Dress Shirt Onesie

I'm not very good at sewing something and having it turn out the actual size I want it. It's usually a size or two too big. Oh well- it's a good thing my kids always grow into them! This dress shirt onesie is a prime example. I thought it would be cute for Easter. It's Halloween now, and it fits him. I was close, right?

[Jessica Nash photography] Right before the photo shoot, he pulled off a button at the crotch, so he ended up having to wear pants with it. I thought it would be cute to see him running around in just a onesie, but oh well!

2 1/2 Pillowcases = a Handmade Swaddler!

Alida over at I Make Stuff is flippin' awesome. She came up with a tutorial on how to make swaddler blankets! I had bought three on clearance that supposedly last up to 14 lbs, but seeing as how my son is about 12 lbs and I can barely fasten the velcro around his broad shoulders, I figured it was time to buy some new ones.

But wait! Alida to the rescue! Why buy when you can sew some for free, using fabric I already have on hand?! Stash-busting, that's what I'm talking about!

Before I decided to whip up some of these bad boys, I did find a The Miracle Blanket Swaddler which gets very good reviews online. It costs $30 at Amazon... it cost me under $2 at a thrift store :)

For my first attempt at a swaddler, I decided to use three pillowcases that I had thrifted for their fabric (technically you need 2 1/2 pillowcases for this project). The plain brown one was 75% off for a total of 15c, and the two sock monkey pillowcases were 40c and 60c. I actually found them on two separate shopping trips, one right after the other. I believe that's what we call good thrifting karma :)





Alida uses minky fabric for her swaddlers, however I don't have any of that and certainly don't need to go buy any new fabric when I have a fabric breeding ground in my basement. Instead, I used flannels, t-shirt fabric, or regular pillowcase fabric.

Also, a quick word about the velcro. Last night when I was sewing the velcro on, my two year old asked me what that stuff was. When I told him "velcro," I think he misunderstood and thought I said, "Hell no," because he said, "Mommy! Don't say that! Say, 'Oh my peas!'" Our son has a swearing problem, and whenever he says something bad, I tell him to say, 'Oh my peas!' Now he's taken to correcting ME when I say a bad word... Not that I ever say bad words, ahem :)

Anyway, back to the swaddlers! The first two swaddlers have black velcro, which I actually cut off of a baby carrier that had been recalled. That velcro is awesome because it's much wider than regular velcro. The last one I had to use regular white velcro, so I doubled up on it so that it would be wide like the black velcro. I also didn't place velcro on the swaddler in all the places that Alida did in her tutorial. I only have so much velcro, and I didn't want to run out and have to buy some, since these are freebie swaddlers. My son has slept in it for two nights now, and so far, he hasn't busted out of it (knock on wood), so hopefully it's okay that I skimped on the velcroing!



Back in '09 I thrifted several yards of this red and black lumberjackish flannel for only 50c. Paired with a cut-up black shirt of my husband's, I think it makes quite a nice swaddler. The best part is, I still have enough to make my older son a pair of pants, and maybe even a matching pair for my husband. That's a lot of mileage for only 50c! (My husband has ripped two pairs of lounge pants in the past couple weeks, and one pair he actually ripped twice. I'm getting tired of mending his pants! I'd say that new ones are definitely in order).





My third and final swaddler is made with 50c race car flannel, thrifted last year, and a green pillowcase from my college days. As that was over a decade ago (wow, I am getting old), and the dark green no longer matches any of our bedding, I decided that chopping it up was no biggie.





Whoops... the velcro didn't quite line up because it shifted while I was sewing. If I had to do it over again, I would have used white thread to sew two strips of velcro together before attaching it to the swaddler. Then I could trim the edges to make sure both strips were exactly the same length.







Second Time Around Tuesday

Calendar Towel Onesies

Besides my little newborn, there was also another baby born on my street a week before mine, and another neighbor gave birth on November 2. Three babies born to three friends all within about one month of each other! Wowser!

After I saw this onesie on pinterest, I knew I would be making these for the three boys! Yes, that's right, they're all boys! AND, we all already have toddler boys about the same age. Crazy, huh?!

We're working on making an entire Buckeyes offensive line here on our street :)



Making one of these calendar towel onesies is really quick and easy to do. Here's how. Take an old calendar towel and cut out the appropriate month. Take some floss and back stitch around the date the baby was born. Next take some fusible web (mine was thrifted of course!) and adhere it to the wrong wide of your calendar applique with your iron. Iron it onto a plain onesie, and then use your machine to zig zag around the outside of the applique. You're done!

