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