Little town shirt again!

Once upon a time, I made a little shirt with a town on it.  I was delighted with many aspects of the pattern (which was made by someone else), but not so delighted with others.  In particular, it happened that when baby Button grew into it, he did so by stretching lengthways, making it more of a crop-top.  (Which I just mistyped as "crap-top", coincidence?  I think not.)  I'm sure the patten would be fine on more normally proportioned children though.  He was wearing size 12 months at age 6 months, so probably this was part of the problem.

Not so long ago, I made another shirt with soldiers on it.  This was a pattern I drafted myself and I was pretty chuffed with it.  I lowered the sleeve cap a little more after making that shirt, so now I have a 18-24month pattern that I'm happy with.

The next chapter of the story is here:

I used up the rest of my town fabric (I had half-a-metre) to make another little shirt from my own pattern.

Unfortunate house on wheels.

Behold!  It has a pocket!  However, there was so little fabric that I couldn't fussy-cut the pocket and as a result it looks like the house is on wheels.  I can't get too sad about this though: I thought I'd have to make the inside of the collar stand and the under-collar from plain cream fabric, but I did at least have enough to make everything match.  Just.

I had to wait almost 2 whole weeks for a day dry and bright enough to photograph this shirt.  I seem to gravitate towards photographs on my garden gate with the cute heart cut-outs.  Big thank-yous to my father-in-law who made the gate and acquiesced to cut the "silly hearts" into his handiwork.  I know you read this blog sometimes: now you have your own mention!  :-)

This shirt is a birthday gift for a very cute little man who is 1 year old this weekend.  Happy birthday, little one! x

Playing with fabric design

I've been toying with the idea of producing "make your own shirt" packs, where the pieces are pre-printed onto the fabric.  To that end, I've been fiddling with some fabric designs, although now that I'm faced with infinite possibilities I really can't decide what I want!

(All images below at 5"x5" swatch size.)

Firstly, we have the giraffe option.   I really can't decide what background colour is best, and I'm not too happy with the green.  I was thinking pale blue, but then the contrast is poor with the yellow.

There's also a herd of cattle:

The design I got the furthest with is the toadstools.  I've actually laid out a yard of fabric for a shirt in this fabric, with with the underside of the collar and the inside of the collar stand, sleeve turnings and plackets in a matching red dot fabric.

Too much?  All a bit bright?  Or would you buy it?

Little Solider Shirt

I can't remember if I wrote about this (I think I didn't), but last year I got fed up with Winifred Aldrich's "Metric pattern cutting for children's wear and baby wear".  Or rather, I didn't understand what I was doing and the blocks were too boxy.  A nice person over at the sewing forum suggested I get Natalie Bray's books, which I did.  Nice and cheap and second-hand.  See here and here.  I read the first one cover-to-cover, and in the second one I read the children's wear chapter.

This is my first attempt at a shirt from her blocks.  I'm pretty pleased!  The bodice block for aged 2-3 actually fits my (pretty giant) 14 month-old like a glove.

Behold: Toddler Button in his fancy new threads:

The fabric is a cute Laura Ashley print of soldiers with a background of blue pin-dots and red diamonds.  It was a kind gift from a family friend.  (Thank you, Sue!)  Sadly, since I made the shirt in a windowless room (no jokes) and mostly during the dark evenings, I failed to notice the fabric was light cream, rather than the white I had supposed when picking out my thread.  Whoops, although I suspect I'll be the only one scrutinising the top-stitching enough to notice.  I modified the armcye in my pattern a bit after making this, as it was still an effort to get the sleeve caps to set flat like in his other casual shirts.

TButton wore his shirt to Ikea (this seems like it's becoming a tradition: I don't always go there, honest).  It's a relief to return from Ikea and still like the hand-sewn clothes we went in!  Note he is smiling in the above photo: that's because it's taken before the flat-pack-hell-hole, hence also the newly-pressed-new-shirt look he's sporting.

Are you wondering how I got him to pose like a menswear model while holding a little teddy by his paw all cute-like?  Do you want to know my secret?  The answer is... fluke.  All the rest look blurry and manic like this:

New vest/bodysuit extenders

There be fun new vest extender packs in the shop: hoorah!  (If you come upon this post later and the shop seems to be sold out, send me an e-mail and tell me to get on with it.  There will be another set in a different cute fabric within another week or so.

Outside putting poppers in extenders, I have been mostly knitting in yellow wool and sewing a toddler shirt.  I guess I'll post about that when it's done.

In other news, only 500 page views to go before this blog becomes more widely read than my other blog which details solutions to various dull linux/fortran related computing problems.  You clearly have odd taste, Mr Internets.