Alterations from the 70's

A few months back, my mother-in-law brought over some old baby clothes... old as in 1979 old. They had been my husbands and she had held on to them for all this time.

Among the clothes were three outfits that all look something like this:

Each one has one shirt and two coordinating bottoms ('cause back in the day, with cloth diapers, a baby was way more likely to need an outfit change on the lower half, or so I was told). I thought the outfits were really neat and I loved the retro colors, but when I put them on the baby, the whole shirt tucked in look really bugged me. So I thought, hey, I can sew! I can alter this outfit and make it look more modern.

(I did opt to only alter one of the three outfits so that the other two kept the full retro look.)

The first step I took was removing the buttons so that the shirt could be on the outside of the pants. Then, without the buttons, the pants needed elastic added to help them stay on.

The elastic isn't the prettiest on the inside, but it works just fine.

Here's the outfit with those two alterations. It would be okay now, but the shirt was still too short (since it was originally made to come only halfway down the belly and the pants would meet it in the middle).

So I took the hem out of the shirt and then zigzagged over the edges to keep them from unraveling. I did also have to reclose the side of the side at the hem.

Unfortunately, in zigzagging, I stretched the fabric some and now the bottom edge has a little bit of a wave to it, and in pulling out some of the original stitches, the old fabric didn't hold up well and now there are three small holes in the back.

I also added the elastic waistband to the coordinating pair of shorts.

I'm not sure if you can see the holes or not, but there they are. I'm wishing now that I had taken a before picture of the baby with the outfit on... the shirt was so short! It barely comes to his natural waist now and I let out a two inch hem.

Here's the same outfit from the front.

Overall, I was really pleased with my first alteration. Some mistakes were made, but the outfit is fully functional and, I think from a 2009 perspective, a better looking outfit for my helping it along.

Algebra, Bears, and Dress Up Skirts

I have been wanting to practice more clothing sewing, but I hate that everything I make still looks homemade, and not in the cute, I could have paid top dollar for this at a craft booth way. I do understand, though, that the only way to get better is to practice. So I decided to start making skirts for my daughter's dress up box.

I recently ran across this tutorial on gathered skirts over at Ikat Bag and I decided that this might actually be a simple enough process for me to make my way through. I was particularly pleased that she used algebra. She called the waist measurement A and the length B and the whole thing made a lot of sense to me.

In my head.

In reality, I made these three skirts for the same little girl:

Yeah, it's like the three bears were doing the sewing. The green plaid is too big, the white one with flowers is too little, and the pink one is just right (mostly).

The green plaid skirt, the one that is way too big, was the one I made using the magical formula from the website, which for some reason or another didn't work for me. Happily, though, I am making these for a dress-up trunk and wanted various sizes and lengths that would work for little girls in a three year old to seven year old range, so the green plaid skirt is still a keeper.

The floral skirt is actually a pillowcase.

I though that since my goal was a rectangular tube that I would then put a waistband on, a pillow case would work well. It actually would have been the perfect size, but I second guessed myself while my model was asleep and brought the waist in a little too much. This one actually does fit, it's just a little snug and for a growing girl, snug won't last long.

But for now, it's cute.

The pink skirt was almost perfect. I was thinking I wanted it a little longer for a dress up skirt, but she likes it, and that's all I really cared about anyway. It's a little lose, but that makes it easier for putting on over clothes while dressing up anyway.

After making those three skirts, I finally found my own magic numbers (which turned out to be more like A + (2/3)A and less of a 2A+1, but whatever) and made this purple skirt:

It has the waist the size of the pink skirt with the length of the floral, so really, this is the "just right" skirt I was looking for... it just took me three tries to get there.

Correction: Four tries. I think maybe this inability to count might factor in with my sewing troubles.

An Apron For Peter

A while back, I made a bunch of dish towel aprons. The directions can still be found at:

http://jas.familyfun.go.com/arts-and-crafts?page=CraftDisplay&craftid=11092

This one is for my friend Kara's son and so it had to be less girly than the other aprons I had made. Since the stock photo on the directions site is of a little boy in a red dish towel and he looked very not girly, I went with the same idea and chose a red dish towel of my own.

I sewed the corners (like the directions said) to put the apron strings through and since Peter is still a little guy, I went ahead and added three pockets because the pockets come out of the overall length of the apron.

Here's the finished product (with a spatula to kind of show where the pockets are, since they are hard to see in the photo):


Once I get the apron to Kara, I'm sure she will oblige and take a picture of Peter wearing the apron for me to add here at the end.