Some Tops for Jane

My girl is about to start kindergarten!  I can't believe it.  She is so ready.  And fortunately for me, she's coming to my school.  We are so excited to go to school together every day.  I might even have her in my art class, as long as she doesn't get the traveling art teacher.  Will she call me mom? Who knows.  The other kids slip up and call me mom all the time anyway, which always makes me giggle.  I decided to make her a few new tops for school.  I like to save larger scraps of fabric from my projects thinking I can make something for Jane.  It's about time I actually got around to it.  The two floral pattern tees are actually recycled from two of my old tees.  And the black and white fabric is a piece I saved specifically to make her something.  Now that I've made these cute tops and have worked out the fit, I need to see what other knit scraps I've saved and make her some more.  Kids clothes are much faster to sew than adult size things. And she's very appreciative at this age.

Pattern Description:  I used McCalls 6947, which is unfortunately out of print now.  I've had it in my pattern stash for a while.  I actually used it last year to make her a dress (the patch pocket variation), so I knew what the fit was like. It's a pattern with lots of options for dresses, tops, and even leggings, which I have not made.

Pattern Sizing:  The pattern is sized 2-5.  I used a size 5.  I made a size 5 last year, too, and it was big then. I figured the five would be a better fit now.  Jane is a pretty standard size 5 in rtw except she is long.  Long though the body. These three tops are still running a teensy bit big in width, but that's a good thing as she'll grow in to them.  I added a bit of length to the bodice from the get-go, maybe a half inch.

Fabric Used:  The two floral fabrics are recycled from two of my tees. Of course I didn't take any 'before' photos.  Do you remember when Uniqlo had the Liberty collection?  I bought three tees then and only ever liked one enough to wear it.   The fit was off on all three.  The fabric, however, was beautiful.  So I saved the two tees with the intention of using the fabric for something.  Jane got a glimpse of the one with the rainbow colors in it and was all about it.  Anything rainbow these days.  Both fabrics are a cotton/viscose blend.  The black and white fabric is a remnant from a rayon knit I bought at Joann's.  I'm pretty sure it was one of their Nicole Miller fabrics.  I wish they'd bring back the Nicole Miller stuff.  It was decent quality compared to the stuff I've seen there lately.

Alterations/Deviations:  I used the bodice and sleeve pieces from view A but the gathered portion is different on all three.  I used the pattern piece as a general guide but the fact that these were all made from smaller pieces of fabric dictated the length and width.  I made the rainbow floral one first.  I used the bottom of the top (it was a swingy tank top) for the gathered portion after I cut the bodice and sleeve.  I really wanted the sleeves on this one so I sacrificed a lot of length.  It ended up very cute, but short.  I added the navy lace trim to give it a bit more length and I think it's my favorite part.  Though she won't be able to wear it much longer before it's a belly shirt.  The pink floral top came from a tee (front was floral and back was that solid oatmeal color). No sleeves so I could get all the length.  I went a little longer on the length so it's more of a tunic.  Both of those don't have all the width due to fabric constraints, so not as much gathering.  The black and white version is the actual length and width of the pattern.  I did a regular tee shirt neck band on all three instead of a binding.

Likes/Dislikes:  I really like all of them and so does Jane.  Of course the rainbow one is her favorite, although she really likes the pink floral one, too.  No dislikes.  The black and white top is a super stretchy fabric, so I bet she can wear it for a couple of years.  All in all, it's a nice, useful pattern.  I actually am sewing her another variation right now from some recycled fabric and have a dress planned if I have time before school starts  She's starting to make requests.  Good thing she's fun to sew for!

Mama's Got A Brand New Bag

 

Well, hello there!  Yes, mama's got a new bag among other practical sewing projects.  Just so you know, I am blatantly exploiting baby Jane's cuteness to make a post about a bag more interesting.  

Tasty straps!

My goodness.  I think these photos would warm even the coldest of souls out there.  I love her so much I can't stand it sometimes.  Ok ok, so I made a bag. And holy cow, friends.  Bag making is not for the faint of heart.   I made this bag veeeery slowly over the past month and there was some serious wrangling of heavy fabric at the end.

