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!

Merry Christmas, Midsummer, Yule & Festivus

I know I've been slack about updating. Truth is, I've been panicking; we had a family gathering with 14 people last weekend, for my dad's family, we spent the day itself with my in-laws, and then we're going to Canberra to see my mother and siblings, tomorrow. Plus, all 3 of us are ill (We must have been on the very top of Santa's naughty list!).

My grand plans of a wholly handmade Christmas gift pile have fallen by the wayside. Apart from a bunch of baking for my cousins, the best I could manage was this no-sew polar fleece blanket for my aunt & uncle.

Wait, I guess that's not strictly true - I did manage to make yet another of Two Little Banshees's hippo stuffies, this time in green, a Midsummer gift for my son. I'm hoping it will be the first of a collection of "handmade stuffies by Mummy", not to mention beginning a tradition of one handmade gift opened on the equinox (I'd like to make something for my partner next year too, and encourage him and our boy to make presents for me and each other as well).

At least it's now mostly over. We just have to get over these colds!

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!

Chocolate and oranges

I had this sudden craving for these two flavours together, at the beginning of this week, so purchased three likely looking oranges (and checked our cocoa stores. As always, the level was high. Ha!).

I used this recipe for chocolate orange sticks, as it looked to be the easiest. It was still a special kind of hell (that took hours) on account of how fiddly it was, and I have a new-found respect for my mother's efforts each Christmas as I was growing up.

I also decided to try my hand at chocolate-orange cake, using the juice of my oranges. I altered the chocolate orange muffin recipe over here by substituting one of the eggs with about 180mLs of orange juice (all of what my oranges gave up). I ended up with a kind of fudge-consistency sweet and sharp cake thing. It is very tasty, but I think next time I'll use less juice.

Now, does anyone know what I can do with 2/3 cup sugar syrup and 4 litres of orange water?