Tiny baby sewing

One of my dh's co-workers had a little baby boy; and I mean little - 4 lbs 11 oz and 19" long IIRC. I have never sewn little baby stuff from Ottobre and I've heard it's not only expensive to buy tiny baby clothes but that they're hard to find. So, I decided to make a present or two. Here is my first garment. It is from Ottobre 6/07 #1 "Wrap-around jacket for premature baby", size 45. I lengthened this to 19" and made it a wrap-around kimono instead of a jacket. I think it is so adorable. In the picture it looks incredibly long as I took the picture at an angle so you could see the fabric instead of a white glare.

I made the sleeves the length of a 50 and they can either fold them back until he grows or let them go over baby's fingers to keep him from scratching himself. Cuter than the little foldover mittens IMHO. On the bottom I sewed clear elastic into the hem folded it over and coverstitched it. I had fits when coverstitching the sleeve ends but after changing to a larger needle size the coverhem not only handled the binding around the neck and front edges but it did a great job around the hem too. I added Snap Source snaps instead of ribbons on the front as baby went home today so isn't in a warmer any more.

I'd make a couple more of these but I don't know how many clothes they have in tiny sizes. I think I will make a little overall and wrap-around jacket in a size 50 next. I have some other cute fabric that I didn't have enough yardage for this. Stuff I bought for N but never used.

Create-a-purse

In November I decided to make M a new purse. I had shopped and hadn't found anything that I thought she'd like. I ended up designing the purse myself using ideas from things I liked in RTW (is it really "ready to wear" when it's a purse?) and some tips from u-handbag.com. I took M to the quilt store to pick out some fabrics that she liked. Wouldn't let her know what they were for. I even "waited" until Christmas instead of making the purse for her birthday to throw her off the scent. LOL. This is the final product.



Front - I drew the lines on my pattern and then copied them to the sew-in interfacing that I was using. I essentially "paper pieced" the fabrics onto the interfacing rather than cutting them out individually and sewing them together. Much easier.


Back - the batik fabric is actually a pocket. The brown is piping along the pocket edge. If I were to do it over, I would put piping on the front side too but it looks fine without it.

You can't see it but I used a gold magnetic clasp to hold the purse openings together. It works very well.

I think she likes it. I made sure to make it big enough that she can still fit a book in it like she does with her current purse. Forgot to check if she can fit a knitting project in there. LOL.

Children's achievements

I am a mom. Therefore, I have to brag over my kids' achievements. Since M took pictures of her projects, I can post them here.

The first two pictures are of things she made for a teacher at school. Her teacher is hoping to have her baby soon. Mikayla designed and made the quilt using leftover pieces from a quilt project I had made. She did all the stitching and even hand stitched the binding down. She made a little hat and scarf and a tote bag too. As you can see, she is very proud of her quilt.

The next picture is a clock that she made in Industrial Tech. She plays the cello so wanted her clock in a cello shape. At home her dad gave her some guitar strings and helped her drill holes so she could add strings. She has also made a hearth lamp but I don't see that she has taken pictures of it yet. It is really neat too. She broke one of our Santa stocking hangers so she put it in her hearth so that Santa is coming down the chimney. LOL. Iwill post pics when we get them.

The next achievement is from K. She was recently in her school community choir and they sang before and during a play. Here is a video of the group singing in the hallway. K is the tall red haired one who sings the first solo. It's a little hard to hear with no microphones. I didn't want to be too pushy to get right in front of her so I sacrificed a little clarify. You get the idea. I took this video with the camera I got for my birthday. This is the first time I've watched a video from my camera and I'm impressed. Now to go look for one I took of N.

K will be singing in an Honors Choir performance come spring. Now I know I can easily save some snippets to share with relatives.

Here's the one of N while he was singing. I'm not sure why I turned the camera sideways partway through but it's still cute.

All in one post I've conveyed the creativeness, goodness, pursuits, and silliness of my children.

Better watch out or they'll be posting videos of mom's reaction when they aren't doing all of the above! LOL. (wha wha wha wha wha - remember on snoopy movies adults alwas sounded that way)

Getting caught up

I'm finally getting around to blogging my most recent sewing projects. As you can tell from one of them it's been a while since I worked on these. Just didn't seem to get the time to get them into my blog.

The first two are turtlenecks that I made for M. She likes to layer so requested these. They are both from Simplicity Lizzie McGuire 4390 size 16. I changed the mock turtleneck to a regular turtleneck and lengthened it. I made some mistake on the heathered one and ended up having to lettuce the two layers of the turtleneck together and I like this one much better. I forgot to add as much length on the heathered one too so I lettuced the hems to keep as much length as possible. The sweater knit was hard to lettuce as the stitches wanted to come apart when I stretched it but it is passable. I got both of these fabrics at S.R. Harris.

For the next one K wanted to be a pop star for Halloween. You might want to look at the enlarged version to see it better but I just had to put in the modelled view. It is a cap from Ottobre 4/07 #25 in size 56. It is a little big but looks great on. On this one I forgot that I had plans for the day before she needed it and I ended up working on this from 11PM to 3AM. Boy was I tired that next day!

The next project is a favor I did for a friend. She ended up cleaning my carpet in exchange. I do think I got the better end of this deal. She had purchased some knit pants that were too short but oh so comfy and cheap. I added cuffs to them using an assortment of fabrics from my stash. I ripped the hems out and added about 2" length total to each pair. The project ended up being quite easy once I got the measurements figured out. She loves finding shirts to match the colors in her new pants.

The last project is actually something for *me*!! It is the gathered neck tee from Ottobre Woman 2/07 #4. I when I was going through fabric for something else I was wearing the pants in the picture and realized that this fabric would go perfectly with them. Finally something to give me the impetus to sew for myself. I had made a pj top (that I didn't photgraph) to check fit. From that I decided to add an 1" to the center folds to give a slight bit more width to gether into the neckline. I also added some width at the shoulder, about a half inch?, that I graduated into the existing armscye. I didn't want the armscye any lower. I still could use a smidge more ease through the bust because it kind of pulls in a line straight across the bust if it's not pulled down all the way. I might have to do an FBA to accomplish this. I've had trouble with that in the past so have avoided doing it. This has some gathers at the side bust and I moved those down about a inch too.

I changed the sleeve on this to use the sleeve from #6 in the same issue. Was going to make it long sleeves but forgot that when I cut the pattern out. Was wondering why I left so much room in between pieces on the tracing paper. LOL. Next one will be long sleeved, although I like the 3/4 length sleeves too.

I used my new coverstitch machine to hem and stitch down the binding on this shirt. It was SOOOO nice to use it. It took awhile to get the tension right since I used regular thread from a spool and bobbin for the outside threads. Don't have the right colors in big cones. I made a boo boo on one of the hems and decided not to fix it, I'll bet no one can even find it. Overall, I'm very happy with this shirt and want to make some more. Recently I was wishing I had a red shirt. Wonder if I have the right fabric for it....