Green voile Citronille top

I found Citronille via Amanda at Soulemama a few weeks ago, and ordered a few of their delicious patterns. I fell totally in love with a square-necked smock shirt and a pointy-hooded coat that both boasted simple construction methods, and picked up a third hippy-style shirt that looked like something my partner would wear in a larger size.
Whilst the shipping wasn't cheap it WAS fast, and the patterns themselves were very inexpensive and covered a wide range of sizes - not to mention beautiful and unusual compared to the poor selection available without flounces or skirts in Australia.

After whipping up a toile in calico I thought the first shirt pattern looked a bit wide and short for my long, skinny pixie (who refused to try it on for me to double check after eyeballing) so I attempted to adjust it when it came time to cut out my actual first attempt.

Lesson learned; don't eyeball changes. Especially ones that make it difficult for the shoulders to fit a garment. I ended up having to add triangular gores back into the side-seams, thus rendering my years in the Medieval Society useful in modern life, after all!

I used a gorgeous green voile that snagged with very little provocation, and was originally another Medieval Society garment. It seems to be my month for remaking old garments into wildly new ones.

And then Pixieface wouldn't try the actual garment on until I'd added the buttons (which were then cause for excitement, celebration, and definite donning). I found these two delicious little red apple buttons at a church market stall and bought them for twenty cents, knowing I'd find the right project sometime.



Unfortunately, Two seems to be a difficult age for getting nice shots of this child of mine. A combination of camera-shy and inability to stand still made these about the best I could do.
BUT the final verdict is that I will be making one of these in every colour, for the warmer months. With longer sleeves and body length than suggested by the pattern (but not narrower!). Just too gorgeous for words. And so very European looking!

Recently seen on my sewing machine

Early this year I found a sleeveless fleece vest for my son's wardrobe. It's been really useful on cooler days this winter, when we've gone out to playgrounds where it's very cool when you stand still, but running around like a two year old makes it a bit warm for a jumper.
I didn't quite trust myself to fit a zip to stretchy fleece fabric so planned to do a double-breasted button thing for my homemade version. This turned out not to be as practical as I'd hoped, since a sudden growth spurt meant he was filling out his clothes an inch or two more than when I first began cutting. So the resulting garment looks slightly lopsided, but was still a big hit - the minute I added the buttons and rediscovered my machine's buttonholing capabilities that is (he didn't want a bar of it, pre-buttons).

The outside is a gorgeous grey minky fleece, and I cut around the fading on an old cotton garment for the lining, that was retired from the Medieval Society when I was in charge of the loaner gear (so the local group heads offered me the spoils!). I patterned it off a (slightly A-line) shirt, allowing a few centimetres extra on each seam, so a few layers could be comfortably worn beneath. (To do this, turn your garment inside out, pull the sleeves inside the body of the garment and lay it as flat as you can. Potential tute to follow. Eventually.)


I think next time I'll try finishing the edges with a contrasting rib knit and not bother lining it. I'd also curve the front edges rather than leaving them as right angles, one of which inevitably flips up.
But not bad for a first go. With the skivvy and embroidered flares the Tiny Tyrant was definitely channelling the 70s the other day!

Toddler Tuesday: pants from bunny rug

I enlisted the Tiny Tyrant's help in making him some new PJ pants (which he needed desperately, since the past month's growth spurt has added an extra two inches to his legs, seemingly).
Digging through my stash of flannelette material lead to the discovery of the rug we wrapped him in for his first Mama-Baby photos, the first day we were home from the hospital. Since he was in the NICU for a week he was already eight days old. I remember asking my partner to take the two photos, so I'd have something to send to the family; apart from a fuzzy, long distance view of the plastic crib he was in, all our photos so far had included wires, heat lamps and machines that went PING.
Finding that blanket made me feel very nostalgic, and I remembered how exhausted, relieved and overjoyed I was that I finally had him home with my partner and I, and we had the opportunity to begin enjoying being the new family that we all were, together.

