Easter shirts! (yes, finally!)

Yes, I've been horribly remiss in posting pictures of completed Easter outfits to date.  Ridiculous, I know!  Anyway, here goes (and these are both B3475):

First up, Thing 1's white penguin shirt.  This is a size 8, and I added a lined yoke.  The outer fabric is a white twill from JAF.  The facings and inner yoke are a penguin print cotton, also from JAF.  To prevent the print from being visible from the outside, I underlined the facings and inner yoke with a white muslin.  It didn't add much bulk but did mask the print.  I used snaps for the closure, per my son's request.  And in the end, he didn't even wear this for Easter, as the kids' choir he was in decided that white was not a good color for the kids to be wearing onstage. :(  However, he did wear it for his school concert a month later, so it was all good.  He became very self-conscious about the penguin print facings, so I ended up adding another snap near the neck, so that only white was visible.  Next time, I would leave the facings plain and only go with something fun on the inner yoke.

 Thing 2 loves Star Wars, so I found him this Clone Wars print at JAF.  (No, our church is not necessarily traditional on dress code.)  This is a size 6, and again I added a lined yoke and used snaps for the closures. He loves it!  And I came this close (><) to matching the print across the front, but somehow it still ended up being about a quarter inch off - gah!  Oh, well.....it's still really cute.

All in all, a hit!

And more silhouettes!

I made another set of silhouettes for a birthday present, this time for my grandma.  I used the same original photos as I had for the last post, but these were the ones that were printed out at 5x7 size.  As you can see, they fit very nicely into 4x6 mat openings.  This time, I left more torso just to see how I would like it.  And I think I like it!  Not for all of them, but I think it turned out really well here.  The background didn't show up as well, but it's a mottled blue/black, and I really liked it with the black silhouettes of boys.  I really hope my grandma likes it, too!  (I didn't make silhouettes of all her great-grandchildren, because I don't have access to profile shots of the other kids.  If she really likes these, maybe I'll try to get everyone to send me photos for a Christmas silhouette set....Or not.)

Silhouettes

I liked the silhouettes I made in December so well that I immediately decided to make some for my mother-in-law for her birthday.  I thought that they would seemed to fit her decor aesthetic.  So when my nephews were over for a day in January, I planned ahead and put each boy against the wall while I took their picture from the same spot on the floor, so that their pictured heads would have the same relative sizes as they do in real life.  (There's gotta be an easier way to say that!)

Fast-forward to April, two days before my MIL's birthday party, in fact, and I got around to printing out the pictures and getting to work.  I had actually pre-purchased my supplies - well, most of them.  I had bought one of the frames (the mats came with the frames, and each opening is 5x7) at Wal-Mart several weeks earlier, but wanted to check to be sure it looked good before buying a second one.  I had the scrapbook papers and the acid-free stickers.  So first I printed out the biggest boy's picture in 8x10 size and checked the size against the mat opening.  Hmm.....seemed too big - it barely fits.  So I printed out all the pictures in 5x7 size and cut out the heads.

*I should point out here that I printed the pictures on cardstock, so that it was easier to trace around later.  And I didn't crop the pictures at all, because I couldn't figure out how to crop them exactly the same and keep the relative sizing as mentioned earlier.

I really should have just printed out the smallest boy's picture in 5x7 and checked it against the mat opening, but I didn't.  (In the end, I printed all 4 pictures in both 8x10 and 5x7 size, and I ended up using the 8x10 pictures for this particular project.  However, all is not lost, as I'm going to use the smaller ones for a set of smaller silhouettes for my grandma and my sister-in-law, so I'm pretending that I planned it that way.)

After each head was cut out from the picture, I decided which way I wanted them to face and then traced the head onto the back of the black scrapbooking cardstock with a pencil.  I have to say that it showed up really well!  I cut out the traced outline, attached the background paper to the back of the mat using acid-free photo stickers, and then used the same stickers to attach the silhouettes to the background.  You can't see it from the picture here, but I also used a scrapbooking pen to write each boy's initials just under the back of the neck.  Just in case their doting grandma forgets what they look like or something. :)

I think they turned out really well, and I'm thinking that I'll be making more in the future.  I really like how they look on black with a patterned background.  And I also like the idea of putting initials and the year next to the silhouettes.  I can keep doing this for years!

The Bag from the Underworld, part II

Remember this bag? The one that made me cuss a lot, because I screwed up just about everything? At least once? Well, I said that I'd make it again at least once, because I cut two out when I made the first. And now the time had come to man up and sew the second one. It was actually supposed to be my BFF's Christmas present, but there were issues at the time, so I gave her a raincheck. And since I'm about to go visit her, I thought it would be good to finish it and hand-deliver it.

