Stash Avalanche

Sun hat #2

I made another one! This time for Stashlet.

Having had a bit of a ponder on how to construct this hat, I hit on the idea of bias binding - not round the edge of the brim as previously mentioned, but round the brim-crown seam, like this...

I have to say the inside of this hat brings me great joy.

Using this method makes a reversible hat - you could even put bias on both sides if you wanted. Unfortunately I was too clever and sewed a name tape into the crown, so this particular hat is not reversible, but the orange+spots combo is so fabulous I may have to make another one.

Here's what I did:

• sew brims together and top stitch
• sew crowns and tack together
• create sandwich of bias binding (wrong side out) + brim  (right side out) + crown (inside out) and sew all together
• turn up bias and hand sew edge to crown (but through one layer only)

If I do this method again, I'll try to take photos of the sandwich bit because I'm not entirely sure my description is clear.

ps. fabrics all from Ikea except the bias which is some I made from an unidentified fat quarter a while ago.

 

Towelling post-swimming robe-tunic-thingy

Now there's a title that just rolls of the tongue.

We're going to go swimming.

I've been holding off on this on principle because I think the idea of having to wear a hat so that my hair doesn't clog the pool drain is absolutely ridiculous (one of those only-in-Ireland type things...), but Stashlet's love of water has finally won through so we're going to a parent and baby session tomorrow.

Babies get cold easily once they're out of the water, so inspired by Dana,  I thought I'd make a little towelling robe to cosy him up in once he's out of the pool. The original idea was to made an open fronted dressing gown type robe with a tie belt, but this metamorphosed into a tunic as Stashlet is not walking by himself yet and I felt that something with a closed front would work better.

Yet again, it's an Ikea repurposing. Three Nackten guest towels (30x50cm, and ridiculously cheap which probably means I'm supporting Taiwanese child labour or something); one for the back, one for the front, one cut in half and tapered a bit for the sleeves, and a bit of Kaffe Fassett bias binding that I made back in the days when I had time for such luxuries.

It looks quite a slim fit but with no nappy on, Stashlet is  a bit of a bean pole so I think it will fit him for a while (by which I mean at least this summer, fingers crossed).

You could easily make it with thicker towelling (the Nackten towelling is quite thin) or with bigger towels for larger kids. Bearing in mind the neck opening size experience I had with the Charlie tunic, I made this one a good couple of inches longer so there is plenty of roomto get in and out easily, and no need to fight with a wet and wriggling baby.

More posts on the way, I've been having a productive week...

Trousers

 Here's the thing: I sometimes have time to write posts, but then I forget to take the photos or the weather is so gastly (I do love that word!) that there just isn't enough light to get a good shot or there is too much rain to get anything other than me looking like I just fell in a pond. So here's a post I wrote nearly two weeks ago (small grimace) but have only just remembered to take the photos for...

Reading through my feeds last night (hmm, well, more like a couple of weekends ago now), I came to the latest post from Film in the Fridge. Ashley had her baby son, Max, about 6 or 7 weeks after Baby Stash appeared, and she has recently been making fabulous trousers and shorts for him to wear.

And that reminded me that I never got round to showing you the pair of trousers I made for Baby Stash. Hmmm, I think I must have made them a good month or two ago, but I included some room for growing so I hope that they will still fit in the autumn.

Unlike, Ashley, I put a popper crotch into these trousers, and although they are more functional this way, I can't say I like the finished look as much as Ashley's versions. Baby Stash has several pairs of pull-on shorts and his jersey trousers, of course, which have come to be known as his yoga-combats.

In fact these navy ones are exactly the same pattern as said yoga-combats, but in a medium weight cotton (I think I made a skirt or something for work with it a long while back). The hem trim is some Kaffe Fasset bias binding I made a couple of years ago:

The idea is that Stashlet will wear the trousers with funky turn-ups now and then when he's a bit bigger I can just turn them back down and let the elastic out in the waist a bit.

I'm not sure I'll make any more trousers with popper crotches. It's just as easy to pull them off completely for nappy changing, although now Baby Stash is a bit older, it takes a bit longer to get them back on because he has turned into a right wriggler. They also don't really work with turn-ups unless you have the poppers a lot closer together than I sewed them.