I needed a bag to carry all my junk to work.  Since the beginning of the school year I have been carting about three or four small bags- my lunch bag, my purse, some sort of grocery bag for supplies, my laptop bag and my breast pump.  That's actually five bags.  And that's not counting baby Jane's diaper bag, which actually stays at daycare with her.  Anyway, I wanted a gigantic flat-bottomed bag where I could combine everything in one spot.  So I did what any good sewist would do in a situation like this- I made one.

 

I used McCalls 6297.  I made view D with the addition of a couple of interior pockets.  This thing is massive.  It's awesome.  This project was done entirely with stash fabrics and notions except for the interfacing.  I had a piece of leopard print canvas I've been saving for a while now with the intention of making a blazer type jacket.  But I decided it would make a nice bag, too.  There may be enough left for the jacket anyway.  The zig zag fabric is leftover from the bench I covered over two years ago.  I interfaced the exterior fabric with a heavy duty decor bond.  I wish I had interfaced the lining fabric, too.  But then again, I don't know how I would have sewed it all together.  I had to use a size 18 needle when I sewed all the side seams.  It's heavy duty.

The pattern has one flat pocket on the outside of one side piece.  And one interior pocket that's made to hold two bottles of some sort.  The pattern is obviously a reusable grocery bag on steroids.  I added a divided interior pocket for my cell phone and keys and a zippered pocket.  I piped all the pockets just because.  And look at the nifty little mini clutch there!

 

I was toying with the idea of making a matching wallet when Cake patterns announced the release of the free Red Velvet Mini Clutch pattern.  It was exactly what I needed.  See, I don't carry an actual purse anymore.  At least not like I used to.  I have a small bag that holds my cards, phone and keys that I chuck in the diaper bag.  Then when I go somewhere sans baby, I take it out and just carry the little bag.  Now I have a matching one :)

 

The mini clutch pattern was super quick and very cute.  I made the "boxy" pleated version.   It's the perfect size for a phone and a few cards.  I actually made a pocket on the inside of the lining to hold my credit card and my license.  I just happened to have a red jeans zipper.  Serendipitous, eh?  Don't look too close at my straggly, goofy tassel.  It was fun to make.  There is a lobster clasp attached to the wrist strap.  I had the foresight to sew a loop in the interior of the big bag so I can clip my mini clutch in place.

 

 

And so you can see that I really am alive and kicking, here's a photo of me modeling my bag.  Ha!  I actually took this picture because I made the skirt, too.  It's not even worth writing about truly.  I made a tube of fabric, tried it on and pinned out the excess above my hip.  Then I added a yoga type waistband and called it a day.  It's actually two layers of knit fabric.  The stripey fabric is some sort of mystery knit from Joanns.  It's underlined with a slinky rayon knit.  It feels thicker and more secure than your average knit pencil skirt if you know what I mean.  I like it so much (and I like how easy it is to wash and throw on in the morning) that I made a charcoal ponte knit version as well.  The charcoal version has a little more ease.  This stripey one is pretty snug.  Eh.

 

I made a white tee, too.  Another knit Scout tee.  This version has all of my modifications along with the high low hem that I liked so much on my green version.  It was made in the same slinky rayon knit I lined my stripey skirt with.  It really is the perfect white tee.  I think I've worn it twice a week since I made it.  I had full intentions of putting it on and taking a modeled photo of it.  But someone woke up from her nap.  

 

And such is the life of a sewing mama.  Little snippets of sewing interspersed with lots snuggling.  I wouldn't have it any other way.

What's that?  You want more baby pictures!?  Well, I guess I can oblige.  I mean, since you asked so nicely.

 

I can't believe how big baby Jane is getting.  She's six months old now.  And sweet as pie.  All of her dark hair has fallen out and new sandy colored hair is coming in.  And those blue eyes are starting to turn green.  Looks like she's going to take after her daddy and his hazel eyes.

So glad I can sew and make things specifically tailored for my needs.  You know, like a bag to carry all of my treasured posessions ;)

 

Happy sewing, friends!

 

Snug Life

  

Yes, my husband is not ashamed to wear a picture of his cat on his shirt.  A very literal version of wearing your heart on your sleeve I suppose.  Tee hee.  Love you, J.

 J had a birthday last week.  For his birthday gift, I finally got around to making a tee shirt that we had talked about making for years.  The idea for this tee shirt was born while we were on our honeymoon three years ago.  While walking around Old San Juan, we went in to a tee shirt shop where they had a pug life tee shirt on display.  We thought it would be hilarious to make a snug life tee shirt instead.

