Ewok Babies!

They will capture you with cuteness! But not with spears. My children find weapons enough on their own without me handing them any.

So half of my kid sewing idols have this thing they do called Sew Geeky. It's run by Max California and Sew Chibi who are basically the rock stars of the geeky sewing world. (Some of my other favorite kid sewing bloggers are things like Sanae Ishida or MADE, with much simpler, classic styles. I'm not sure what that says about my fashion sense. Hopefully the mix works? lol)

Sew Geeky is exactly what it sounds like: a geeky theme is announced and we all make something that fits the bill. Obviously we're all about Star Wars this month. (I'm sure at least one person out there went "May the 4th be with you to you...)

"I sat here while you put this thing on my head already, like I'm staying put for photos when there's a whole backyard I could be wreaking!"

So Ewoks hoods aren't the most original thing I could have made. I didn't put a fancy new spin on what's already floating around the internet. To be completely honest my kids don't even know what Ewoks are since Sophie won't sit by and watch something bad happen to an animal, even on TV. Picture to yourself how many times something fuzzy gets hurt in those movies. Yah...

As far as my kids were concerned these were just a new addition to the dress up box. No fancy clasps they had to do up. Not too hot to wear in summer. Just some wonky old pillowcases made out of jersey and some scrap pieces from the elephant rug.

Ok, so he kind of looks like a Jedi baby with bear ears in this one. Guess one size doesn't fit all :)

Look! It even has a hooded cape option if you get sick of this game and shove Mommy's silly hat thing off of your head so that you can see properly!

Little Miss "No Face" strikes again.

I will admit that it's kind of amusing to dress my children in cultural references they don't understand. I do my best to brainwash them with an age appropriate level of geeky-ness though. I figured I'd done my job as a parent when Sophie asked for a Totoro birthday party, complete with catbus and birthday dress! I'll share, I promise. You'll probably have to wait until next Friday though, since I've been dying to give you a sneak peek at one of my belly dancing costumes first! 

Elephant Rug

In hopes of a home to put this in soon, I made an elephant rug.

Is that not the cutest little guy ever? I really feel that like it needs an ear though but I'm afraid I'll trip over it if I add one. Sophie took one look at it and told me it needed babies :) Maybe you'll see some elephant pillows in the future! 

I just folded the edges over and hand sewed them down. (We're still in the keeping the feet up stage.) Whether I put a non-slip layer on the back will depend on where we live and what sort of floor we put it on, since I'm pretty sure this would stay put on carpet.

 Can't you just picture a baby sleeping here? If I'd made this a few days ago I could have played photo shoot with baby Hunter :) I made it out of this grey and white fake fur that I got a ton of for 4.99$ at the thrift store. I used maybe half of it. Unfortunately the baby elephants are the least strange use I've thought up for the rest. (Ewok hats and Princess Mononoke capes come to mind.)

These pillowcases are where the elephant idea came from, I plan to turn them into laundry bags and thought it would be cute to pull one of the animals from here. It's a good thing pinterest exists though, because without it I'd have a much harder time coming up with things to occupy myself with! Turns out I'm not a good patient, two weeks into putting my feet up occasionally and I'm going squirrely! 

Look! I Actually Have Two Kids I Sew For! (AKA Baby Shorts)

Ok, seriously, there are the cutest thing ever!

They're the Fancy Pants Leggings again, but the shorts version. I cut a 2T this time since his leggings are getting small and we need room for a cloth diaper bum.

 Here's a look at the front, plus bonus baby toes to make the Mama's squeal.

You know me, if something's quick and easy I go on a rampage and make a hundred more. (Or 3)

These shorts are so great I didn't even wait to photograph them before putting them on the baby! (Meaning I may or may not have stolen these from the laundry pile...)

Maybe I should have said 2.5 pairs of shorts. I hurt my legs within a week and a half of deciding I could totally just run (despite my last attempt being pre-Deacon) and haven't been able to use my sewing machine since. I have however spent a ridiculous amount of time with my feet up knitting and hand sewing things so you may get to see some of that soon.

A Summer Outfit for You Know Who

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's... A T-shirt! For me! That I made! And nobody knew! 

Ok, ok. I will reluctantly accept that this is not as exciting to you as it was to me. This shirt was a little ray of sunshine to me though so please indulge me for a moment.

 I drafted the pattern by tracing an old favorite that was starting to get those little holes in it. I used cuffs for all of the hems because I would probably have cried if it had gone all wavy on me at the end, after all of that anticipation. I used bright, happy yellow stripes because a) I had enough for an adult sized shirt and b) my 

wardrobe needed more colour before I lost my mind. (The suitcase strikes again. It was packed in January and is not well equipped for spring.)

The other thing that's taken a hit are my pants. I packed  three pairs of jeans and managed to rip holes in two of them a few weeks ago. This pair just got the hem half ripped off because they were close enough to the right length that I was too lazy to shorten them. Turning them into shorts was probably an improvement, fashion-wise.