The fabric is not great either. Although it's cotton, it seems to attract fluff in the wash like nobody's business, so it never looks entirely clean. Admittedly this is a minor point when there is baby dribble to cover up the fluff but it's still a small annoyance all the same. So now I just have to find some fabulous fabrics to sew with and Stash can look as fabulous as Max does.

ps. the lurid grass in the photos... well, I had my camera on it's 'foliage' setting and normally the images are very green but not so washed out looking. But I did take the photos literally just now so the sun its at it's highest and brightest so perhaps that's the reason.

 

Being busy

Nobody seemed to find the woman giving birth in a tank full of koi carp funny - not even Mr G. Perhaps it was just too extreme. Ah well...

Anyway, just wanted to check in and say I'm still alive and frantically doing lots of fiddly things before we go away for a few days.

I added some fleece padding to the mei tei that Baby Stash hated so much back at the beginning of May and he seems to have had second thoughts...

And I made him a sleeping bag out of cotton sheeting because it has been so hot in his room, even with the door and window open.

It was pretty quick to make; I just traced round one I got from Mothercare and sewed it together. It's a 6-18 month size so it should do him for next summer too (fingers crossed). The outer fabric is from Ikea's kids department (can't remember what it's called though) and I lined it with white cotton lawn. I used a 30" zip which just about made it to the middle of the bottom - alright for getting Stashlet in and out of but probably a bit of a pain if we were still in the midnight nappy changing phase.

It would have been even quicker if I'd bias bound the arm and neck edge (as with the Mothercare version) but somehow that didn't occur to me and I'd cut out a seam allowance and sewed half round. That's what comes of doing too many things at once probably.

Happy Tuesday!

Cute as a Button theme and variations

First there was this...

The original Cute as a Button baby jacket that I made in January.

Then I made this...

The Whale Jacket: a size bigger and a teeny bit tweeked from the original.

And I thought, that's a useful little pattern, I wonder what else I could do with it.

And made this...

But the sleeves - well, the wrists - turned out to be too tight and I could just only get Baby S's hands through them.

So I cut them back and added a little cuff...

But I didn't like the seam across the top of the sleeve, so I altered the pattern to make raglan sleeves instead, top stitched the sleeve seams, added little vents in the side seams, and took a really wonky photo of it...

And then I thought, I still really like that original Charlie Tunic which is made in linen rather than cotton jersey. So I was going to make a Bomull tunic version (which admittedly is cotton not linen) but Baby S was having a bad eczema week and didn't like pulling his arms through sleeve holes, so I decided to make life easier for him and made this...

Which admittedly needs ironing but there's no space to unfold the ironing board at the moment!

I think it looks a bit like something a Chinese Mandarin would wear, but perhaps that's just me. I kept the raglan sleeves and the vents in the side seams, and added 1cm to each front half to enable a bit of overlap for buttonholes (yay! for a sewing machine that makes button holes!).

So, despite the fact that I originally grumped about the miniscule seam allowances, I think I can say that all in all it's quite a versatile and alterable pattern. I still intend to make a linen/cotton pull-over-the-head version, and there is also a half-made dressing gown version waiting to be finished, so I think we can officially call this my first sewing frenzy of 2011.

Happy Monday!

(ps. the binding for the shirt and the blue top are both Kaffe Fassett.)

 

 

CTSB: sun hat

At last, the final and very late entry for Rae and Dana's Celebrating the Summer Boy...

I wanted to get a better photo of Baby Stash modelling his sun hat but bad timing and now the weather have conspired against me so here is the wee sprog sitting in his bouncy chir and sucking his fingers. Very cute, but bad for his eczema.

Ooh! and he's even modelling his tunic - only just noticed that!

I made the hat about a month ago but me being me, I made in in Ikea Bomull so then it needed dyeing, and I only managed to get round to that last weekend. It's from the same Burda 9522 pattern that I made the navy short onesie from, and whilst the finished article came out very happily, I have to say (yet again) that this is not a great pattern to work with in terms of fabrication and directions.

I'm used to bucket hats being, or at least looking, reversible. In other words, no raw edges. If you follow the pattern as it is, you end up with a raw edge where the brim and the what's-it-called? sides? are sewn together, which to me looks pretty cheap and not very cheerful.

I ended up turning everything underneath, pinnning it to within an inch of it's life and top stitching it, which did the trick. I suppose you could also bias bind the raw edges, which might look quite smart.

There was also a lot of (far too much) ease between the sides and the top of the hat, of which there was no mention in the instructions, and made me a bit annoyed as well.

The thing is, I don't understand what has happened to Burda. I'm sure they weren't always this slap dash about their patterns or their instructions, and I think it's sad that they appear to dumbing down. It's not like the hat or the onesie are difficult to make - and I'm confident that even a beginner could manage to sew with jersey - so why end up with a poor quality garment?

