Sew Lisette Patterns

I don’t have that much interest in sewing for myself.  BUT Liesl Gibson, who designs totally adorable patterns for children’s clothes, just came out with a line for women.  They’re on sale this week at Joann Fabric for $0.99 each.  So, why not?  I got all 4 pattern sets. 

Ruffles, take two!

Attempt number two at this ruffle dress.  I think it turned out really cute.  Although, I’m still trying to decide if it’s too much ruffle.  Maybe the ruffle on the bottom was too much? 

Ruffles!

While blog surfing one day, I came upon this blog post with a tutorial for this totally cute ruffle dress.  It was supposed to be a Hanna Andersson “knock-off”.  I’d never seen the Hanna Andersson dress, but the dress she made was super-cute, and it looked pretty easy to do.  The dress requires a raglan sleeve t-shirt pattern.  I didn’t have such a pattern, but I thought it would be fairly easy to make one by tracing one of my son’s old t-shirts. 

As soon as I sewed on the first ruffle, I knew this dress would be cute.  There’s something about ruffles that makes any outfit so adorable. 

The advantage of having a sewing machine

My son is a skinny guy.  It’s really hard to find pants that fit him.  He’s 3.5 and until recently was still wearing 2T pants, because the 3T would just fall off him.  He’d walk around with the Marky Mark look, and Marky Mark is so 1990s.  The 2T pants, though, started get so short, they were looking like flood pants.  It was time to let them go.  Then, I realized, I have a sewing machine.  I could fix those 3T pants so the waist is a little smaller.  These are just his sweatpants he wears to preschool and the park, so nothing fancy.  These are the kind of pants where the elastic is sewn into the pants, so I couldn’t just open up the waistband and shorten the elastic.  So, I ended up sewing both sides of the waistband to make it a little smaller.  Not the most attractive look, but I figure the waistband would be covered by his shirts.  And, more importantly, no more Marky Mark look!

I did about 10 of these in one night.  Whew!

To think, I used to take my pants to the tailor to be hemmed, even my yoga pants.

A funny thing happened on the way to the grocery store...

So, while I was out grocery shopping, I somehow ended up at Joann Fabrics.  They happened to have some cute spring fabrics in the store, and a few of these fabrics somehow ended in my shopping cart.  I also somehow happened to have these coupons in my purse.  And somehow these fabrics are now in my house.

Funny how that happens.

As a side note, the lady who cut the fabric for me told me that the white embroidered fabric reminded her of her grandmother.  In a good way, I hope.

Sweet little romper

I think babies in rompers are so cute.  When my son was around 12 months, I had about a million of them for him.

While wandering around at the mall, I found this romper for the baby girl:

  
It’s super-cute in person, but the price tag is not so cute.  And it wasn’t even part of whatever sale was going on in the store.  I went back and forth on whether I should attempt to make it.  I kept looking at it, thinking, It’s just shorts and a top sewn together, but then it had all these details, and I’d have to figure out my own pattern.  I kept telling myself it would be more time-consuming than it was worth.  But, on the other hand, there are some intangibles about making it that might be worth the time, like what about the pride of having made something for my child to wear?  Or what about showing those big store chains that they don’t have the power over me, they can keep their $30 romper, thankyouverymuch.  For those reasons, along with my overachiever tendencies, I dove right in.

Why “hidden in the hem”?

When I thought about starting a blog to talk about my sewing projects, all the typical titles came to mind: “i love fabric,” “confessions of a fabric addict,” something using the word “sew,” as in “my sew-called life.”  Well, it turns out other people have thought of these titles, too, and they had already taken them.  So, this required me to think a little more creatively.  I came up with a different title, “More Fabric Please!” but then one day, “hidden in the hem” came to me, and it felt like just the right title. 

So, what is hidden in the hem?, you ask.  If you’ve been reading this blog, you might say more fabric?!  ha!  No, no.

Last summer, after my daughter was born, I was still decorating her room, and I got this idea to hang a peg shelf in her room and hang a cute dress on one of the pegs.  (I totally got the idea from a blog I read, so not an original idea at all.)  My daughter had a little pink tutu onesie that she’d already outgrown that I thought would be cute to display on the peg shelf.  Then, during one of those middle of the night feedings, I got the idea that I would also hang this shirt that my mom made for me when I was little.  My mom had kept this shirt for years and gave it to me to keep a few years ago.  After multiple moves, I wasn’t quite sure where it was.  While my mom is a pack rat, I’m a purger.  I really feared that maybe I had thrown this shirt away. 

But, no, I found it in one of the plastic bins in the garage.  I think it goes perfectly with the tutu onesie. 

Recently, when I started sewing, it occurred to me how special handmade things are.  It’s sad that home sewing is such a dying art, because there is so much personality and character in everything that is handmade.  I mean, there is always a story behind it, right?  Like, the hours that went into making it, the search for the perfect fabric, or all the mistakes made along the way.  Oh, the mistakes are always fun to share, aren't they?

And it brought me back to this shirt hanging in my daughter’s room and the story behind this shirt.  My mom made me this shirt when I was four years old.  It’s the shirt I wore when we escaped Vietnam.  My mom had sewn a gold chain into the hem, so that if we were attacked by pirates (which we were), they would not be able to find it.  And I remember, when we got to the refuge camp, my mom ripping out the seams and taking out the gold chain, which she used to pay for a telegram to my dad to let him know where we were.

So much history in this little shirt.  So glad my mom kept it.  So glad I never gave it to the Goodwill.

 
It sits next to my daughter’s tutu onesie, so that she’ll one day know the story of the women who came before her, and how far that shirt traveled to hang next to her tutu onesie.

