Baby clothing from scraps in the stash and free patterns

First of all appologies! Its been far too long since my last blog post. Life just kept getting in the way.

I have though managed to actually make a few items to show you. They are all baby clothes for age 9-12 months - sorry no baby is modelling them but I decided to show these anyway since they have taken over a week to make and they are cute and you can still get an idea of what I have been up to.

Dragon scale tracksuit - no hood on this one and self drafted trousers which are based on this little romper though I added a front seam and of course had to estimate waist height etc.  

This is made from scraps from my Hoody, Trousers and dress - I never had enough left over for a baby hoody but a top with no hood is still good.

I had pretty much made these dungarees a few weeks ago except for the leg poppers which I have now added: 

Unfortunately its my first attempt adding poppers and I went and added back to front so the legs wrap the wrong way to most RTW clothing but really? well I don't care. Its a serious achievement to add the things at all and to find they do not just rip straight out. No idea how long these will last but babies grow so fast it should hopefully not matter too much. The poppers are easy as pie to attach but they do hurt your hands when doing this because you need to press very hard on the pliers - unless I am just doing this wrong of course. Anyway they seem to work for now so thats fine. The romper is actually 12-18 months size so a bit bigger than the rest.

The startscape fabric is left over from my top.

 So really anyway some of these are made from free patterns some from bought patterns. The dragon scale trousers are made from the hacked free dungaree pattern so really I just used the pattern as a guide and made it up as I went along. So really quite different to the original pattern but definitely inspired by it with the gusset at crotch and zouave shape. Though I added long fold over cuffs as well.  Unlike the dungarees they have a CFand CB seam because that worked for the pieces of fabric I had available which was limited to say the least. Top is the Jacob hoody from Made by Oranges (BTrendy) without the hood- so just a sweatshirt/ Tshirt. It works. Why buy a new pattern if you can manage with what you already have?

I used black ribbing for the neck. And the wrists. They were tiny scraps left over from my trousers. They work so well I have now bought 2m of this stuff just so I can use it like this for kids clothing edging. It should last years I would think 2m is loads. I only have it in black though. Its not good to add to my stash really when everything else here is meat to be a stash buster but its the best way to make the new items for baby work so I decided that was allowed. So 2m of ribbed tubing it is.  Its not a huge addition bearing in mind the amount of space I freed up making these and there will be a few more to come yet too.

I used a free downloaded pattern for these green starscape trousers. Have not hemed them because I decided why bother when there is a local "designer" shop for kids charging £30 for very similar clothing so for now at least these can just be rolled up. To make them long enough I just cut with the double hem piece added onto the hem of the trousers. I do not want everything to have ankle bands. These should be long enough and give a different style of trousers while still usig the same pattern pieces.I did check the sizing of all of these trousers on a RTW pair we already had. The free pattern does come out slightly smaller than some RTW trousers in the same size so check before you cut.

 

Pattern is the "Comfy legs" from Sparkle ad Roar: https://secondstarfabric.co.uk/category/sparkle-and-roar-free-sewing-patterns/

Red Camo tracksuit from left over fabric from Mick's hoody and my trousers.:

Top is Jacob Hoody from BTrendymagazine which I bought a month or so ago. I am so far impressed by BTrendy. I think for kids clothes the Made by Oranges group who publish BTrendy are bettery than Burda. Or at least they are nearer to the correct sizing than Burda are for kids. I love Burda for adults but have mixed impressions so far with the kids clothing I have made. I do have a ton of 70s Burdas with kids patterns in that I have yet to try out though so maybe its the more recent Burdas? Anyway this is Jacob by Made by Oranges BTrendy which is a Dutch pattern company ( hence Made by Oranges I suppose!):

I added "dino spikes" to the hood of the Jacob Hoody from BTrendy

To do this I just added Dino spikes down CB hood to give a bit of interest. These are just black triangles made from a new but never worn black Tshirt. I made each triangle first the just inserted into the CB seam and overlocked in position. They did not quite work out evenly but my other half reckons it adds to the effect (?). 