The outside is a slightly stretchy dark olive twill, I think. It was a $1-2/yd purchase from WM years ago, and I made at least one pair of small Thing pants out of it (which held up really well, as I recall!). I used two strands of black thread held together for the top-stitching on the pockets and attachment of the straps. (For some reason, my sewing machine gets very angry with the Gutermann topstitching thread I have but sails along with two strands of regular - go figure. It doesn't matter what needle I've tried, either.)

The lining is the same Charlie Brown cotton print, interfaced with ShapeFlex interfacing (Pellon). I really like the way the stuff drapes. The pocket is fully lined, with boxed corners and a piece of elastic in the top that's only about an inch or so shorter than the width of the pocket - just enough to help keep contents in place.
I made a large patch pocket on this side, with a zipper at the top. This could be used for cell phone, sunglasses, wallet - whatever. And you can see that the key fob is attached high on the side seam, maybe two inches from the top. I realized that if I have a key leash, then the key fob should be higher for ease of location. At least, that was the rationale.

The magnetic snaps are a little higher than they should have been. I had to remove them to edgestitch the top of the bag, then replace them before stitching the opening in the bottom. I thought I'd left enough room, but apparently I miscalculated. Otherwise, I would have made a double-row of stitching around the top to echo what I did on the outer pockets.
And then a matching key leash and tissue cover. I think she'll really like this gift!

Back to uniforms....

I haven't made any scrubs in quite some time, because my BFF can no longer wear non-standard scrubs to work (boo!). And since I haven't needed any, well, what's the point? However, I found the partially cut scrub shirt for a friend's husband the other day, and I was embarrassed to realize that this UFO actually moved with us a year ago. Yikes! They had bought 3 fabrics about a year and a half or so ago and asked me to sew them, and clearly I dropped the ball on this one. So I got to work on it and finished it up, which is good, because now I can hand-deliver it. :) All's well that ends well, right?

More baby love....

Dr. Seuss's birthday was last month, and it gave me the impetus I needed to finally use some Thing 1/Thing 2 fabric that I bought from the SewItSeams coop several years ago. The problem is that I accidentally bought some of the poly knit and had no idea what to do with it, because I don't make diapers. (I thought I'd deleted my poly order and switched entirely to cotton interlock, but apparently I forgot to delete the poly part. So I ended up with both.) However, I have since seen that some people used the poly knits to make T-shirts for their kids, so I figured I had nothing to lose, right? So I sewed T-shirts for my boys from the Fishsticks Designs PCR pattern (still need to get pics of those shirts to blog), using the Thing 1/Thing 2 fabric for the main pieces and a cotton-Lycra knit for the sleeves and neckbands. Since that turned out well, I decided to use up the leftovers on a jogging suit for my niece. I didn't get it done quickly enough to mail to her for Dr. Seuss's birthday, but I think it'll be okay. This is KS SFB size M.

And my sister-in-law requested more boppy covers like the one I sent previously. Apparently it fits pretty well, and they use it all the time. So I raided my flannel stash (the dragonflies are from JAF clearance section a few years ago, and the other two are from JAF on Black Friday - maybe five years ago? I think that might've been my very first Black Friday fabric shopping trip.) This time I decided that I didn't feel like dealing with zippers (or buying them) when I have a snap press and plenty of snaps on hand! So I added an inch to each piece and interfaced the inch before turning it under and stitching in place, then added snaps. I haven't heard back yet, but I'm assuming these fit just as well.

More dog love....

I previously wrote about making a double-layer fleece jacket for my elderly dog, and I said that I would likely make another so that she would be sure to stay warm. Well, I did, at the end of January. In fact, I made TWO more - one double-layer, for outside, and one single-layer, for inside. (The "house coat" was my DH's suggestion, believe it or not!)

The pawprints on brown fleece is the double-layer one, lined with a camel solid. Both were Black Friday purchases. I made them as previously described, except for cutting the upper back and the collar with the pattern piece an inch away from the fabric fold, to give her a little more room across the back. This seemed to work pretty well. The single-layer jacket is the hunter fleece, which was stash salvaged from a failed costume attempt. I felt pretty good about making it something useful in the end. Both are bound with brown nylon-lycra.
I did zigzag the seam allowances of the collar-neck seam down on the green jacket, just so they weren't terribly obvious. Both use snaps, as that worked really well in the last jacket, which has held up very well to washing and wearing.

Of course, once I got around to making these, the weather turned mostly too warm for her to use them. I think each jacket has gotten at most a week's worth of wear. Oh, well! She'll have them if she's still around next winter....