Star Wars Easter

I bought this Star Wars Easter fabric on clearance a few years ago. And there it sat. For some reason, it popped into my mind the other night, and then the race was on. I had three yards, so I briefly thought about making a Madison dress. But I also wanted to make darn sure that it would reach my niece before Easter, so that was out. (Also, I'm not sure if I had anything to coordinate, so....oh, well.)

Instead, I reached for the trusty skirt pattern. Or at least skirt pattern inspiration. I cut this out Tuesday afternoon/evening, stitched it completely before going to bed Tuesday night, and mailed it Wednesday morning.

The main skirt piece was cut 20.5 inches long (because that's the size of my biggest square ruler) by WOF. The ruffle piece is 7 inches by WOF. I made the ruffle a double one so that there would be no hemming. 

It's a little busy, but I'm thinking she's going to like it. I didn't have time to make a matching doll skirt, but that can come later.....

 

Back to the lightweight PJs!

Back when I made the requested lightweight pair of PJ pants for my mother, using a microfiber sheet set from Target, I had asked my SIL if my niece would like matching PJs. This was a terrible idea, because I hadn't yet done anything but cut the PJ pants. (Though I should've known better just from that!) This is fabric from hell. It looks super cute, but it frays like nobody's business and just generally misbehaves. I have hated almost every minute working with it.

This is the usual KS 213 pattern, but minus any ribbon trim because the fabric was just awful. I finished up other projects and then ran across this - cut and pinned but not a stitch in it - while cleaning up some piles. Sigh.....time to whip it up while the serger was in a behaving mood.

 Hopefully she loves them!

More Hockey PJ Pants!

Thing 2 loves PJ pants almost as much as he loves hockey. He's constantly changing into PJ pants to lounge around the house after school. And he does have plenty of pairs, thanks mostly to his mama. But when I saw this hockey flannel on doorbuster sale at JAF, I knew he needed to have it. This is the trusty S8022, in teen/adult size XS for more growth room. I'm planning to throw it into the gift stash and have it ready to pull out for his birthday.

 

More sports pants!

So when JAF had the good sale on licensed sports fabrics, I also bought a length of fleece for my buddy. She's a die-hard White Sox fan, and she's also always cold, so I figured this would be a total win.

Sometime maybe last year - I don't think I ever mentioned it on the blog - I had mocked up two adult sizes of  S8022 and sent them to my SIL, to try on for size, when she wanted me to make her some lounge pants. Never one to miss an opportunity, I then asked her to forward them to my friend so she could do the same. I was really wanting to make her some flannel PJ pants in a plaid background and wanted to use a pattern with minimal seams. But it also works out well for fleece!

And then, since I've learned these lessons, I thought to check if I could squeeze a pair for my niece (her dad is also a White Sox fan) out of the leftovers! And - woohoo! She gets an extra pair of lounge pants, and I have less fabric waste. You can see that I'm still debating shirt colors for a matching shirt with applique.

Edited to add that I decided to go with grey! Mainly because I have a new use for the red shirt. ;)

 

Lounge pants for a kiddo

I stopped by JAF the other day to look for a specific fabric to pet. Then this one caught my eye and it became an impulse buy for my niece. 😎 I'm going to assume that she won't mind. The fleece was on all sale, and it only took a yard to turn into a cute pair of lounge pants for her, just like the Grinch pair I made from the leftovers of my pants.

I ended up making a shirt to go with this one to send to my niece. I'm working through a bunch of shirts that I bought her and never did anything with, so.....the scraps of fleece that were leftover were useless, so I traced the unicorn constellation and made an applique from it.

I tried to echo the lines of the constellation in the stitching. Hopefully it looks good enough.

 

Grinch set for my niece!

I try my hardest to get my niece's birthday present out on time (her birthday is just before Christmas), but then the Christmas gifts to that household are usually sometime in January. You know....it draws out the season. 😂 

So when I made my Grinch lounge pants for me, I realized that I probably had enough leftover to make her a pair, as well. These fleece pants require no seam finishing and no pressing, so they are quick to make! Last night, I traced the pattern and whipped up a pair in no time. I used Simplicity 8022, child/teen size S. (I compared the pattern to the KS213 I've been using for her, and the XS was about exactly the size I've been using, so I went up a size to give her more time to wear them.)

And then, just for fun, I appliqued Grinches from the leftover fabric onto two shirts, for a PJ set. (Why two? Well, I couldn't decide on black vs white, and I also have a bunch of shirts for her that I haven't yet done anything with, so....)