Sorry. I have inexplicable stomach ache, the poor Grey Cat ended up at the vet for the second time in three weeks with a serious leg wound (what does she do when she's out?), next door's house alarm  has been ringing since quarter past 11 this morning, and I discovered my favourite summer jumper developed two holes when it was last in the wash, so perhaps this is not a good blogging day!

Grumble, grumble.

By the way, the fantastically cute ribbon is from Blooming Felt, who have quite a few lovely ribbons for sale. Their minimum order is £5 (which is really no hardship at all given what they sell) so I also got some dinosaur ribbon and some sky rockets ribbon and these will make an appearance at some stage. The great thing about all these ribbons  - apart from the fact that they SO CUTE - is that the designs are woven into the ribbon, not printed on like a lot of the stuff you can get. So no looking crappy after they're been in the wash ten times.

More tunic developments over the weekend...

CTSB: tunic

I'm starting this year's potential tunic frenzy (should there be one, that is) with one for Baby Stash. This is my overdue and penultimate contribution to Celebrating the Summer Boy which ran last week on Made By Rae and Dana's Made.

Actually, it was Made By Rae which originallly inspired me to make a kaftan-esque tunic for Baby S, because I completely fell in love with one that she made for her son, Elliot. Everything about it was just perfect (sorry to gush, but really, it was!) - a cream linen mix for the tunic and some colourful Tailor Made measuring tape fabric for the facing.

This first one that I've made is a bit of an experiment. I used single rib cotton jersey for starters, because it is probably a lot less of a fight to get on a 4 month old than a woven, and I customised the pattern from Jackie Clark Design's Baby Jacket, which you might remember I've made a couple of times already (here and here).

Clearly there is room for improvement in the shape of the tunic, but cutting it out at 1am on Sunday morning is partly to blame. It hasn't actually been tried on yet, but I'm anticipating too short a body and too wide as well, and probably the sleeves will be too long, so there will need to be some fiddling done to fix it.

But I don't want to give it up as a lost cause because the facing fabric is so fabulous. It's Beep Beep Daylight by Michael Miller and I got it from Seamstar in the UK although no doubt you can get it from other places too.  There is also Beep Beep NightNight and Beep Beep Twilight and to be honest, I am a little obsessed by all three of them, so don't be surprised to see them popping up again.

Anyway, we shall have a trying on session in the very near future and I shall make another to better specifications and let you know how it goes.

Oh, and nearly forgot to say, Rae's Charlie Tunic as it is now known, is available to buy as a pdf pattern. It's too big for Baby S at the moment, but I have it stashed away ready to make up by the dozen once he gets big enough. It fits 12 months to 5T (which I'm guessing is 5 years old-ish) and of course, works just as well for girls as for boys (have a look at the Celebrating the Summer Boy Flickr photo pool for some lovely examples).

 

Quick and dirty quilting

Well, not literally dirty.

Baby S has grandparents in the UK and Germany, so it was inevitable that we were going to need a travel cot at some stage.

I bought a Samsonite Bubble pop-up cot  (which is supposed to be suitable from 18 months but there didn't seem much point in buying anything smaller) and also got a separate blow-up mattress for it because the one that comes with the cot is really thin. However, there does not seem to have been much creative thinking at Samsonite, because the thin mattress (which attaches to the cot with velcro) no longer attaches once you put the blow up one in underneath. Which is pretty stoopid if you ask me.

Anyway.

Mr G's aunt sent us some baby goodies from Germany and amongst them was a quilted mattress protector, and I was inspired to make one to fit the blow up mattress so that Baby S isn't sleeping pretty much on non-breathable plastic (separated only by a thin sheet).

And we were supposed to be going to see my parents today so I did some quick and dirty quilting and made this:

 I say we were supposed to be going today but it seems that in my post-birth addled brain I managed to book flights for last week by mistake (well, it was only 2 weeks after Baby S was born) and only discovered this when I tried to check in on-line last night. Cue much frustration and tears, especially as I've spent the whole week frantically trying to get ready for the trip and it's my dad's birthday today.

Anyway. Deep breath. I've booked new flights, and double checked the dates this time. And Aer Lingus are going to refund me some airport taxes, so all is not lost.

And at least now we are three quarters packed and I can do a bit of sewing, perhaps even for myself, before we go. And in the meantime, I still have the under-quilt finished.