 

See, we have this cat.  A cat named Socks who loves to snuggle.  I mean SNUGGLE.   I'll be honest, I've never seen anything like it.  Neither has J.  Socks will snuggle morning, noon and night.  I wake up in the middle of the night and he will be flopped on his back with his head on my shoulder.  He snuggles like a person.  He snuggles so much that sometimes it's really annoying and you have to push him off.  But you can't be mad at him for too long.  I mean, how many cats do you know that are so loving?  Our other cat is pretty indifferent to us.

   
 

I went though our photo roll and found lots of snuggle pictures, but some are just too embarrassing to post.  But here's one.  Socks' story is a funny one.  I was not a cat person before Socks.  In fact, I often claimed I hated cats.  Then my aunt asked me to cat sit for a year while she was doing humanitarian work in Africa.  That's when I got Socks.  He was a born in the gutter stray that she took in.  J and I laugh about he would never have made it out on the streets with his proclivity for warm places and snuggle.  He's too much of a wimp.   Anyway, he snuggled his way in to our home. When my aunt came back from Africa, I couldn't let him go and she was kind enough to let me keep him.  And now I can't believe I ever said I didn't like cats.

  

Back to the tee shirt.  I wanted to try out a photo screen printing kit I saw at Hobby Lobby by Plaid.  It was quite pricey ($40), but I used a 40% coupon which made it more reasonable.  Still a little pricey for my tastes.  I was not totally convinced it would work when I started this project.  I did some photo silk screening back in college and I remember needing a lot of sophisticated equipment.  We put photo emulsion on the screens in a dark room and used a huge glass light table to expose the screens. But this little kit does the same thing on a smaller scale.  It came with three small screens that already had photo emulsion on them in a black bag, a box with a socket and light bulb to be used for exposing the screen, and supplies to actually print your image after you make your screen.

 

All you have to do is print out the black and white image you want to use.  I used the photo of Socks above but altered it in PicMonkey to be only black and white.  In case you are wondering, I made it black and white first, played around with the brightness and contrast and then "posterized" it to only have two colors-  just black and white.  No grey.  I did add to the image since we wanted to see the top of his ears and whiskers on the other side of his face.  I worked back in to the image with a sharpie and then photocopied it.  I just used regular paper, not a transparency.  I laid my printed image face down on my screen and laid a piece of glass on top and then exposed it in the light box.  I did not use a piece of glass the first time I tried it and my image was not as successful.  The heat from the light bulb caused the paper to curl up even though I taped it down and missed a lot of detail.  So I highly recommend using a piece of glass on top.  I took a piece of glass out of a picture frame to use.

 

After exposing the screen for 25 minutes, I soaked it and removed the emulsion to form the image.  The emulsion that is exposed to light stays put and the emulsion beneath the black image is washed away.   I had to put the text on a separate screen because we wanted the image to be as big as possible.

 

Once the screen was dry I was ready to print.   My image was way too close to the edges but I attached a wide masking tape border before I printed.  That kept me from spilling ink over the edge of the screen.  The size of the screens was a bit of an issue.  I needed them to be just a little bit bigger.

 

I did a few practice prints before I printed J's tee shirt. I actually printed two tee shirts for him; a white ink on black tee and a black ink on gray tee.  I like the black image better.  The white ink soaked in to the tee shirt and looked very faded, which is ok.  I may make him one more.  You can wash the screen and use it again.  You can see below that the image is pretty close to the original print out.  There were some minute details lost but it's pretty darn close.  My only complaint is that the photo emulsion does not seem like it will last very long.  The edges feel pretty gummy and the more times I washed it, the more I felt like the edges would peel up.  I don't see it lasting for 50 prints like the instructions claim.  But it was great for making a few tees.

 

The verdict on Plaid's Custom Silk Screening Kit?  Fun and good for a printing a few small scale images.   But pretty expensive.  I wouldn't have bought it without the coupon.  You can also buy replacement screens but they are pricey, too.  Good thing Hobby Lobby lets you use a 40% coupon everyday if you like.   And no, I didn't receive any free stuff or compensation for this post which is why I'm not linking to the product.  You can look it up online if you are interested.  Just my honest opinions.

 

He's going to kill me for posting this photo, bwahahaha!

 

J likes his tee shirt and that's all that really matters.  

Happy Birthday to a man who is not ashamed to snuggle with his cat!