Cookie Monster Sleep Sack Costume and a Newborn!

I would like to introduce you to the newest member of the family.... Jonas Alexander!

At 9 lbs 4 oz, he was a hefty little newborn! He was born two weeks ago via c-section, and we're both doing quite well. I'm so glad he was born in time for Halloween... I do love Halloween :)

Proud big brother!




Now let's talk Halloween. To save money (hey, we are now diapering for two!), I decided to have my older son be Elmo because we already have an Elmo costume. My mom got Joel one for Christmas last year. And who goes great with Elmo? Cookie Monster, of course!

I started with a thrifted sleep sack pattern, and a bunch of other vintage stuff that I already had on hand. The fabric was from my great-grandmother's stash. When she passed away, I got her fabric. The zipper and bias tape were thrifted too.

The cookie is made of felt sandwiched together with batting in the middle, and attached to the sleep sack with velcro.

Then for his head, I decided to make a baby bonnet using Prudent Baby's awesome tutorial. I left off the ruffle for obvious reasons! I bought a six pack of ping pong balls for $1.29, hot glued two of them on top of the baby bonnet, and then drew some googly eyes with a permanent marker.

Is he not the cutest baby Cookie Monster you ever saw?

Keep Calm and Ride On (And Other Nursery Printables!)

{When I printed mine out, they had white backgrounds... I didn't figure out until later how to make the background colored! Oh well!}

Until the newborn babe is born and I can take tons of pictures of my fat little baby and plaster them all over the house, I have a lot of picture frames that need filled. With the help of Microsoft clipart, some cool fonts, Microsoft Word, and Paint (the computer program), I created some free nursery art that I thought I'd share with y'all. I couldn't figure out how to add a pdf file in blogger, so I uploaded them into google docs. Just click on the photos below, and it will take you to the big version.

This is the part where I tell you that these free printables are for your personal use only, so please don't sell them (unless of course you want to give me half the proceeds)! Thanks!

This one is my fav:



By the way, these are centered in the pdf file...
I cropped them and made jpgs out of them for the links.

Dress Shirt Onesie. Genius!

So have you seen this tutorial yet over at Sew, Mama, Sew!?

Yeah, it's pretty awesome.

What makes it even more awesome is that this men's shirt was originally thrifted so that I could cover a cork board in my son's room. I figured I had enough extra fabric left to make a onesie out of it also, especially since I had not used the button plackets for the cork board project. So this onesie cost me no additional money :)

Because I never fully follow a pattern and end up winging it at some point, mine is a little bit different. First of all, I didn't want to mess with putting the button hole foot on my machine, so I opted to hand sew on snaps at the bottom of the onesie.





I sewed matching buttons on the other side of the snaps to make it look like it buttons, but they're really not functional. Fooled ya :)

Secondly, I didn't want to mess with elastic, so I just used some extra t-shirt scraps to sew a bias binding (even though it wasn't really cut on the bias), and then just finished off the bottom with that.

Lastly, I think I screwed up the collar somehow because it just didn't seem to reach around as far to the front as I think it should, and so a clip-on tie wouldn't work with it like I had planned. Instead, I made Prudent Baby's super easy and super awesome bow tie :) I opted to make my tie smaller than hers because mine is for a super large 3-6 month old. (Ok, it's supposed to be 3-6 months, but when I hold it up to his other onesies, it's really more like 9-12. Not sure why it came out so big!)

The dimensions I used for the main part of the bow tie were 9" x 2.5" whereas hers were 12.5" x 3.5". I actually used her dimensions first, and it turned out pretty ginormous. Cool for my toddler, but too big for an infant.



I didn't photograph it, however here's how it's attached to the onesie. I made a tube of the same fabric as the bow tie, pressed it flat to make a strap, and slipped it through the "knot" on the backside. On the left side of the onesie, under the collar, I stitched the strap directly to the onesie. On the right side, I used my handy dandy snaps again. I sewed the snap onto the onesie, under the collar, so it's hidden out of sight. No one will ever know that the strap doesn't go all the way around the neck!


Love it!

Two Toned Baby Sleeves: the tutorial

Seven handmade shirts just wasn't enough. I felt the itch to cut up just one more of my hubby's old tees. I. just. can't. stop! And seriously- how cute is this appliqued Scrabble tile? The number 8 was a little fiddly to cut out, but I love how it turned out :) And the baseball... I was worried that I was going to have to hand sew (ugh) the red stitching, until I discovered that my awesome new machine already had the perfect fancy-schmancy stitch built in! Sa-weet!