Trousers are the Comfiy legs from Sparkle and Roar (free) patterns as above and made as directed with no hacks:.

Lastly I managed to squeeze a black Jacob hoody from the space fabric left over from my pixie dress.

I have also made a Burda Style Magazine pattern up but I am less happy with this. 

Its meant to be a size 86 but it is huge. The sleeves if left as Burda design are adult sized on the cuffs:

Here you can see the sleeve width next to the red Jacob sweatshirt sleeve:

Massive or what?

Of course in some ways bigger is fine. You can always take it in and certainly better than too small but its not true to size with the RTW sizes at all and comes in more like a 2-3years size rather than an 18 months but never mind. Its one for growing into. I intend to alter the sleeves on this though because even at 2 years old the child is unlikely to have adult sized wrists. But its not a complete disaster, its just it cannot be worn right now. In a way it gives me a head start on bigger sizes.

After all kids keep growing so it can never be too big really if its just a size up from where you intended.

So thats my update for now on what I have been doing this last 10 days-ish. 

I hope life is treating you well,

Take care and see you soon,

Bracken

Micks Red Hoody

I meant to write this post a bit earlier but the last Wednesday was my Dad's funeral and I just couldn't get motivated.

 

 I sewed this a little while ago and it was too warm for Mick to wear it so its just been there "waiting". 

Anyway its great to have this to post about, because I cannot make anything right now. I already had one overlocker not working - the older one that was damaged a long time ago. I use it in emergency but the seams are pretty loose. Its fine for edges on wovens to make them neat and not fray but really not good enough to sew up stretch clothing so I sometimes wonder why do I keep it? I suppose I hope to eventually strip it down and learn about the overlockers and maybe repair that one. Right now the blades are out of line completely so its totally unusable.

So anyway besides the backup one not being useable now I broke my good overlocker as well. Its also gone out of line again so I need to go back to Youtube to see how do I line the blades back up. I did achieve that once before so best do it again I suppose. nyway I also now need a new blade - I think!. For the top cutter. 

At least, I am hoping all it needs is a new blade but really, I changed the top and bottom cutters not that long ago so it should be ok. Having said that I have never forked out for proper Janome blades and always bought the cheap chinese copies. This time I paid the £23 for a new Janome blade for the top cutter. Hopefully it will be worth the money. Update - when the blade arrived today, its just a blade so not even in Janome packaging so is it actually a genuine part? Or have I just paid double for a blade of unknown manufacturer the same as I bought previously?

I have also been saving for a couple of years to buy a new overlocker that can hopefully handle the amount of sewing I do. I would love an industrial grade overlocker, but thats just too expensive, so I bought a different type. I read a review online about the different brands and models and decided to go with the Brother 4234D. You can read the review here:

https://threadsmonthly.com/best-overlockers-uk/

It basically says both my old overlockers are rubbish so best try another one I think. So now I am stuck with no possible overlocking sewing and a pile of cut out stretch fabric that never really sews as well on a normal machine despite I did manage for years doing just that. But really I prefer to wait and get a professional finish. 

I might have actually wrecked a pair of childs trousers when I found out the old one would not work without jamming. Certainly they will be at least a size smaller than I cut due to my chopping off the sides several times in my efforts to get them sewn. I should have stopped sooner when they got jammed but there, I never learn! 

 

So this top then - its the same fabric as my trousers - haha we will need to not wear at the same time and is a french terry which is £8.95/m from Pound Fabrics UK. If you do look for this because they do ship internationally I would just warn be careful not to go to Pound-a-Metre because they are rip off merchants. I got caught out 3 times with them and just steer well clear now. They do have amazing offers but too often they send you ripped, damaged and substandard fabrics with tears and holes or even when its OK fabric its very often much smaller than it should be - as in you buy 3m and get 2.5m. Well you have bee warned if you decide to buy from them. At least use Paypal if you do so you are covered. Paypal were amazing when I got ripped off. 

 

This is the fabric close up.

