A Birthday

Was celebrated last week. My boy turned 7! I still don't know where all those years went. One moment he is a baby, wanting constant feeding, next he is at school, can read by himself and needs a bigger bike! (Which luckily was a birthday present).

As seems to be the tradition since I began sewing, my kids get a new outfit for their birthdays. DS actually checked to make sure I was making one :) And when I handed him a present to unwrap, he said "Ohhh it's from Mummy. Must be new clothes". Well then, no surprises there.

I had fun picking the patterns, as he is now a size 128 (euro sizing for those thinking he is a giant lol). So that means for a lot of the Ottobre patterns, he is in the next/bigger size range, and there is some seriously cool boys wear for older boys.

Some influence for choosing patterns came from a piece of fabric I received in a Crafty Mama's swap from the lovely Lissy of handmade - homegrown. It was a woven in black with awesome dragons on it. I knew immediately that I wanted to make a button up shirt. But heading into winter and with only just enough fabric to scrape a short sleeve shirt from, also taking into account the fact that DS really didn't like button up, collared shirts, I was in for a challenge. The pants fabric was some widewale cord that I had been hoarding for years! The t-shirt fabric was a remnant of a stretchy knit - probably a cotton/elastane blend - beautiful to sew.

1/2007 had exactly what I was looking for! A button up shirt, combined with a long sleeve t-shirt (#31). Perfect. Even better, the pants paired with it in the magazine (#32), were just what I was looking for. DS loved it!






I also realised after beginning to sew the t-shirt part, that it was navy blue not black like the shirt. But it works well. I had to fussy cut the sleeves in the dragon fabric, and didn't notice that the blue dragons were different sizes at each selvedge. But these are unimportant details - it looks great overall - and I am finally getting to the point of "blind man....galloping horse" about my sewing (ie: it is perfect to my hubby, it is only me that notices the fiddly bits).

Little boast for the binding - look how great it went on with the twin needle :) Though the stupid needle decided to skip when I did the hem and I had no more, so I won't show you that.



Oh, and a sugar laden cake :) The Treasure Island cake from the Womens Weekly Kids Cake Book.


Cheers!

Be Careful Mr Bump....

here comes the wolf!

Well ok, a slight exaggeration. Two weeks ago was DS's class assembly at school. Being book week, they needed to come dressed as their favourite book character. So I asked DS who he wanted to dress up as. "Mr Happy" was the reply. Well, if you know your Mr Men characters, then you will know he is round and yellow. Hmm....the yellow I can do....but no idea on how to create the round. So I asked DS to chose another - this time it was Mr Bump. That I could do. So I set off to the shops in order to purchase blue track pants, and a blue long sleeve top, as it is still quite wintery here. Oops - thats right, the shops are stocking their summer stuff now. Grrrrrrr!! Not a decent pair of pants or a plain blue top to be found.
So that meant I HAD to go to Spotlight. Luckily blue fleece and cotton knit were easily found. Patterns were from Ottobre - I took the pockets from one pair of pants and used them on the smaller sized pattern (Otto 3/2004 #20 for the pants and the pockets from #31 - same issue). The top is the same pattern as the black spider tee, I just made it long sleeved (Otto 3/2008 #29). At least bandages aren't seasonal.
Mr Bump was embroidered onto the front of the top (and I am still amazed by how many kids don't know who Mr Bump is!) He had a ball, and best of all, the clothes are wearable as everyday clothes. And the pants are long enough that I can let them down for next year :)



Who's afraid of the big bad wolf? Well not me! Mainly because it isn't scary - just really cool. I wanted a new jacket for DS, as he has pretty much grown out of the previous two I have made him. So when the latest kids Ottobre (4/2009) arrived I traced #40 out straight away. Even though it was a size bigger than he takes. Ah well, he'll grow!
I managed to get two remnants of polar fleece at Spotlight, for $2 each, and there is possibly even enough left to make another jacket with the colouring reversed. Makes a pretty cheap jacket :)


I had never sewn with polar fleece, and I had a few issues with topstitching the pocket zips. One I wasn't happy with, so I un-picked, and restitched it. Only to find out when it came time to put them onto the jacket, that I had two identical pockets - instead of two mirror image pockets (because one side of the pocket is smaller). Duh! So I had to un-pick again. But despite that, it was an easy pattern for a jacket, with, I think, a great looking result. The embroidery is from http://www.emblibrary.com/ and works well with the polar fleece. Parts of the wolfs jaw isn't stitched, so when you wash it, the fleece fluffs up within the design - and the grey is almost perfectly matched.


DS loves it, and although it is a little big, he will fit it hopefully until next year.

He is pointing at the Farbenmix skeleton ribbon that is his favourite :)



Cheers!