Baby Sun Dress & Bloomers

This is a little sun dress and bloomers (or diaper cover) that I made for a friend of mine. His niece, the recipient of this lovely quilt, is turning one year old and celebrating with a polka dot themed birthday party. This is a girl after my own heart. You may have noticed that I love polka dots. 

This was made using the McCall's 6309 pattern.

A couple things to note about this pattern:

1. This pattern asks you to measure your baby's chest, waist, and thighs. If you do not own a baby or can't procure one then it might be difficult to get the right fit. I looked up approximate sizes based on the baby's weight that I happened to know. Hopefully it works out. Someone online did mention that the chest and waist size are often the same size, so I went with that. I hope it's right.

2. The straps are ridiculous if you follow the directions. It asks you to sew them together inside out and then turn them right side out. Impossible. It's way too tiny to flip. I picked out the seams and folded everything under and topstitched.

3. The bloomer instructions ask you to sew in bias binding to make a casing for the leg elastic. I decided to try out the method in Heather Ross' Weekend Sewing book which calls for elastic thread instead of a casing and wide elastic. Wow. It is so amazing!

First off, I thought this would be the end of my machine. How could elastic thread ever work? Some how and it was super easy. When I showed it to some co-workers with babies they all said that this was the best idea because they've bought kids clothes with regular elastic that are way too tight on super fat baby legs. (Super CUTE fat baby legs, I might add. No judgements, babies.) I will be trying this method out on some of my own shirt sleeves, I think.

Cuteness Cure

I made a couple of cute items this weekend. Two tag blankets and a pacifier clip. They are presents for a baby shower.

It took a lot of effort to get off the couch, but deadlines motivate and this time I was grateful for them. The cuteness helped my lift my mood as well. You can't help but smile when working with bunnies and bears driving cars.

This was my first time making both of these items. The pacifier clip tutorial is here and I just winged it for the blankets. I found a super soft minky fabric for the back of the blankets and the car fabric is from Japan. It's about 10 inches square and has different size and textured ribbons.

Most importantly, I made two blankets because I know how devastating it is when you blanket wears through or you lose it. Always good to have a spare.

The pacifier clip was super fast to make, particularly because of my new serger. (Wee!) This was my first project on it. I practiced on some scraps before making this and then switched over to the rolled hem setting for the pacifier clip. I can't believe how easy it was to switch settings and to use it general. No issues thus far.

Look at that rolled hem! Wow. And I've already made my first knit shirt as well. Pictures soon.

Quilt in progress

I've started on a new quilt using some of those cute gingham fabrics that my mom gave me. The pattern will be a rainbow zig zag quilt based off of the Purl Bee tutorial, but with more zig zag rows. I'm excited to get back into quilt piecing. It's been a long time.