Tyrant seemed to be drawn to it too, because it was the material he chose to have his new pants made from.
I've been getting him a bit more involved in my sewing, lately; he likes to sit on my lap when I'm not sewing fiddly things, and watch the fabric move through the machine (thank goodness he's such a careful child). He works the presser foot for me, and I pause to let him pull pins out and stick them on my magnetic mushroom, which he loves to do.
So we sewed up his new pants in around fifteen minutes, and for the first night in some time he wanted to get into his pyjamas early!

Just Pants

The toddler has had a growth spurt and the pants that fit my miniature manling last winter are now just as tight round the waist, but sit ridiculously high on his ankles and shins. So has begun the great pants-making effort of Winter '10.

Red pants with contrast fabric at cuff and on/in the side pockets of green with daisies:



Same but in blue, with blue, red and yellow birds and a back pocket too:



Up close the red pair looks homemade, the blue handmade with an unfortunate seam. I'm still wokring on streamlining this pattern/sewing process. Because my goodness, aren't these cute?

Matching kimonos

Oh, Habitual "Simple" Kimono, how I love to hate and hate to love you!

These two are a matching set for a friend's two sons - the smallest of whom is only three weeks old, and as big as my munchkin was at birth. They're the fourth and fifth versions of this pattern that I've made, and I've come to the point where I've realised two things;

1. Whilst binding on the edges looks really awesome, it's nasty to sew without pressing and being very, very careful you've got it matched up on either side of the fabric. Inevitably, I end up missing the edge on the underside. (is there some trick I have not discovered?)
   
   
2. My son is just too tiny for this massive neckline! Whilst a size may fit him length-wise, the neck gapes really badly. The kimono I made him at six months sits strangely along the bottom as it tries to reach round his body, but the neck fits perfectly, as an example.

So I think some pattern tweaking is in order, when I next feel the need to make another of these (and I do love them; it's so hard to find interesting, creative clothing for little boys that doesn't consist of insane amounts of tailoring and I'm not about to try getting an 18 month old to stand still for a fitting!). necessity is the mother of invention, after all.

Case in point; I didn't have enough of the gorgeous forest green or pale blue bindings to completely do each of the kimonos, so I took a multicoloured approach. Tiny boy's kimono is trimmed in a darker blue than the background of the fabric, with brown and green for the side-ties that matches some of the cars in the print. Big boy's kimono is trimmed in the forest green his mother and I both love on our boys, with orange side-ties, that again goes with the print on the fabric - this one's not an exact match, but less disparity than the photos suggest. My camera and the light levels just were not happy with me this morning!

Beautiful, Inspiring Boys' Clothes, courtesy of flickr

1. Wild West Overalls, 2. flow shirt, 3. For Oskar's birthday, 4. 2 new shirts, 5. Elephants in a row, 6. VIntage Inspired Sunsuit/Romper, 7. Zombies- BlueLS- rockNroll, 8. kwik sew 2545, 9. Dog jacket and matching pants

Created with fd's Flickr Toys.

Inspiration; Boys from the past

There's heaps of cute stuff you can sew for girls, not so much for boys, it seems. I'm plugging away at this problem, and lately I've started looking at some historical styles for ideas.
Today I found this great found photographs profile on flickr, which is chock-full of inspiration!

I've been playing with the idea of a sailor suit for a little while, and thinking about how the neckline on a top would work. So it was cool to find this collection of photographs from Denmark (I think?) featuring lots of little boys in sailor suit-esque clothes. Check out the pants in that second shot, too! LURVE the button embellishments on the outside of the shorts legs, though I'd like to lengthen the short if I was going to do something similar.

I also really like the front of the coat the little boy in the front right of this photo is wearing - the decorative double-breasted look and the short waist is really sweet, especially with the over the knee, tight pantaloon.

Of a slightly more recent age (but still cute) are these shorts with attached braces (thought again, I'd like to see them around knee length, instead of teeny tiny 60s-style).

And I can't decide if I actually like these two pictures, or if it's the kid's slightly guilty expression that's giving me a fit of the giggles, and making the clothes seem more appealing.