It's held up pretty well, hasn't it?  It has lots of great details, too.

Tilted pocket:

Peter Pan collar:

(I just noticed that the seams are covered.  Wow.)

Gathering:

Baby pants!

I made these baby pants for a friend of mine who just had a baby.  When I saw the space themed fabric, I thought it’d be perfect for this friend, who is literally a rocket scientist.  (Although, now that I think about it, she probably got bombarded with space themed gifts for that very reason.)  I used Made by Rae’s newborn baby pants pattern and Big Butt Baby Pants pattern.

Both patterns were pretty easy to sew.  But I think I got ambitious with all the embellishments.  I wanted to embellish each pair of pants a little differently, so the project probably ended up taking longer than it needed to. 

This is my attempt at a cargo pocket.

Of course, after I made the pocket, I looked at the pockets on a pair of my husband’s cargo shorts, and these look nothing like those.  Oh well.  Hopefully, the baby won’t mind too much.

More simple pockets and binding at the hem on this one.

I used Rae’s tutorial for pimping those baby pants.  (Love Rae’s blog, btw!)  I need to figure out how to get the corners of the pockets more pointy and square, though.  The binding was one of the more tricky embellishments, lots of ironing and trying to catch all the layers with the sewing machine.  I don’t think it ended up that pretty.  If I were to do it again, I’d probably just use the same method for making a cuff that I did with the pants below, which I think is easier and less bulky.

These are the Big Butt Baby Pants.

Such a fun pattern, and they turned out so cute.  Love the butt panel.  I originally intended to make the main part of the pants out of the blue fabric (it’s super-cute with the rockets), but I cut it upside down. :( And there wasn't enough fabric left to re-cut it. So, I made it into the butt panel and the cuffs.  Ah, this is what nine months of sleep deprivation can do to you.

Overall, I think they turned out well.  They're the first baby gift that I've ever sewn myself.  It feels nice--more meaningful--to make a gift for someone.

Lots of lessons learned, though.  (Like, make sure you’re cutting the pattern in the right direction!)  Next set will be better.  I just need for someone else to have a baby now.  :)

Skinny pants

I’ve had pants on the brain lately.  I know pants are not as interesting as cute little dresses with ruffles.  Maybe I’ll eventually get around to that.  Right now, though, I’ve been really into pants.  I used to think pants would be hard to make, but you know, they’re pretty easy.  You just cut out two pattern pieces and sew it up in a few lines.  I’ve been experimenting with some leggings for the baby girl.  And I made these skinny pants from this pattern by Leila and Ben.

The best part was I made them from a pair of my Bermuda shorts that my mom had given me.  A friend hers had given them to her.  Anyway, they never really fit me right, so I’d only worn them a couple times.  But they were so nice, I kept them around.  Making them into pants for the baby girl just seemed better than getting rid of them altogether.  Putting a new use to something old.  Upcycling can be very fulfilling.

 
I like the fit of these pants.  They have that skinny pants silhouette but they’re not so tight, baby girl can still crawl around in them.

 

Skinny pants on babies kind of crack me up.

Cutting up towels on a Saturday night

It’s seriously la vida loca over here.

Until recently, our bedtime routine was brush teeth, bath, pjs, story books and bed.  About six months ago, my son decided it was “backwards day” and he wanted to take a bath first.  Now everyday is "backwards day."  Which means we’d wrap him up in his towel to brush his teeth after his bath, but the towel was always falling off.  So, I wanted to get him a bathrobe.  I looked around for a plain, white bathrobe.  I have a big, plush white bathrobe that I love putting on after a shower, and I wanted the exact thing in miniature for him.  But kids’ bathrobes always seem to be embellished with something kid-ish, like a duck, a frog or a bear.  And they are either pink, blue or yellow.  Am I totally boring that I just want a plain, white bathrobe?

So, I never did get him a bathrobe.  But when I started sewing, I saw this pattern for toddler bathrobes.

Apparently, they make patterns for everything!  So, I thought I'd give it a try.  I got one of those big, plush towels from Ikea and went to work, cutting it up, on a Saturday night.  A hot date with my Brother.  haha.  (Apologies to my real brother, with a small b.) 

The pattern was really easy to follow.  I liked that it was easy to put together but also had these details that made it look like a real bathrobe, like the pockets and the belt loop.  The first part of the bathrobe I sewed up was the pocket.  And, yes, I did get excited when I saw how cute the pocket turned out.  I mean, who wouldn’t?!  I made a pocket!

 
Problems:  I chose a towel instead of the terry cloth fabric you can buy in the fabric store, because I liked how plush the towel was, and I really wanted a plush bathrobe.  Well, that might not have been the best idea, because I think plush means that the towel has larger loops, so when I started to cut it up, all the loops started falling out and started shedding everywhere.  I sew in the kitchen, so the kitchen floor was COVERED with “towel droppings.”  I also got towel droppings on the bottom of my socks, so I carried towel droppings all over the house.  It took a while to get the house completely towel dropping free.

 
I’m pretty happy with how it turned out, though.  I was afraid it might fall apart after one washing, but it’s been through a few washings, and it still looks like a bathrobe.  I did the unlined version, and the edges look ok, but I think the lined version would look more finished.  Next time, I’d probably do the lined version, with terry cloth and maybe white flannel as the outside fabric.  Or maybe two layers of terry cloth?

 
My little guy loves his new bathrobe.  He insists on wearing it everyday when he comes out of the bath.  Once when I had put it in the wash, he got upset that he couldn’t wear it after his bath.  Ah, it totally warms a mommy’s heart.