I’m making some progress on my mystery project (I love that you are trying to guess what it is, but no one has guessed correctly yet). 2 muslins down and I think I’m ready to cut into the real fabric.
In the meantime, we have friends having their first baby (a girl) soon. There was a baby shower this weekend that I ended up being too sick to go to, but I sent a gift with one of my siblings.
The pictures do not do justice to showing off the size of these clothes. They aren’t really, really tiny, but they are much smaller than anything my children have worn recently.
The sweater is the Oriental Lily sweater, a free download on Ravelry.
I’d made this pattern up once before, for Guinevere, so I knew it was a relatively quick and uncomplicated knit. The black yarn is 100% cotton and the pink a 50/50 cotton/acrylic blend, both from my stash.
The jeans are from a pattern company I’d never really looked at in the past, Peek-a-Boo Patterns. This may be my new favorite pattern company (though they have some serious competition in my affections from the up-and-coming Thread Theory who are focused on wearable basics for men–I’m excited about starting in on the Newcastle Cardigan for Pete, just as soon as I get my sewing queue emptied of my mystery project).
Digression into menswear sewing aside, let’s talk about Peek-a-Boo patterns. My biggest pet peeve with modern “Big Four” kids’ patterns has to do with sizing. For instance, this pattern, which looks like a relatively fitted tee has 10 inches of ease around the chest and waist for the smallest size. There is nothing about a “fitted” tee w/ that much ease that would have any kind of home-made legitimacy for my skinny kids.
The second issue I have with many of the mainstream pattern offerings for children right now is the “dumbing down” that has occurred. There are plenty of elastic-waisted shorts patterns, but not a lot of pants with real details like fly-fronts or ready-to-wear looking pockets. Add that to the ridiculous amounts of ease, and you have a pattern destined to make the clothes that no kid will ever purposely wear to school, or anywhere else.
Looking through the Peek-a-Boo pattern collection, I’d say their pattern offerings are close to the clothes you would expect to find at A Children’s place, or Old Navy, or similar stores. Really wearable children’s basics with a lot of potential to make kid’s clothes that will fit in with what their peers are wearing at school (that is, assuming that the sizing turns out to have similar ease to read-to-wear. I think it might, but I haven’t yet checked for myself)
I used the Skinny Jeans pattern, and they actually turned out looking skinny! Not unwearably skinny, but slim cut, like they are supposed to be.
The instructions are nicely detailed, including all the info about how to custom-size for a kid (assuming you aren’t making a gift for a yet-to-be-born kid) when and where to top-stitch, and how to add button-hole elastic for an adjustable waist-band (which I didn’t do).
This company only produces downloaded PDF patterns. This one went together neatly and didn’t seem to waste paper or ink. One nice feature of this pattern line is that the size lines are color-coded. This made it super-easy to trace off the size I was making after I’d taped it together. I’m excited enough about how this first pattern went that I’ve now bought a few other of their patterns, this time for the other friends we have who are also having their first baby (a boy), and of course, with plans to make up versions for my kids in the future.
The fabric for the skinny jeans came out of my stash, a stretch denim with some pink woven into the blue to give it kind of a purple color in some angles. Guinevere rather liked the pink top-stitching on these, but there isn’t enough of this fabric left to make her a similar pair (maybe, maybe some shorts, but even that might take some creative cutting). The pattern does have a nice size range, so I expect to make a few pairs for Guinevere in the future.
Stash-Busting Stats 14/25
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