The cute print is one of the fat quarters Jess sent me for Christmas. It's nice having a couple of fun bits of fabric to add onto things here and there. When I first had the idea of adding a print to the cuff I was a bit worried that they would only match a few of my shirts and it wouldn't be practical but it hasn't been an issue yet since I chose something pretty neutral against the jeans. 

I actually made these two things to be worn together and haven't managed to make it happen yet. Wouldn't they make a cute couple though? (Yes, I know that I'm a weirdo. I've just learned to embrace it.)

A Winter Cloud, Some Salvaged Knitting and a Craft Fail

Don't hate me for the snow, it's still a cute shirt people. Look how well those colours go together. See how it incorporates my love of clouds. Notice that the stain I missed when I bought the shirt at a thrift store is covered. :P  

So next up we have the disastrous sweater. It is now a dress-up skirt. (Or a dress-up poncho if your name is Deacon.) Don't worry, it looks much less like a sweater with the armholes filled in when it's on, I just took the  picture that way to show what I did to fix it.

Here's a better look at my ruffles. I decided to fill in the gaps with crochet even though the sweater was knit for two reasons. The first is that it made picking up stitches and joining to the sweater really easy. The other reason was that I wanted to add the ruffles at the bottom and single crochet makes a nice sturdy grid to attach them to.

So here's the promised craft fail, for your amusement. We were having a similar issue to the undies problem with the shirts I've been sewing for Sophie, mainly that they have no tags in the back to show her how to put them on. The simple solution would be to buy some plain white ribbon and use my fabric markers to make some. I wanted some way of recording what size everything was anyways, so that would be perfect right? Haha, wrong! Wow did those markers bleed! They look like I let Sophie draw them! I considered just sewing some pretty ribbon where the tag should be, but now I've got my heart set on having the size in there too so I guess it's back to the drawing board.

Colourful Summer PJ's

 

Summer PJ's were in order, since Sophie insists on sleeping under her blankie no matter the weather. These are a little silly, with their bright colours and frilly lace straps, but pj's aren't exactly a serious item of clothing. I used this tutorial: http://www.themotherhuddle.com/tutorial-simple-summer-pajamas/ 

Her versions are much sweeter and girlie-er than mine, but I was just using old t-shirts for my materials. She isn't kidding when she says these are quick though! Especially if you're using t-shirts since that gives you finished hems. I did all of these in the space of an evening's worth of television. 

 

They look like they're different lengths mostly because I varied how long the shorts part was. (For example the blue one was just barely long enough to use, but the yellow one needed long legs if I wanted to include the design.) The shirt picking criteria was just anything that was long enough and not  earmarked for another project. My only cost was the ruffled elastic (4.40$ for the total project cost) since the t-shirts were free; one from a race, one from the freecycle bag and two of my Dad's old ones. I'd ask him if he finds it strange how often I dress my children in his old clothes but by the time I'm done with them he generally doesn't recognize them unless I point it out!

Vintage Donuts Shirt

 

 It may not have been on Sophie's list of acceptable patterns (green-black-bunnies-buttons) but there are few things that get her as excited as donuts, so I was pretty confident in this one ;)

This is the pattern I used. It's a dress but I shortened it to shirt length since that's what she needs right now. It's actually a size 4, but Sophie's on the trim side so I didn't add any width. I'm really glad I didn't since it's still too wide on her! 

Those sleeves just make the outfit though, I'm in love with them! The donuts are kind of a crazy print but they made her smile. This outfit was a collaboration with her. She helped me with most of it, in some way or another.

One of the things we decided to do was to purposely install the zipper backwards. She had already chosen her zipper but when we opened up the package the inside was metal and I was afraid it would be scratchy on her skin.

The one issue I had with this pattern was that the inside facing isn't laying flat. I tacked it down so it's a bit better but if anyone know why it happened in the first place I'd be glad to know!

PJ's

 Katie has a love for sleepwear, and sometimes goes through 3 or more pairs of pajamas in a day. Even though we had enough pajamas to get her through a week, it wasn't enough considering how many pairs she can dirty in a day. I had some old PJ's of mine kicking around, and decided to turn them into Katie sized jammies. The top ones had a hole in the crotch. In an attempt to avoid that problem again, I used french seams to sew them.

 These two pairs, I bought as sets. After washing them once, the t-shirts were way too short, and so were the pants. I cut the pants into pajama shorts for myself, and used the left overs to make mini ones for Katie. The T-shirts were resized, using the basic T-shirt tutorial from danamadeit.com.

There was one other pair that i made, but they turned out a little small, and not blog worthy.

A T-shirt Blitz

So I went a bit nuts again. I realized that Sophie had exactly zero t-shirts in her next size and decided to fix it. Right that second. I grabbed the first few t-shirts that appealed to me from the refashion pile, pulled some cute knits from my scrap bin and drafted some patterns (with mixed results) from a pajama top. After an afternoon at my Mom's and a marathon the next night,  here's what I came up with.

