I am feeling very accomplished you guys! I’ve got two patterns coming out (as soon as I create the fancy PDF formatting and schematics etc, I’m a bit burnt out from petite purls so slacking on that front), I made my first cut-out sugar cookies from scratch with my own frosting, and they came out GREAT! And in the last 48 hours I have sewn up my first two completed items of clothing! I asked a long-time knitting buddy Brett if he could teach me how to sew, I needed a private lesson and lots of time (and forgiveness for awful baby behavior, tho really there was not much of that). He obliged as he is one quarter from graduating with a fashion design degree. How lucky am I to know such a cool dude? Claudia did introduce me though so she gets some credit there. Hah.
The time after Petite Purls launches is always nice, I just step away from it for a while and try not to think about it or stress about it. It also being the holiday season the husbeast has been home to help out a LOT with the kids. He watched LG and BG while I sewed for nearly 8 hours straight yesterday, and 2 or so hours today.
So yesterday when Brett came over, he was kind enough to hold miss LG when she was fussing and refusing to go to bed. She was SO over the husbeast, wouldn’t even let him hold her any more (remember, 8 hours!). So Brett was holding her and she got all excited and was smiling and flapping her arms, and then, just when things seemed okay, she spit up a very large amount on HIS FACE no less, right into his goatee, looked like he had poured cream all over it. It was awful and disgusting and I lost it so bad I could not stop laughing. Poor Brett, and do you know what sort of trooper he is? He offered to hold her, AGAIN! Those are some serious coolness points there people!
This above is the hem of the pant leg, I did the pants 100% by myself, yeah I ripped out a few times as trying to juggle that and a fussy baby meant I kept accidently pinning/seaming the pant legs ride sides OUT instead of in, like 3 times.
(Oh yeah, I also finished the ripple afghan 2 nights ago! It’s way back in the shot all blurry)
Today while I was on my own for the pants, I was not understanding a few terms in the pattern and went to twitter for help, which I got right away and was able to complete the pants! Thanks tweeps! Do you see my Channukah/Christmas present? It’s a little Samsung Netbook! SOOO excited, it’s white on the inside and pink on the outside. I love it so much. It’s not as easy to use the track pad as a mac is, and well the PC OS is just plain awful, but I still love it! I am thinking about loading MAC OS on there but it’s good to have a PC for testing websites on. I have TweetDeck open there, you can use TweetDeck to post to twitter and facebook, so you don’t have to visit both website! It’s for PC and MAC.
We put the little outfit on LG tonight to see how it fit. It’s a 6-9 month size and she’s just shy of 5 months and not tiny, so it fit her just fine. The pants are totally not meant for cloth diapers but we still got them over a fairly bulky one.
I made one big mistake when sewing this, and that is I had not pre-washed the fabric before I started sewing, but this was more about learning and getting it done then anything and we had no time to deal with all that!
The fabric is “Mendocino” by Heather Ross and the pattern is Amy Butlers Kimono PJs from “Little Stitches for Little Ones” a very wonderful book full of baby projects of all sorts, from toys to bags to clothing.
The pattern itself has a lot of bias binding to it, and I’m not such a fan of the 1″ seams on the bottom, but the pattern is well written and clear, and not hard to follow for someone with NO experience at all. I did have an issue were it said to cut the elastic 21″ long but when I thread it through, it didn’t pull in AT ALL and didn’t stretch, or rather could not stretch because it was the exact same size as the pants. So I trimmed off 2.5 inches and it wound up seeming just right. So if your looking for something small to make and a little bit of a challenge beyond a pillow but still not too crazy difficult, this is a great project.
Is Brett available for lessons in other states? I have a sewing machine and can’t use it. I’ve been trying to learn but apparently the machine and I do not speak the same language. LOL!
The outfit is adorable as is the baby!
You did a fabulous job on the pj set! She is so cute in it.
Great job! Rowan looks like a little Japanese doll. I am glad you had a great time with Brett teaching you how to sew the pattern.