Anyway, getting on with the tute.

Because the design was pretty small on this particular shirt, I was able to make T.H.R.E.E. baby shirts out of this one shirt! (The third shirt is not complete yet, though all the pattern pieces have been cut).

I also took photos along the way of the process of making the two-toned sleeves, so that you, my dear sweet readers, can make these too!

Ok, let's get started! Visit the awesome tute at This Mama Makes Stuff to print out the pattern. Gather up an adult tee. The bigger, the better.
Cut it apart and open it up like so, and place your pattern in one of two places.



If you want to use the picture on the front, center of the tee, place the pattern up there. If you want to utilize the bottom hem of the t-shirt as the bottom of your baby shirt, place it along the bottom like I did here. I do both so maximum the shirt's potential, but please note that if you place the pattern up around the neckline in order to use the picture already on the adult tee, you will need to make the shirt a little longer than if you use the bottom hem of the adult tee. This is so that you will have a little extra fabric to fold under to create your own hem.

Notice the little green cheerleaders at the bottom of my pattern. I need my patterns to cheer me on as I go :)

Here are two photos of where I placed the pattern in order to end up with a shirt just like the husband's originally was, only smaller :)





My pattern is only half, so I have to fold the fabric in half before I cut. Cut a back and a front, and another back and front if your shirt is large enough. (If you're wondering what's up with the bottom of my patterns, remember that these were originally baby gown patterns. I fold the pattern in order to make it the correct length for a shirt).



Here it is, all cut out but still folded in half.



And unfolded! Notice on the back where it says "Nike" is a little off-center. I had to do this because of the fabric available. I can fix it later by adding an appliqued Nike swoosh or something on the left. Then it will look centered :)



Now we're going to use the sleeves off of the adult tee. Here they are cut off, sitting pretty next to the baby sleeves pattern.



Take the sleeves and open them up. If you can fit it, make two short baby sleeves from each of the adult sleeves. Place the pattern along the hemmed edge of the sleeve. Notice the dotted line that says "short sleeve hem." I added that to the pattern because the original pattern was only for long sleeves. There's also a "short sleeve cut." Use the "hem" line when you're using the existing hem on the adult tee; use the "cut" line when you're not using the original hem, and you're going to have to hem the bottom yourself. (That's why it's a little longer... to give you extra fabric for the hem). Make sense?



Notice all the mumbo-jumbo that I've written on the pattern. You'll want to do the same. I've marked on my pattern where to cut fabric #1. Remember that the second half of the baby sleeve is going to be made with a second fabric, and so we're not going to use the entire pattern on fabric #1.



(If you can't quite make out all that I've written on the pattern, you can click on it, and it should take you to a larger version of the photo).

Then cut. You might need a John Deere tractor and a three foot tall helper with this part. I know I did.



And repeat.



Pfew! You're over half way done :)

Now take fabric number #2. If you're lazy smart like me, make sure you're taking a piece that is already hemmed.



Notice the "long sleeve hem" and "long sleeve cut" lines. Once again, the "hem" line is for when you're using an already-hemmed piece. The lower line, or the "cut" line gives you a little bit of extra fabric so that you can hem the baby shirt yourself. I just want to be clear, because this is important :)



Now you're ready to cut the top section of the second fabric, where it will attach to fabric #1. Just make sure you leave enough fabric at the top so it will overlap a little bit with fabric #1.



I like to lay the top part of the sleeve on the pattern, just to make sure they're overlapping.



Then cut and repeat!



Pin together like so. Simply lay fabric #1 over fabric #2, remembering to overlap a bit. Sorry I'm not more precise with my measurements. I don't get to use my measuring tape because my son always wants to play with it.



Here's what the inside of the sleeve will look like. It's not finished, but of course if you're a perfectionist, you could make the second fabric a little longer, leaving enough room to turn it under and make it look all professional. I am not a perfectionist, and so I'm totally fine with unfinished edges on the inside of the garment :)



Now let's sew! Finally getting to the good part. I hate the cutting and pinning part, don't you?

Place your needle directly over the stitching that already exists (if you're using an existing hem). Make sure you use matching thread so that it blends in with the original stitching. I sew slowly so that I don't go left or right of the original stitching.



Here's what the sleeve looks like when the two parts have been joined. Feel free to snip the jagged, uneven edges.



And here's a shot from the back. (This sleeve's secondary fabric is black because it's the second set I made).



You are now ready to get back to the tutorial over at This Mama Makes Stuff, because the tricky awesome two-toned sleeves are ready to be sewn into the shirt! Woohoo!