This one's my favorite. Probably because the sleeves are from one of the cutest onesies she had. It did not however survive Deacon. The yellow shirt belonged to my Dad and the blue trim was from the scraps of the shirt below. The pleated front is the other feature that I absolutely love about this shirt and it was actually a mistake! My attempt at eyeballing my first raglan sleeve pattern left me with a neck opening that her shoulders would have fit through and the little pleats were my solution.

Shirt number 2 has the same giant neck problem but for a different reason. I forgot when I made it that I needed to cut the ribbing smaller than the neck opening. It was the last thing on the last shirt in the middle of the night though, so it'll have to wait until I'm not sick of looking at it to be fixed ;)

This one makes me really happy too. The top is made from scraps of a shirt I loved years ago. I'd used the bottom in another project but there was just enough left for me to re-size the bodice. The bottom is from a plain purple t-shirt out of that freecycle bag. It wasn't an inspiring colour on it's own but with the top it's perfect. The only thing I might change is to add a bit of something to the neckline. I find it a bit low for a child.

Last but not least is the gathered neckline shirt. It's based loosely off of this top from Craftiness is not Optional. (Maybe I should have followed her raglan sleeve tutorial too lol!) I had fun looking for different ways to make a neck opening that wouldn't get caught on her head. It made a huge difference trying them on her and was probably the only thing about them she appreciated. (With an audience like that you can see why I blog!) She again refused to have her face in the pictures, so sorry to any relatives hoping to see more of my child than her torso. The only reason she let me try them on her at all is that I bribed her with Easter candy. (Arguments like "I need to know if this actually fits you" don't strike her as important.) So in a way, you could say that this post was brought to you by the Easter Bunny. Who would have guessed that he was really leaving trails of leverage?

CPK Doll Clothes Tutorial

A crochet doll's wardrobe!

Or half of one, according to Sophie.I handed her Coco's outfits and was immediately told that she also needed undies, socks and pants so there may be a follow up post in the future. I chose to crochet these for a few reasons. Speed was definitely a factor since I needed three sets, plus everything else I was sending for the baby shower. The other reasons were durability and stretch. A lot of doll clothes can actually be pretty tough for little ones use, so I wanted something forgiving. 

For the dress I used this pattern here:  http://dishclothdiaries.blogspot.ca/2013/07/stash-busting-progress.html

It's the same pattern I made the newborn dresses from, I just left out one row for the torso and shortened it to reach the doll's knees.

Since the rompers are a variation on someone else's pattern I don't really feel comfortable posting what I did. However if you were to start that dress pattern and then look at my shorts instructions you could probably figure something out. ;)

For the next three patterns I used the same size hook and three different weights of yarn since I didn't have much of a selection. (Figures I decide to start an enormous yarn-consuming project while my stash is in storage!) With a bit of experimenting you could probably use the same sized yarn and different hooks, or change the sizing for a different doll. You might want to lengthen the tank top if you do though, Cabbage Patch Kids are incredibly short waist-ed!

Why is the skirt upside down?  I don't know but if you figure it out I'm all ears!

The Skirt Pattern

Using worsted weight yarn and a 5.5 mm/size 9 hook

ch 27

r1: sc in second chain from hook, sc around. Join.

r2: sc around.

r3: v-stitch in every second ch.

r4: v-st in every v-st around.

r5: *v-st in first v-st, shell st in second v-st* repeat around.

r6:v-st in the v-st's, shell st in the shell st's around.

r7: 1 shell st in each v-st and each shell st around.

r8: shell st in each shell st around.

Slip st loose shell end and join. Weave in ends.

The Tank Tops

Using Baby or Sport Yarn and a 5.5 mm/size 9 hook

ch 27

r1: sc in second ch frim hook. Sc to end of row. Join to work in the round.

r2-r6: sc in each sc around, slip stitching between rows.

r7: ch 3. 1 dc in each of the first 15 sc's. Turn.

r8-r9: ch 3, dc across.

r10: ch 1, sc in each of the first 3 dc's. Turn.

r11-r15: ch1, 3 sc across. Turn. Bind off last row.

r16-r21: repeat on other side for second strap.

r22-r24: make back panel the same a front panel (repeating rows 7-9) leaving 2 st between the sides of the panels. Bind off.

Sew strap ends to top of back panel. Weave in ends.

The Shorts

Using Sport Weight Yarn and a 5.5 mm/size 9 hook

ch 27

 r1: 1 sc in second ch from hook, sc around. Join.

r2-r8: sc around

r9: sc in first 14 sc. Join 14th sc to 1st sc (first leg)

r10-r11: 1 sc in each of the 14 sc's. Bind off.

r12-r14: Join yarn on other side and repeat rows 9-11 to make second leg. Bind off. 

Weave in ends.