 

This is an identical top to my Mermaid/ Dragon scales hoody. But I never made the sleeves narrower for Mick's top. Otherwise its the same pattern.

 

The sleeves are too long on this. Once I get my new overlocker I will sort that out. I do want them to have a nice neat finished edge though so worth a few days wait I think to make it right.

 I do add onto the pattern usually, because we don't so far at least add ribbed cuffs so I take that into account when I cut out the sleeve, but this time I did make the sleeves a bit too long, so will have to shorten them. Otherwise it all worked out as expected.

 

Its the same red camo I used for some trousers for me so we will have to make sure we do not wear them at the same time. Mick said he liked my fabric so I bought the extra 2m just to make this for him. Mick already has several tops made from the same pattern which he wears a lot hence I just made this same design again. Not very adventurous, but the fabric is much better quality than all the previous versions, with the possible exception of the blue one. I never really blogged about this top. Its made from a upmarket wicking fabric. I made me a similar top and they were worn when we went to Scotland - well they've been worn a lot since actually but they were made for that holiday. This is Mick's blue top:

The new red camo top is a very similar top to one he was mad on in the 90s and has continued to wear for all those years since, and which he finally disposed of recently due to it being totally worn out, so I hope he will enjoy this as much as he did that old top.

So realy there is little I can say about this top. Its a basic top I have made lots of times so not a challenge, but I do know its going to get worn a lot, so its well worth making. Normally it probably would never have made it to the blog but with nothing new made, and a broken overlocker stopping me from sewing I decided to show you this top.

Anyway at some day soon I am getting a new toy so I am very excited despite not really being about to afford the one I paid out for. But its meant to be so much better than my Janomes which are the 9300dx and 8002dx both of which get slated in the reveiew. This new Brother is meant to be much faster to thread too which has to be good because threading the lower looper on either of mine is a complete nightmare to the extent if I break a thread I generally stop sewing and thread it another day because it takes so much time and patience to just thread it so I just take a break for sometimes a full week. Iwill let you know how I get on with my new toy when I get it. I of course also have to learn how to use it!

Have a great weekend

Bracken

Dragon scale winter pixie dress

 

I love the black space print dress so much that a decided to make another two dresses the same for this winter. I also love my dragon scale fabric top and trousers so I bought more of the same fabric to make this. I have another similar dress in the pipeline but more on that later.

It was cold when these pictures were taken so this is worn with basic black leggings which is how I am likely to wear it in winter, but then the weather has warmed up. Its now 28 degrees C!

Still may as well get ready because winter is coming soon here you can feel it in the morings despite the current heat wave which is not really unusual because I remember the last few days of summer were always the first few days of the new school year and the schools went back this week,

I just love the pointy hood on this dress though really its for show rather than being very warm because of it being on a V neck but still I like this dress a lot. The shape and style that is but, Yes, also so far both of the dresses I have made in french terry. I think it really suits the style being as its a heavier weight fabric and it hangs well.

And the extra long slightly flared sleeves really appeal because they have such a small flare they work in real life unlike the wider flared sleeve that is included with this pattern. I do love this kind of very wide flared sleeve but its rubbish when you need to do things like wash your hands. This narrower version is better. Its practical but still nice. My first couple of tops and dresses all had the wider sleeve. I think unlessI make it as a party dress I will be using this sleeve in future.

I did stupidly again make a narrow hem which turns over. Should have remembered that from the previous version.

Though it does not actually look so nad but it does bug me a bit. Iwouldn't mind if I had decided to make an exposed hem but I didn't. Still I can live with that.Note to self to make a wider hem on the next one whe eventually I finish it.

I think this really must be the last item though made from Dragon scales fabric. At least unless I find it in another colour anyway. It seems to be taking over my wardrobe and my fabric stash as well with all the little bits left over - but I have an idea for using them up. More once I actually do something with it.

Here you can see the pointy back and the long sleeve - and pixie hood of course:

This photo really shows my flippy over hem:

Its not so bad!

Have a great weekend, take care,

Bracken