You'll laugh when I tell you I wanted something quick and simple, but if you had the time to sit down and do this without the lengthy distractions of a wriggle monster, I reckon it would only take a day. As it was, I started on Sunday and finished it yesterday morning.

I have to admit that it's not a quality product, but I think for a first try at this sort of thing, it turned out pretty well. I used my usual Ikea Bomull and some left over cotton quilt wadding from the Lila Tueller patchwork quilt, pinned everything together, drew round  a teacup for my initial circle, and then just went round in circles, with the sewing machine needle set to the right and using the width of the presser foot as a distance marker. So the lines are roughly a centimetre apart.

 I used a bought white bias binding around the edge, partly because I didn't have time to cut any Bomull bias, and partly because once we're past the travel cot stage, I intend to dye this quilt dark blue. And here's the potentially clever bit, I used polyester thread for the heart, and cotton thread for the rest, so it should still come out of the dye bath with a red heart. It would be really nice if this worked.

And, I also added little loops for attaching elastic to keep the quilt on the mattress, but which can then be removed once the quilt becomes a non-mattress quilt.

What I learned about quilting:

• safety pins at 3" apart are not sufficient to keep the fabrics from moving
• moving fabric means that when you quilt in a hurry, you end up catching little folds of fabric everywhere (although this looks minutely less awful once the quilt has been washed)
• you use tons of thread
• pinning with pins at an inch apart seems to work but is really tedious
• I need a walking presser foot

Because the fabric kept sliding, I ended up re-pinning the quilt twice and I'm pretty surprised that it turned out as rectangular as it did. I wonder if sticking the fabrics together with Spray Mount would work? Does anyone have any suggestions for this problem?

So seeing as I'm not about to dash off to the airport, I shall now retire to the kitchen table and cut out a onesie for Baby S instead.

Happy Thursday!

 

Overalls

Hello? Remember me? I used to blog here.

Actually, I'm still trying to, but when it takes me a week to make something and then another week to take photos of it, before I even get to the computer, things get more than a little slow. And can I just have a small grumble at those bloggers out there who also had a baby recently and have managed to keep posting as if nothing has happened. Hrumph!

Anyway. Now I've got that off my chest I have things to show you. Two posts worth if I manage it!

Remember the jackets I made for Baby Stash? Well, when I bought that pattern (from Jackie Clark Design), I also got one for baby overalls/dungarees - they looked just the thing for a unisex item which could potentially be customised and varied. And now that Baby S is sleeping through from 11.45pm to 8am (ohmigod! I can so recommend the Jo Tantum book!) I feel like I have the stamina to do a bit of crafting.

So far I've made two, and neither of them managed to follow the pattern! The first was in a cotton flannel from Hickeys...

I should say that the actual pattern design is for a lined pair of overalls, but as I was cutting out the flannel we were having our April heatwave here in Ireland and I realised that two layers of flannel would probably cook the poor baby, so I made a little yoke instead.

I used plain metal poppers for the shoulders, and standard ring ones for the crotch. Initially the shoulders had only one popper but the arm holes turned out to be too big on Baby S so I added a second about an inch in. I think this worked quite well, and also means that the overalls are potentially lengthenable.

I also managed to be a complete klutz and cut the front out first, marvelling at the fact that 50cm's worth of fabric fitted perfectly, and then went to cut the back out (with longer straps) and found that, in fact, 50cm wasn't long enough at all. So I had to add a strip to the bottom of each back leg, which ended up requiring about 20 pins to keep the stripes from moving out of alignment when I sewed. Luckily they are pretty unnoticable but I will retain what dignity I have left and not post a photo of the patching.

The second pair are out of a lightweight brown denim from my LFS. Again I made a yoke instead of a full lining, this time out of a lovely crisp gingham which feels like linen. It's so nice - not your usual floaty gingham at all - that I might go back and get some more for a top for me. I think it would look lovely cut on the bias.

As you can see, I only used one popper on each shoulder, and I am toying with the idea of adding another to minimise flapping.

I decided to be a bit fancy and do my top stitching in a different colour but couldn't decide between red and blue, so in the end I got out my twin needle and used both.

And then I got carried away with fancyness, and added a little patch pocket on the back.

Sadly, it is not big enough to carry a dribble cloth (which would come in useful at the moment).

