Wednesday, April 1, 2015

You Guys....I Made These!!

It's no secret that I've added quilting to my list of "old lady hobbies".  I've been posting about the quilts I've been making for over a year now and most of you are probably tired of hearing about them.  But guys - guess what I tried this past week?  Sewing clothes!!  Honestly I've never really been interested in sewing clothes because I've always had both my mom and Ellyn on that front.  My mom used to make us Pj's every year and I'll never forget our yearly trips to Joann's to pick out our Halloween costumes.  We'd look through the pattern books picking the perfect costume and then move onto fabric.  I remember gauzy girly costumes like a witch and genie for my sister and warmer ones for me - like a pumpkin and a scarecrow.  I was no dummy!  October is ALWAYS cold in northern Illinois.

Ellyn is a great seamstress as well.  I think she's retired from it now but she used to make all the costumes for the local play house and has been making Halloween costumes for Erin and Ryan since they were little...and yes(!) we still rope her into making our costumes as adults....I'm no dope - I don't turn down good help when I can find it!

All that being said - a few months ago one of the bloggers I read posted this pattern and I was hooked.  Well, it actually took reading another post from a different blogger I follow making them before I decided I'd try them for myself.  Course, having a little one of my own on the way played a huge factor as well.  I'm not sure if I'm going to get a quilt made for this baby before he/she arrives but I'd be damned if he/she didn't' have something handmade from me!


Oh and I was trying to live by my own words.  I've been teaching two friends to knit lately and both were tentative to start anything harder than the normal knit/purl.  After some convincing I've got one doing cables (which really aren't hard) and the second working on some secret project with semi complicated stitches....they both asked me how I learned to knit and the answer was "I just tried".  I watched YouTube when I didn't know how to do something and I put my mind to figuring it out.  I decided to do the same with making some baby clothes.  The internet is a magical place...you can learn how to do ANYTHING if you really want to.

Cute fabric motivates me as well.  I mean, come on. vintage campers?!?  If you know us, you'd know that had me hook, line and sinker.  These were relatively easy to make and I'm sure if I had more experience with sewing clothes they would have been much simpler.  If I'm being 100% honest I had quite a hard time getting started.  But I had a lot working against me.  There were a lot of first involved here:
1.  First time sewing clothes.
2.  First time sewing with knit fabric (it's stretchy and that leads to its own issues).
3.  First time using Stretch Thread (to go with the stretchy fabric).
4.  First time using a double needle.

I decided to start slow and just cut the fabric for one of these little guys (the orange one) and see how it went.  The first two nights were a complete disaster.  I tried all of the "new things" at once.  New thread, new fabric, new needles and that was a bad combination!  When I ended up with snagged and snarled thread I wasn't able to pin point what to change because everything was new.  After MUCH testing I eliminated one "new" at a time until I finally found a combination that worked.  Knit fabric, regular needle, polyester thread (not stretch).  By that time I was just glad to have something working right for me and to be moving in the direction of a finished product.  


After getting the orange one all sewed up and complete I went back and did the remaining three all in one large batch.  I wasn't surprised that batching them together went much faster.  And the fact that I'd already made one helped too.  

Yes - there is one "girly" fabric in there.  Ryan and I have chosen not to find out the gender of this baby, just like we did for Abby, so that one was a little risky.  I just couldn't help myself.  I think this baby is a girl (I guess we'll know if I was right in a few months) and those little flowers just called my name.  Plus with 2015 being the "year of the baby" I'm sure that I can find a cute newborn baby girl to gift it to if I end up being wrong and we have a boy.  I have a feeling finding someone to take it off my hands won't be hard!

So, what do you think?  I'm super proud of them!!  I'm not sure that I'm going to start sewing all the kids clothes...I'm not THAT motivated but I am glad I tried something new!  

Oh - and the hats!  I made those using this pattern if anyone is interested in making them too.  The pattern is a little, how shall I say it, funny looking, but they were really easy to make and turned out super cute!  My mom said they look a little big and I have to admit my memory of how tiny newborns are is a little fuzzy so I'll report back on that come July.  If you're making them for yourself though you might want to consider scaling the circumference down a bit...just a heads up.  They do seem big.


5 comments:

  1. Those are adorable! I love the fabrics you chose.

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  2. Super cute! Wish I'd seen this pattern 6 months ago before my kiddos were born!

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  3. Good for you trying something new! They turned out great!

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  4. super job! ive got pattern and fabric waiting on me for a baby project too, perhaps your success will motivate me! thanks for sharing.

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  5. oh my gosh these are awesome!

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