elizabeth_mn

If I’m going to plan a costume event for next spring or summer, I will need to figure out a costume for The Girl.

I have always liked Truly Victorian’s dress for girls, but maybe it is a little old for her. She’ll be 1 ½ or almost 2, depending on when we do the event.  It might be cute to do something a little more rustic, like prairie girl with an apron, but I want to avoid going too generically ye-olde-timey.  And it would be nice to not have to draft my own pattern from scratch.

I’m being vague. Clearly more research is indicated!

Baby pants!


(The best way to get her to stand still for photos lately is to let her play with the camera case.)

Three pairs, all from the same basic pattern as her rocket pants. They are remnants from my stash lined with cotton flannel. For the prototype pair I made a couple months ago (not shown), I fully lined them by sewing the outer and lining separately and then joining them. I decided that was too complicated and just flatlined the other ones. Once I solved some serger tension issues, these were a breeze to put together.

The main reason I made these pants is because my baby is long and skinny, so store-boughten pants that fit her in the waist are too short, and the long-enough ones fall down. She needed some pants, so. . . sewing to the rescue! So far they are fitting pretty well, but I will probably make some tweaks when I upsize them for the next set in a few months.

( More photos! )

 Here's my little rocket girl!

  

There wasn't anyone else around to get a photo of all 3 of us, and my timer shots turned out pretty crappy, but I did get a couple photos of F with each of us.  (As usual, I am utterly disappointed with the quality of my photos. All the ones that are posed perfectly and would be otherwise great are super blurry. All the properly focused ones have heads cut off or crabby facial expressions or other weird things going on.  Just please believe that it looked much cuter in real life!)



I ended up not making the hat, even though it would have made the costume look more rocket-y, mostly because I didn't want to fight with her to wear it, but party also because I ran out of time.

We went to a baby costume party on Thursday and I got a few photos. We had planned a baby costume party at our house for Friday, but F caught a cold so we had to cancel. We dressed up yesterday just to hang around the house and hand out candy.

( Lots more photos! )

I made the star out of two layers of craft felt, an inner layer of Peltex interfacing, and two outer layers of gold mesh from the christmas section at Jo-Ann. I cut the same mesh stuff into the streamers.

I put way too much planning into the star costume because in the end the way I decided it looked best took all of 10 minutes to put together.

 
This year for Halloween I am going to dress F up as a rocket ship!

She crawls so fast, it only seemed natural.

I'm going to make a simple A-line sleeveless dress out of some blue-grey cotton twill and use craft felt to add details.  I want to put some red, slightly stuffed fins around the bottom.  I think I'll use some of the printer fabric to make a little flag and a "USA" and maybe a NASA logo.  I'm going for a very 1950s American cartoon rocket ship look.  Oh, and a little pointed hat of course to make the top of the rocket, which she will probably only tolerate wearing for the 30 seconds it will take for me to get a photo, if that.  A matching pair of pants with red, orange, and yellow felt scraps at the hem for flames.

And then, to make this a complete Cheesy Family Costume, I am going to be a shooting star - black thrifted shirt and skirt decorated with glitter paint and a big giant star with trailing sparkley streamers pinned to my shoulder.  HB is going to be a NASA engineer - white lab coat which he is always trying to incorporate into a costume somehow and a little NASA badge I will print for him.  Maybe a clipboard and a pocket protector.  And a slide rule.

We have a baby Halloween party to go to on (I think) the 29th but otherwise on the day itself we are just going to hand out candy to the neighborhood kids.

My new stroller bag!



I did end up finishing it in time to go to the state fair, yay!  Super thanks to undycat  for the loan of her sewing machine, which I switched to after mine broke down again and refused to make a buttonhole.

Please note that I took all these photos after we had spent all day at the fair, so it is a little crumpled.

I drafted the pattern from scratch, but I was going for a sort of scaled-down version of my Weekender Bag.  I just really liked the shape of that one, plus it had a simple way of including a zipper in the design, something I always have to spend a little too much time thinking about when designing bags.

( More photos and notes )

I made F a little sun hat with the pattern I picked up the other day and two fat quarters from one of those fat quarter coordinate packs.  She was kind enough to model it for me.



The crown piece was about 1/2" too long, but I didn't realize that until after I had sewn it, ripped it, and re-sewed it, easing the crap out of it to make it fit the top.  I thought the piece had stretched the first time (because I skipped stay-stitching it) and it wasn't until I attached the brim that I noticed it was acutally a bit too large.

I also think I could have attached the lining a bit more neatly, but how finicky do I need to get over a baby hat?

I think I might add a ribbon to the crown/brim join to make it look a little more girly.

I guess this is the first picture I've shared of her here - I just haven't got around to it until now.  Too bad she looks a little startled.
 