Eagle-eyed or pedantic readers will have noticed that the crotch poppers face the other way on this pair. That's due to trying to do too many things at once, and not paying enough attention to anything. Actually I managed to put all of the back poppers on the wrong way round, but discovered that with a bit of prying with a sewing machine screwdriver, you can get them off, and if you straighten the prongs (I used a little pair of flat nosed pliers from my beading stash) you can even reuse them. Just don't try this at 11 o'clock at night with a view to having them on the baby at 8am the following morning.

The actual pattern makes use of the double layer of fabric to attach a strip of poppers (ie. a tape with plastic poppers already attached) to the crotch, but because I didn't have this, I used bias binding to create plackets. On the flanel pair, I turned back the fabric as far as the seam allowance before adding the plackets, but on the brown pair I tried to keep as much width as possible and just bound the raw edges of the fabric with the bias instead. This was much less hassle and also makes the legs marginally wider too.

I must say this is a great little pattern for doing your own variations, and I will make some overalls with contrasting linings for when the weather gets colder again. I'm still not convinced about the ¼" seam allowances though, and because Baby Stash is such a giraffe, I added an inch to the leg length of the brown pair. I'm also finding them a bit snug with cloth nappies (I'm yet to try with a disposable - we only use them in an emergency these days) but in general I like this pattern rather a lot and will be making more in larger sizes.

ps. Thanks for all your recent comments and apologies for not replying. I will try to make more effort, promise!

Thar he blows!

Remember this jacket from a couple of weeks ago?

And how I said I wasn't going to make another until I had an idea about sizing?

Well, that didn't last long.

But there's a reason. You know I've been mulling over a footmuff for the carseat, and part of that included wondering what size to make it, and how I could use the pattern from this jacket to work out shoulder width and hood size.  So I made the next size up with a little modification. You could call it a muslin (of sorts).

It's the same Cute as a Button Jacket from Jackie Clark Designs as before but this time it's the 18 months to 2 years size, which in reality turns out to only be an inch wider round the chest than the smaller size. I added an inch to each front edge to give an overlap, and increased the circumference of the sleeves by half an inch.

Sorry to be predictable, but the fabric is from Ikea. The outer is the remains of the Minna which I used to make a pair of trousers last year, and the inner quilted lining is an off-cut of a thin bed cover which I bought a few years ago to make a summer duvet. 

I bias bound the edges with some even older Ikea furnishing cotton that I can't even remember the name of. I thought binding would be a better idea than seams because of the resulting thickness caused by the padding. In the event, I should have cut the binding wider because it was a bit of a fiddle to sew on  - the fact that it was furnishing weight and quite coarsely woven didn't help either.

I ended up machine stitching the binding on, trimming back the padding,  folding the binding over and stitching it by hand, and then zigzagging the whole caboodle. A bit of a much of a muchness but it seemed the only way to ensure it would stay on. It doesn't look fantastic but it's not so crappy as to be an embarrassment!

I thought toggles would be nicer than buttons, and I can move them out a bit as the baby gets bigger.

I didn't want to go for a duffle coat loopy-type fastening so that meant button (or toggle?) holes. You know I struggle with these, but I decided to try again anyway.

I tacked out the size I wanted them in a contrasting thread and tried 'manual' buttonholes with the Elna. They looked awful! So I picked them out and tried with a narrower zigzag. They looked terrible too. So I threw caution to the wind and got out the Lidl machine.

It coped fine with the thickness of the fabrics but I just couldn't adjust it to get a decent stitch length, so one side had really widely spaced zigzag and the other was too close together even on the widest setting (actually changing the setting seemed to make no difference at all). In the end the machine decided that it couldn't even move the fabric on the second long side so I would just end up with an enormous lump of thread.

So having unpicked three lots of button holes I decided to take the pragmatic approach. I would either take the jacket to my LFS and get them to do the holes, or by the time the baby is big enough to wear it, I will have got a spanking new machine from a proper sewing machine manufacturer (I have my eye on a Janone...) and can do them myself with something reliable.

So that's the second jacket.

Ah, but don't go. You haven't seen the cute bit yet...

The back. If you can't dress a child in cute clothes when it's a toddler, when can you?

So here's a denim whale. Rejoice! for the fabric is NOT from Ikea! :¬)

I used Bondaweb to stick the denim onto the jacket then zigzaged round the edge. The eye is satin stitch and the squirt of water is just running stitch but I used some random dyed embroidery thread, so the water changes from white to blue as it squirts out (you can't really see that too well in the photo though).

My G said 'I like the jacket but er... I'm not sure about the whale'. Typical contraryness! I just hope his son has a better opinion!