 

Twirls and Lace

Since I was on a twirly roll - and also/mainly because I happened to find the cut pieces when I was looking for something else - I decided to finish up these twirly skirts I started from leftover linen pieces from baby slings. (These were also cut and then put into time out when the serger was misbehaving, but it's been behaving so beautiful for these that I'm thrilled!) I had decided some lace overlays on the middle tier would make them more fun for a little girl than just a plain linen skirt.

First up, the olive linen. This picture doesn't quite accurately represent the color, but it's close. I paired it with a light silver lace. The waist is pretty bulky, because I didn't want to try gathering the lace onto a shorter tier, but it'll work for a child. And instead of doing a double-layer ruffle to avoid hemming, I used the same binding that I had used on this sling. It's a black with grey music symbols. I had enough of this left that the skirt was fairly full.

Both the teal linen and the pink binding were from slings as well, but not from the same sling. Yikes! I actually had intended to use a silver binding on this (which I believe is the one I used on that baby sling), but I asked my niece's preference, and she wanted the "crazy pink." Yes, ma'am! (The "crazy pink" was the binding for a black linen sling, for one of my work buddies.) I didn't have as much of this left, so the skirt isn't as full, and I cut the ruffle at half the length of the olive one. But it's still cute and twirly, and hopefully my niece loves it!

Just for fun, I also bound the raw edge of the waistband, instead of folding it under. To avoid a ton of bulk from the edges coming together, I applied the binding to the waist edge, then serged both sides of the skirt, then stitched them together, and then pressed the seam open. I also stitched it down to either side of the seamline. I think it made it look really nice inside.

Next up? Appliqued shirts!

Twirly skirts!

Just a boy mom, drowning in ruffles.....

So since my serger was behaving and helping me make fantastic ruffles for the twirly dresses, I decided that I should finally bust out some twirly summer skirts I'd cut for my niece last year, before putting them in time-out because the serger was being a pain. After all, I didn't want her to outgrow them before she wore them!  And these really are perfect for summer.

I've made quite a few Rachel skirts for my niece, though I haven't blogged them all. These were cut out in a size 8. (Fortunately, I record details when I cut them, because it's been a year! I wouldn't have remembered.) I used to use buttonhole elastic on her skirts, but these ones just use regular elastic. I figure she'll outgrow them before the expandable elastic would have been super helpful. And of course, her doll needed matching skirts!

My favorite - I'm not really a paisley person, but this print is super cute. And I love the teal and fuschia.

I thought the orange dots were fun.

Love the strawberries and bicycles in this main print! I thought the whole thing was super summery.

As usual, the fabrics are from JAF's tutti fruitti line. I love that weight for summery twirly skirts, especially since I double the hem ruffles to avoid hemming miles of ruffles. And they have such bright fun prints!

Twirly dresses!

So once upon a time, almost three years ago, I made my niece a twirly dress. It was the Madison pattern from Made for Mermaids, and there's the Dolly Madison matching pattern for 15 or 18" dolls. (My niece has an 18" Our Generation doll from Target.) I made the prototype out of random bright fabric I had on hand, intending to then make the next ones probably from Nemo fabric, and then who knows after that.....But my serger didn't want to play nicely with making ruffles, and so I had to hand gather miles of ruffles, and I never got past the prototype, even though she loved it. 

But then a few months ago I got a message that her twirly dress was getting too small, and she was sad and wanted a new one. Which made me decide that, yes, I should finally get around to that. But I still put it off a bit, and then finally bit the bullet. It was at this crazy point that I decided to make TWO Nemo dresses instead of trying to decide which print to use for the bodice vs the skirt. Thank goodness my serger decided to give me a break and produce awesome ruffles this time!

These are size ten, midway between tea and maxi-length (I think I just went maxi on the doll dresses), and I tried out the piping instead of waist ruffle. I really like how the piping looks, but I'll ask my niece what she thinks before another one appears.

I do my ruffles double layer so I can avoid hemming them. ;) I also think it gives a bit more weight to the hem, so that maybe they won't flip up as much. I really like how these turned out and hope my nieces loves them!

New Christmas PJ Pants

Silly me did not remember to take pics before mailing out some of the gifts, but I did grab these out of my kids' rooms to take one. This is Simplicity 8022, my new go-to for my younger son. I bought the Blackhawks fleece during a sale over the summer, and it's been waiting for Christmas. I have been making his PJ pants a size child/teen M, with smaller SAs for the fleece. But I went up to child/teen L for this one, as I want it to fit longer.

