"Powder Puff" Raglan Tee

Here's the next installment in my quick-make-some-basics-so-Sara-has-something-to-wear scramble.
This fabric is so busy it's hard to see the raglan sleeves and the shirring detail. It's only after I've made two garments with shirring near the neckline that the solution to the neck binding poking out has revealed itself (thanks to an ottobre yahoo group member). I should have stitched the gathered/shirred neckline to avoid stretching it while applying the binding. That way it wouldn't gather the neck binding along with itself.

The sleeve hems are gathered with elastic.

I added some length because, as usual, I expect some more shrinkage from this Hobby Lobby Fabric.

Oh...the pattern is from ottobre 6-2008-20.

Very Green

I wouldn't think of lime green as a staple wardrobe color, but I've nearly used up my second spool of lime thread this year.

I wanted to make a quick knit dress for Sara, so I chose a pattern I'd used before: this bubble dress. I eliminated the bubble skirt feature and made a normal dress. I also added three inches to the length since I knew the dress was on the short side. There's plenty of length there now, since I've started tracing the next size up to allow for the ridiculous amount of sprouting up that happened this summer. At this rate, she's going to pass up her older brothers!

You can't see the details well, but there are raglan sleeves which are gathered with elastic. The bodice has some decorative shirring close to the neckline and, as you can see in the photo above, that cute feature which Sara likes so much makes the neckline poke out. Sara didn't notice that, of course. She's well pleased and wore the dress to church this morning.

If I made this again, I'd take the waist in a bit. The style is all right, but a bit on the frumpy side.

The fabric is from Chez Ami.

Kaisa Jersey Blouse

I realize I have way too many stitches planned to fit in between now and Christmas. I held off on buying Sara any fall/winter clothes because I wanted to make her a little wardrobe - but then, of course, I've been distracted with making birthday and baby gifts, as well as with clothes for the boys. Well, because I'm desperately tired of seeing her wear the same few outfits (and because my husband is threatening to go buy her some clothes at Target, he he), I'm "whipping up" a few basics.

This is the "Kaisa" jersey blouse from Ottobre 1-2009-12. The neck and bodice are gathered with clear elastic tape and the sleeves are slightly cropped. Sara's grown a little since I traced this pattern in May, so I added 2 inches to the length and a little to the sleeves. Plus, I expect this Hobby Lobby knit to shrink even though I prewashed and dried it twice.

The heart pocket pants, which she wears continuously, are featured here.

Masks of Felt

I think I'm done with felt for the time being... The last installment in the aforementioned birthday gift were these masks. A printable pattern can be found here.

Small collections of felt-in-varying-forms for boy and girl.

Felt Crowns

For the birthday mentioned in the previous post, I made two felt crowns, copied from an Ikat Bag original (thanks, L!), which was modified from this tutorial.

Felt on a Stick

This week I digressed from my regular projects to do a few birthday gifts. If I hadn't been pressed for time I would have made multiples of each item to store in my gift stash (and to give to all those kids in my house who have been ogling them). But Christmas is around the corner...

These are lightly stuffed felt wands. One is a flower (I hope that's obvious) and the other is supposed to be a sun.

It's a pretty quick project once you have the materials gathered and if you have small people in your house, they'd make a great stocking stuffer. The tutorial I used can be found at Ikat Bag.

Scientific Pants

To match the stripey baby bodysuit, we have some denim overalls. The pattern is called "Puuheppa" overalls from ottobre 1-2009-11.

The elastic leg openings didn't get as tight as they're supposed to be. The elastic is stitched straight to the fabric (rather than snaked through a casing) and it tends to stretch for me. Maybe it'll shrink up in the wash.

Here's a better shot of the applique: a radio telescope. My husband found a black line drawing of this online and I traced the individual pieces onto fusible web and so on.

The whole outfit.

Striped Envelope Neck

I trialed this pattern (ottobre 5-2006-1) last week before making a stripey version for part of a baby gift. The neck on this one turned out much less floppy because I made sure to get the shoulder flaps further down the front, creating a smaller neck hole.

I used some striped interlock from Chez Ami and red jersey from the stash.

I used size 16 snaps as I did last time, but forgot to interface the binding. I think it should be fine once the snaps loosen up.

The Envelope Neck

I'm planning on making this little bodysuit for a baby gift, but wanted to try out the pattern first.
So Molly got a new top out of the deal. There's a little growing room there, but that's good, because growing is what she's been doing a lot of lately.

The pattern is from Ottobre 5-2006-1. I used my coverstitch for the binding, which turned out beautifully (yeah, it takes practice, but once you get the hang of it, there's no going back...). I first used size 14 snaps (those things are tiny!) but they just could not fit through all those layers of fabric. They pulled out on the first try (grrrr....). I managed to dig them out and replace them with size 16. I also put a bit of twill tape in between the layers to interface each side of the crotch - this of course made it thicker. The snaps eventually pulled through the fabric on my first knit romper.

On my next go-around I'll try to get the sides (flaps?) of the back neckline to come down further in front so the neckline is less floppy.

The Lingonberry

My in-laws eat lingonberries with their ice cream. Lingonberry sauce comes with my meatballs at IKEA. And here we have the Lingonberry Dress.

It's wide.

Grace loves it and tells me it's "sooo beautiful."

The square neck yoke and facing were a bugger to do, especially since I used a wide wale corduroy. I ended up hand-stitching it down on the inside so it would look decent on the outside. The "stitch-in-the-ditch" thing just doesn't work for me.

The pattern is from Ottobre 6-2008-21. I used a spotted pinwale cord from Chez Ami and a wide wale cord from somewhere else.