Surely if it were the cuteness though, I'd be wanting reproduce the outfit of the marshmallow baby pictured here? Zie's so squishy! Like a baby marshmallow!

Green Apple tunic

Began life as a woman's size small v-neck fitted top. Found in a $2 bin at JayJays. I didn't get a 'before' picture because I didn't think ahead.

The fabric reminds me of my friend Ez.

And yes, this is my son pulling everything out of his drawers. One of his favourite activities, at the moment.

"E" is for Elephant

My girlfriend fell pregnant very shortly after my own son was conceived. Since she lives West of Sydney and I'm south, we're both in kind of black holes so far as the transport situation is concerned. So I was really excited to get to meet her and her beautiful little boy in the city, today!

I made him a little present that I whipped up in the last two or three nights.
First is a pair of wide-legged yoga pants - the outside is made from a delicious dark green up-cycled old sheet that my Mother Outlaw donated to me a while back (I'm so plotting a pixie outfit for my boy sometime soon!). I'm also starting to get into the swing of the rib-knit I used for the waistband. It's fun stuff and not as hard as I thought.

But because the recipient is a delicate little petal and needs 100% cotton clothes for his poor chafed skin, I rummaged through my stash for a lining and came up with pale yellow cotton flannel. It's made the pants thicker and warmer than I originally envisioned, but hopefully it will mean they can be winter and autumn pants rather than the spring I was going for! My little boy decided that second shot needed to be helped by his doll. Since photographic styling is not my strong suit, I took his suggestion.

The second part of his project is this sweet little door hanger - I spotted the "E" at a local shop - they only had Es! Which was serendipitous, since my gift is for an Elliott.
I almost cried, cutting up the rainbow ribbon - I pounced on it months back and haven't had the heart to open it till now. And then I cut my pieces too generously and have all these tag-ends I don't want to get rid of.
The elephant was inspired by the beautiful layette decor Tecelinha keeps posting to one of my flickr groups, and this fabulous Ganesha image at Wikipedia.

Habitual Kimono top

Before I started working on my latest I sewed up a little something for my own little boy, in the past fortnight. I've been wanting to try the Habitual Kimono top pattern for ages but couldn't seem to kick myself into gear. I was very afraid of the bias binding, and having to potentially make my own. Then I found some green bias-binding in an op-shop for 50 cents and remembered the froggy fabric I picked up on sale several moons ago. I'd bought it with no particular project in mind, under the influence of fabric lust.
This was because fabric is kind of like my crack, and Spotlight is my dealer. I mean this in that I casually run into Spotlight on the street and mean to "just say hi", thinking it would be rude to pretend we didn't know each other. But after spending longer in each others' company than I ever intended, I inevitably stumble home with a hit, feeling wretchedly guilty and strangely elated at the same time. The long-suffering Wicked Fairy.... is not so long-suffering actually. He's usually egging me on in my fabric lustiness, throwing money at me and cheering me to the registers.

ANYWAY

I'd seen this fabric, bought a swatch and put it in a corner until inspiration struck. It was super cute - here it is in close up, so you can see for yourself.

I stuffed up a little, and made the crossover parts as wide as the back, so the whole thing is a little big on my boy. This was due to the fact that I am very impatient and tend to skim-read instructions until I feel I have the jist of things, and then go to. Hopefully I'll be able to rectify my mistakes in version two! And in the meantime, version one is still EXTREMELY cute.
See what I mean?

Little Piggy tunic

I hate most little boys' clothes in shops.
I hate the restricted colour palettes. I hate the lack of cute prints. I hate the boring lack of imagination in the basic design and shape. I hate graffiti-esque designs. I hate attitude slogans that proclaim your child is violent, materialistic, misogynist, or aspiring to be any and all of these things.
So I'm working on making my son some of his own wardrobe. To mix things up a little.


It's a start.

Rainbow Pants of Dooom, Toddler edition

(Note the green and gold cupcake in hand. Both were hits with this particular little boy.)