My older son doesn't normally wear PJ pants, but I saw the gamer flannel at JAF one day and thought it would be perfect. He was having surgery right after Christmas, so I thought he might like a pair of soft flannel lounge pants during his recovery. This is the teen/adult size L.

New twirly skirt!

My niece looooves her twirly skirts. I hear about it frequently, and I get to see them in action in pictures that her parents post! So when I stopped into a JAF with no plan in mind, I spotted the Christmas fabric on sale and just had to make her a new skirt to wear at Christmas. This is yet another Rachel skirt - I clearly haven't blogged all the ones I made, but there are quite a few.

Both the stripes and the gingerbread fabrics have a glittery metallic texture. I think they look like a lot of fun together! I lengthened the skirt a bit and basically just used the pattern for the measurements. The trim ruffle is doubled to avoid the need to hem. And both the main and trim pieces are done at 2:1 fullness. Since my serger decided that it didn't want to gather ruffles this week, I had to do them the old fashioned way, by zigzagging over thick crochet thread and then manually pulling the gathers and arranging them. Not. Fun. But I think she's going to love the finished result!

As usual, the doll skirt is a free online pattern.

More cardigans!

So my niece loved her cardigan prototype! And she wanted more. So what's an aunt to do but oblige? I had this knit print that I picked up somewhere, and it yielded enough for one cardigan for my niece (size 10 - the 8 fit her perfectly so I wanted some growth room), one cardigan for a friend's daughter (not pictured but identical except a size 2T), and one doll cardigan (pattern).

I went with the same pattern options as before - patch pockets, tunic length, short bands, and three-quarter sleeves. I used a rib knit cut against the grain to stabilize the shoulders and just behind the top of the pockets. And I added bands instead of hemming the sleeves. Way too lazy for that!

No changes to the pattern for the doll cardigan!

These are going in the box for her birthday present - I hope she loves them just as much as the last ones!

Picture Day!

Thing 2 has a habit of wearing Mama-made shirts - usually with Mama-made ties! - for picture day. He's done this for the last four years at least (as I try to tick off the shirts in my memory), but shockingly I've apparently never blogged them?  Anyway, this was stitched the night before picture day, and somehow I was done by 11 pm. I used Fashion Sewing Supply's Pro-Welft Fusible Interfacing and the tutorial from Gigi Sews to add a lined yoke. This is M2146, size XL. He still has some room to grow in it, thank goodness!

And just check out that pattern matching across the front! I'm ridiculously pleased with it.

More PJ Pants!

Thing 2 had a birthday recently, and he needed some smaller gifts to go with the bigger one we'd already gotten. So PJ pants were my immediate idea! The milk and cookies flannel has been in my stash for a long time - I eked this pair out of what I had! And the Chicago Blackhawks woven fabric was from a sale earlier this summer. (I also have some fleece for Christmas PJ pants - shhh! Don't tell him!)

The milk and cookies pair was S8022, size M. I wasn't sure how it would do in a flannel (although I believe flannel was listed as a recommended fabric), so I did the 3/8" SAs again. The Blackhawks pair is KS 3042 size XL. The others that he has in that pattern and size have some decent growth room, so I figured these would last awhile. The fabric was too expensive to want him to outgrow it quickly!

Toddler fun!

Ah, I remember the days when I did a lot of little kid sewing, and it was so gratifying.  Well, a coworker has a toddler, and I had been meaning to sew for her for a long time.  It all started with finding this Nightmare before Christmas knit remnant at JAF maybe a year ago. So finally I did a lot of cutting (patterns from Kwik Sew's Sewing for Toddlers) and sewed these up over Memorial Day weekend.

The Nightmare before Christmas pants are size 2T.

Along with those pants, I also had a few other knit fabrics.  From top left and going clockwise - Nightmare before Christmas, rainbow spiderweb (stash - 2T pants), cats (JAF - 2T shorts), sharks (stash - 2T shorts), superhero cat words (JAF - 2T shorts), and blocks of cats (stash - 2T pants).

My coworker was surprised and excited to get these for her little one!

Boxers everywhere

We know that boxers are a common gift for the males in my life.  (Although I'm surprised to not see any of the ones for my boys in there....did I seriously never blog them?  Let's see if I can find those pics....okay, here's one....These are some of the original boxers, after they got a prototype each in their stockings to test size....)

And more of the early ones....

