Moon Man!

Moon Man!, a photo by liberrian on Flickr.

One of Jasper's favorite books is Tomi Ungerer's Moon Man. For his birthday I made him a Moon Man. Here is is! It took a little trial-and-error to get the shape right (or at least not laughable), but it was a success--Jasper immediately knew who it was and has slept with it every night ever since.

garden frolic

garden frolic, a photo by liberrian on Flickr.

Alma got a new dress, right before Easter. The top is a Gymboree t-shirt, attached to a patchwork twirl skirt made of 6" squares cut from a lovely fabric bundle from Fabricworm. I've made a few dresses for Alma of this type over the years, originally based on a pattern from IndieTutes back in 2007.

Advent Calendar

My daughter is really into countdowns for upcoming events. We often make them out of little scraps of paper, stapled together. But it occurred to me recently that an advent calendar would be a fun sewing project and the ultimate countdown. A countdown where every day you get to count down AND get a tiny present. Whoa.
So I dug out the fabric scrap bin and winged it. It actually came out pretty nice. It's a big square of a double layer of cotton, with polar fleece sandwiched in between. Then I made 24 little envelopes by pressing them into shape and roll-hemming the edges with my serger. I added snaps with my snap press (this was truly a project that was made 1000% times easier due to good equipment).



I then sewed them on to the square with a straight stitch across (the stitch runs right over the crease of the flap). To number the envelopes, I used puffy paint (which someone remarked looks like cookie frosting! how Christmassy!). I guess advent calendars usually have the date on them, so they count up to 25, but I went with the countdown given my daughter's already-ingrained love of counting down. It hangs on the wall with a clothes hanger. Ta da!

stained dress? no problem!

The first time she wore this Hanna Anderssen dress, Alma poured thick hot chocolate down the front. The stain never came out despite repeated attempts on my part. I thought this dress was just the cutest, softest, best all-around dress in her wardrobe (among the approximately 1000 dresses she has).



So I proposed to her that I add a design on the front of it--I had suggested a hot air balloon (it seemed to fit the stain's shape), but she countered with butterflies. Butterflies work.



So I happened to have some green jersey knit in about the same shade as the shoulder buttons, so green butterflies it is. After a fair amount of trial and error (and ripping out and repairing the rips and judicious use of fusible interfacing and stitch witchery), voila! we have four appliqued butterflies, complete with stitched antenna. And now the dress is way cuter.

Update: Overalls project

I sewed the cuffs on the pant legs in the hopes that they would keep the pants in place a little better when Jasper crawled around in them. Fail. They're cute--I used the serger to flatlock them on with the red thread, so it's cute and all, but as soon as he started crawling away (i.e., immediately), they got all bunched up again.


But, the good news is that they might now be big enough for him to wear next fall, and he probably won't be crawling too much by then. So perhaps this post will get a third installment around October or so.

See the original post on these overalls here.

Baby overalls from an old shirt

So I got a snap press this week. It's very exciting. For me. Maybe not for you. But now I can make baby clothes with all those crotch/leg snaps without having to deal with snap tape or--even worse--a hammer and that cheap plastic clamp thing Dritz makes that I hate.

Anyway, this snap press is great for converting velco diapers to snap diapers (and since we have a bunch of diapers with useless, wasted velco, that's a great thing.) But that's not the project I'm excited about right now.

I've been pulling out my old clothes that I no longer wear--the Hartstings truck is making a stop at our house next week. But in the case of some of my old clothes, I don't like the garment itself anymore, but I do still like the fabric. And this L.L.Bean shirt is a perfect example. I've had it since junior high or so, so it's super soft. It's wool jersey on the outside and soft cotton jersey on the inside. Sounds like some nice warm, soft baby overalls are in order!

So the shirt I started with is the L.L. Bean Two-Layer River Driver henley shirt. It doesn't look like they still make the exact same thing, but here's the crew neck version. (no I wasn't smart enough to take a picture of the shirt before I hacked it to bits.) The nice thing about the henley style is that, if you preserve the neck band, you've got the front buttons in place to make it easy to take off baby's head (then again, most adult neckbands are probably big enough to take over a baby's head.)

Anyway, I set out to make the overalls with the serger. And with one little exception, I didn't need the regular sewing machine at all. The plan was to use the roll hem on the armholes, inseam, and leg cuffs and the 4-thread overlock on the seams. It wound up being a pretty easy project--one I could probably have finished during Jasper's nap if a) I hadn't been figuring it out as I went and b) he'd taken a decent nap today.

So this is not exactly a tutorial--I won't go into that much detail--but more like loose instructions that someone who's pretty adept at using the serger could probably use to figure it out. Or it's just a really vague tutorial.

First, I cut all the pieces out.



I cut out the body, keeping the bottom hem in place as well as the neck line. I used another romper as a guide to where the crotch and armholes should be. Note that he's about a size 18 months and the length of the shirt worked well. Smaller sizes would need the bottom cut too; larger would need something sewn on the bottom. (More on that later.) I also cut out the crotch extension piece and a facing for the back snap opening. I cut off the cuffs too, though I wasn't sure if I'd use them. (For taller babies, this is an easy way to add some length.)

First, I sewed the crotch onto the back of the overalls. (I first basted with the sewing machine because I needed to ease the pieces together and I wasn't too confident that I'd do that well with the serger. A more experienced serger could skip that step.)



Then I serged the snap facing to the legs and crotch.



Next I roll hemmed the arm holes, the edges of the inseam and snap facing, and, since I was using contrasting thread, the bottom of the legs too.



Then I serged the sides and put snaps all along the leg openings. Ta da!



And found a model:



Beautiful! Until he started moving around in it. That's when it occured to me that adding the cuffs to the legs might come in handy. He's a crawler/cruiser, and tends to crawl out of the legs.



So I will add some cuffs tonight and add an epilogue to this post once I get some new pictures.