diagonal hit a little further down on the top edge of the piece of flannel. Anyway, you can see the rough dimensions here, about 7" x 4.5", minus that cutout.

I sewed along the top edge, the diagonal, and the non-folded edge (on the right in the picture above), leaving the bottom open for turning. I turned and topstitched around those three edges, leaving the bottom and the folded side un-topstitched.

Then I cut out the body pieces. I used the same dimensions as given in the tutorial mentioned above, but added half an inch to account for seam allowances, since I would be turning and topstitching. I think each piece ended up being 8.5" x 12". If I were doing it again, I'd add another half inch, and sew with a half inch seam allowance, just to give myself a little more room to work with.

I sewed the other strip of velcro to one body piece. This would become the outside cover.

I pinned the inside pocket to the other body piece, making sure to match up edges. This meant that the (still-open) bottom and the folded edge got sewn up when I sewed the body pieces together:

Finally, I put the two body pieces together, wrong sides facing, and sandwiched the strap between them. In this picture, the outside cover is on top (you can see where the velcro is sewed down, on the left side in the picture below). I helpfully noted that the strap has the velcro tab facing down, towards the inside cover:

I cut the strap way down! In the original tutorial, the strap goes all the way around the outside of the cover. Mine didn't have to go that far. I think it ended up being about 4.5 inches, with about an inch of that sticking out of the cover piece "sandwich," as you can see above.

Then I stitched the body pieces together, leaving a small opening for turning, at the top. Here's what it looked like after turning... outside:

And inside:

I stuck two pieces of Peltex in through the hole I'd left for turning. (So, that hole should be at least 5" wide or thereabouts. Peltex is SUPER heavy duty interfacing. I had some left over from my failed attempts to make the collar for Littles' Halloween costume, so I was glad to find another use for it. Here's what it looks like inside the cover:

You could also use headliner fabric if you wanted a softer/more padded case. But one thing I discovered in our big move is that I have a lot of fabric, haha. So my mission over the next few months is to sew out of my stash as much as possible!

OK, moving on. This wasn't in the directions for the original tutorial I was following, but I went ahead and fused the Peltex to the fabric, by putting a wet cloth on top of it and ironing.I figured that would keep it from shifting around.

Finally, I topstitched all around the cover body, which also closed up the hole for turning. And I sewed a couple of lines going down the "spine" of the cover.

Here's what it looked like when it was finished!

With something in the inside pocket, just to show it off, since it tends to get a little lost in the pattern.

I do have one more thing to completely finish this off. I need to sew four strips of elastic to secure the Kindle in the cover. (Inspired by this tutorial.) I couldn't find Hubby's Kindle when I was working on this, and didn't want to ruin the surprise, so I gave it to him as-is and plan to add those strips now that I can make sure to get them positioned just right.

Now... Hubby got a new Kindle Fire for Christmas! And it fits well inside this cover, too. But he has some suggestions for some minor modifications, e.g. making the strap longer so that he can "stand up" the Kindle Fire when watching movies on it. So, he'll use this one for his original Kindle (which he's keeping) and I'll probably sew another one of these soon. It seems like a lot of steps but it's really not too hard, and should be even easier now that I've figured out the modifications I need to make to that original tutorial.