Okay, back to this year.  These are for my husband, and both prints were from JAF.  He got the craft beer print in his stocking, and the dino skeletons are going into a box until Father's Day.

These are for Thing 1!  All fabrics again from JAF.  The superhero words print is the boys' XL, which is what he is currently wearing.  But the Mario, Zelda, and knockoff Minecraft are all men's size XS.  We'll see how those go.

These are for Thing 2!  The Chicago Blackhawks and bottle caps prints were from JAF.  The surfing skeletons, tools, and Marine Corps prints were from stash - I don't remember where.  These are all boys' size L.  (His previous ones were boys' M, and they're getting a bit tight.  He already had a Blackhawks print as seen above, but heaven forbid that he not have a Blackhawks pair that fits!)

These definitely went over well at Christmas!

Christmas sewing

Back in 2014, I made a set of Christmas stockings as a wedding gift for my sister and her new husband.  Since then, I made a Christmas stocking for my nephew - just realized that I never blogged it, so here it is.

And so this year I needed to make a new stocking for my new niece.  Kept to the same font, same simplicity.  But decided that purple would go well for a girl.

And then my nephew got a set of new PJs for his gift.  The pants are from KS SFT, and the shirt was embellished to tie it together with the pants.

Mish mash and photographer fail

 So....first of all, I've done a bunch of regular sewing but failed to take photos.  Remember those boppy covers I made for my sister-in-law way back when?  Well, a colleague asked if I'd make some for her.  I said, sure, why not?  I used a flannel from my stash as a prototype to check the fit, then made covers from the three fabrics shown below (she provided those - this was the pic to see what she thought of snap possibilities), and then also found another hilarious flannel in my stash for the fifth one (that was a tie-dyed flannel with skulls). And then did I take any pics after finishing them?  Of course not....sigh....

I also finished a baby sling (think this one with orange binding instead of pink) and appliqued sugar skulls onto three baby onesies the night before the shower.  Forgot to take pics of anything.  Grrrrrr....

During that time, I also made two new pairs of PJ shorts for me, to see which pattern I preferred.  I haven't taken pics of them, either, but at least they live here with me and will be photographed eventually.

In the meantime, let's be amused by the other cross-stitch finishes I've had recently.

A friend moved into her first home, and I knew she'd love this.  The pattern is more explicit, but she was concerned her family would object, so I redrew it to include the asterisk and adjust the spacing.

And then I had to make PacMan for ME!  It struck me as an awesome bookmark, which it is now.  I'm still debating backstitching as called for, but I'm not sure that it would do much, since it's on black....We'll see....

Drawstring backpack to order

Thing 2 has eyed Thing 1's drawstring backpack for awhile, and I'd been promising him one.  And I finally followed through near the end of summer.  Unlike Thing 1's, which was a surprise, I let Thing 2 help design his.  He wanted one like my Chicago Blackhawks version, but bigger like his brother's.  No problem!

Outer is black twill like mine, but he chose a red zipper.  Good choice!  And like mine, there's a full pocket on this side but not the other.  

I added the D-ring again, and he got his own jersey key fob, made by my friend Sheila, who does amazing work as well as custom orders.  Also, this year he needed his own house key, so he got to pick out the ribbon he wanted on his key fob.  He loves going to Subway, so I wasn't surprised that he picked out the Zombie Subway ribbon.

Chicago Blackhawks block print for the lining of the outer pocket.....

....as well as for the lining.  And this time I actually lined up that print for a full inner pocket.  Look at that pattern matching!  I'm still tickled by it!  I think I used black for the backing of that pocket.  I should probably look, because I don't remember.

And then I used some of the heavier black cording I got from Home Depot.  It's been holding up pretty well.  Thing 2 has used this bag pretty much non-stop for the last three months now!  He's asked that the next one be camo for his "military" adventures with his friends.

Wow...it's been awhile....

Let's see if I can remember what all I've worked on since my last post and find pics for some.  Bear with me....

So I made prototype shorts for my niece.  This is the Easy Ruffle Shorts pattern by LLK - it's an older pattern that they are no longer supporting, apparently, but it's still out there.  I think this was size 6.  I need to try it again, because it was too tight on her.  I even bought more fabric for it, but so far hasn't happened.  We'll see....I'll probably try size 8 next.

However, the doll version DID fit. As one would hope. 

And I also made the poor doll a few T-shirts.  The gray is scraps from one of Thing 1's shirts, and the sparkly purple was one of mine.  I used the Liberty Jane Trendy T-shirt pattern, which worked up really well.