Play clothes

This week-end I made some play clothes for the elder son. I haven’t made anything for the little guy lately, but he really has a lot of clothes. He is not interested in clothes either, but soon enough he will notice that his brother is getting fun clothes and then I will have to make clothes in multiple.

 

The tee is Biscuit from Tamanegi-kobo. The front and back are made from a photo print cotton jersey fabric, and the fabric for the sleeves is a really soft jersey from my stash. I made the first Biscuit tee a month ago, and it’s already time to adjust the pattern, to both lengthen the sleeves and the body!

The trousers are Kickin’ back sweats from the book Sewing for boys. I made the size 2/3 in with and 4/5 in length. Because the trousers are ment to worn at home I thought that I’d just cut the leg of at right length and leave it at that. But, the legs were very long, so I ended up folding the hems 5 cm and stitching them in place with a twin needle. Now, I can adjust the length as he grows.

Even though I made the trousers in sinze 2/3 the trousers are really wide! I have already cut and stitched another pair, but if I use this pattern again, I will certainly adjust the width.

 Excuse the wrinkles; I just have my sleeve ironing board at hand!

 

 

Dumper truck sweaters

My mother knitted these gorgeous sweaters for the little guys’ birthdays. They turned 1 and 3 late this summer, and now the weather is perfect for these warm and cozy wool sweaters.

I believe the pattern is from Sandnes garn

The boys love them!

Thank you mum!!

Tiger tee

We’ve had a wonderful autum so far, but it is getting colder every day now. While my little guy (1 year) is having lots of clothes his elder brother (3 years) is running short of almost everything!

I’m very pleased with the fit of the Biscuit tee (Tamanegi-kobo), so I don’t bother to test any other tee patterns for now. I have precious little time to sew so here is my next version, the Tiger tee!

 

 

The sewing went really well until I was stitching on the neckband. Suddenly I was stitching with too much seam allowance. Sigh! I figured that I would just go over the seam allowance with my overlock machine, but my overlock machine didn’t do a good job on the thick rib knit. In the end I topstitched the seam allowance and cut it close to the stitches.

As I mentioned before, the sewing went well up to that last point! I want to show how I get over the bulky seam allowances when stitching the side and arm seams.

I use a gadget for stitching buttons to lift the presser foot when going over the joint seams.

 

 

 

 

 

I use a stretch straight stitch on my sewing machine to stitch the tee together, and then I trim the seam allowances with my overlock machine. I’m not confident enough to simply sew the tee together using the overlock machine.

 

 

Doing laundry

When I made the tee with the construction machines for A, I chose to make the sleeves white and the back black. I was so taken in with the design so I wanted to highlight the design features. A wore his new tee for his third birthday party. Afterwards it looked like this:

Since I reused the fabrics for the sleeves and back, I figured that any excess color would have been washed away. But, I did not dare to just throw it in the laundry machine and hope for the best!
So I tried Color Catchers, a sheet that catches loose dyes in the wash water and prevents the dye from bleeding onto other clothes.

It worked fine!:

 

Maybe I’m behind the times up here in the north, but when I googled color catchers I found that you can actually MAKE YOUR OWN. It appears to be both SIMPLE and CHEAP. There is a lot of web sites and blogs showing how to do the sheets yourself, just search “DIY color catchers”.

Boys underwear

I found a great pattern on Craftsy, Boys Undies Briefs by Little Olly!

So far I've made two pairs for A:

The green ones are size 3, and they are a bit big on him.

So, yesterday I made a new pair in size 2:

A absolutely loves the purple monkeys, purple is his favourite colour! He has not tried them on yet, but I Think this will be a success!

Biscuit tee

This is my first blog post on my very first blog! I don't even have a presentation yet, but I'm eager to share some clothes that I've recently made.

I found this pattern via VERYPURPLEPERSON who has made some very cute tees!
The pattern is a free PDF pattern from Tamanegi Kobo, a Japanese pattern shop. Yes, the pattern is in japanese! I certainly don't know the language, but I figured that there would only be one way to get the pieces together. The front looks like an ordinary tee, but the sleeves are actually raglan cut.

I used a bought photoprint fabric from Stoff & Stil, and two tees from my upcycle pile, a white for the sleeves and a black for the back. I used a ribknit for neckbinding.

The tee is a size 100, and it fits my son A, who is three, very well. I Think it is the best fitting pattern I've found so far. No alterations needed!

It took about 3 hours to make this tee, but then I really wanted it to look store bought! A wore it for his birthday party and he was very proud of the tee.