A couple weeks ago I got some new yarn and started the yoke of a new sweater for F.  A top-down raglan cardigan.  I knitted a few inches over the past couple weeks, but I went to pick it up last night, looked at it, and thought, "I just do not want to do this any more."  So I ripped it out.

I've been thinking about the logic of making baby clothes.  I know there's some kind of formula involved, something about the pleasure derived from the process + uniqueness of finished item + cost of materials - cost of store-boughten equivalent - period of time item will be worn.

I made a couple more sleep sacks for her yesterday.  She is growing out of the other ones.  A yard of flannel each, simple, straightforward sewing.  It took me an just over an hour to make two.  She'll probably be able to wear them for months.  Totally worth making.

But sweaters?  About $20 worth of yarn, weeks of knitting, dull stockinette stitch (I could always use a fancier stitch pattern to make this less dull, but then it would take even longer to knit).  She would probably wear it for the remainder of the winter, which is about 4 months.  Maybe a little longer.  And while I really don't mind handwashing my own wool and delicate clothes, there are two important differences: 1.) It's somehow, actually easier to wash a larger garment than a teeny one, and 2.) I don't barf on myself with nearly the frequency she does.

I really like the knitted sweater and vest I made her while I was pregnant, and she wears them all the time.  But I think I am just going to try to crush that little DIY urge this time (you know, the one that says "Hmm, shoddy workmanship, too expensive, I could totally make this myself!" when confronted with, well, most any item in any store) and buy sweaters for her until she's old enough to make them more worth knitting.

The thing that convinced me was reminding myself that this is my hobby, and I do it for my pleasure.  I'm not Caroline Ingalls out on the frontier; I don't need to knit for my family to keep them from freezing to death.

So last night I instead picked up my orange lace scarf and put a few more rows into it.  Totally selfish, and totally worth it.

I just took a photo of this.  If I had more time on my hands, I'd have doen a better job, maybe scaled it down or cut it up into a printable pattern, made it into a pdf, or something.  But you get the idea.

I made this on graph paper and it's a pity the graph lines don't show up better.  If you can see them, 1 bold-line sqaure = 1 inch.  Back is on the left, Front on the right.  The CF is 22" long.  I added the tabbed shoulders as an afterthought; just cut a rounded tab and sew to back shoulder seam, or cut the tab in one with the back.  You could also put a velcro tab over the top of the zipper at the neck.

1/2" seams throughout.  Back is cut on fold.  I finished the neck and armholes with a teeny zig-zagged and turned hem.

( the pattern )

I find it a bit dull to post about things I've been working on without photos, but I'm posting anyway because I like feeling like I'm making progress on something.

I've been working on my Big Montana Tunic.  I'm using Casacde 128, and yesterday I started on the 3rd ball of yarn (of 5).  I like the way the lace pattern is looking.  It's just complex enough to keep me interested but simple enough that I don't need to devote too much attention to it.  I re-wrote the side shaping to pull it in a bit more at the waist.  Not too much, since the look is pretty A-line, but since I have a pretty large difference between my waist and bust, I wanted to fit it a bit more so it didn't end up looking like a sack.

I also started (and almost finished, now) the Avaitrix hat for my little one.  She absolutely will not keep a hat on her head if she can help it, so I realized I needed to make something with a chin strap.  I was also worried about wool being too itchy for her until she gets a little older, so I used cotton.  I got some beautiful, irregular, soft, slubby cotton in bright lime green last saturday and now I'm almost done knitting the strap.  Then just another earflap and it is done.  It's a bit big for her, but I think I will sew a little tuck in it that I can pick out later.  Easier than ripping and re-knitting, and the hat will be more versatile.

I'm also making a little coat for her.  I got some really pretty quilted fabric at Treadle and I'm planning a simple bound edge and big snaps to close.  I used to have a way more uptight view of pre-quilted fabrics, but I've mellowed in vew of the practicality.  I could not find a coat small enough for a 1-month-old anywhere.  People probably assume that no one takes their 1-month-old baby out in cold weather.

Time still seems to be dragging on!  And I still feel a little bummed about not having much time for crafting.  But anything I can do while sitting down, with my little girl sleeping on my lap, has a chance of getting done, since that's how I spend so much of my time these days!  I have so, so many ideas for projects I want to do, but I am trying not to think too much about stuff I can't get to for a while.  It is a victory for me when I can get the household chores done, so knitting and sewing are icing on the cake.

Made one and a half of these yesterday and finished the remianing half this morning. I really don't know yet how practical they will be, but they sure are cute!



I used Malabrigo merino leftover from a hat I made a couple years ago. The pattern is Saartje's Booties (from www.saartjeknits.nl) but I omitted the buttons and just sewed the straps down to the bootie.

I also worked on the ribbing on my red cotton sweater.  The pattern says to do 9 rows, but I think 7 looks like quite enough, so I'm going to do one more row and then bind off.  Then I'll pick up the bottom band/ties, and then the sleeves last.