Modify baby, oh yeah

I chopped up a very ugly suspendered dress with lots of tacky embellishments to make this Oklahoma-esque full skirt for our little sitter girl. I love ginghams amd checked patterns and I thrifted the dress over a year ago knowing I would want to remake it. I could easily make her an entire wardrobe out of all manner of checks! I love them for me too and I get all excited when I see them in the fabric store.

The top/onsie is also thrifted and I will detach the collar in a month when she outgrows it and attach it to another t-shirt, probably a pretty white one or maybe I´ll make something from linen if I´m brave. Baby clothes are fun to make and modify because you have a cute client who doesn´t complain about the results good or bad.

The onsie samurai

I've been dissecting onsies for the past month. I don´t know why they put the snaps in. I hate the snaps. We have always used cloth diapers on our kids and we never used the snaps or if we did our babies ended up having wedgies because the onsie pulled so tight against the diaper.

I've also been cutting off the sleeves of the numerous long sleeved Alpine onsies we seem to have a stockpile of and turning them into Little Mexican short sleeved versions. It´s so hot here that I am even cutting some sleeveless versions.

Be careful when chopping off your babie's onsies. Make sure they are long enough to handle the chopping. Sometimes it doesn't work out because the onsie is manufactured too short in the torso and is unchoppable. In our case I just stash it in the rag bag for other projects. No big loss. This onsie was unfortuantely one of those short ones. Oops.

New rags!

Since moving to Mexico we have done our dishes with linen rags salvaged from old bed sheets my mother in law cut up and distributed. They're white, and a little dull looking. They aren't the most effective size either.

It was a gradual thing getting rid of the sponge. At the time it wasn't political at all, just more cost effective. Sponges in Mexico are two times the price we were used to paying and it made me angry to buy them, and for the first few months Seb did all the grocery shopping while I languished like beach whale, babe in belly and later in arms. He always forgets to buy cleaning supplies so I got used to grabbing one of my linen rag scraps because the sponge was looking questionable. Since ditching the sponge though I've read a bit more and have been disgusted enough by the germ and toxin reports to give them up entirely, forever.

I've been having fun sewing and stocking my drawer with new rags, these little guys. It will take me a while to build up my stock of 30, but I'm already impressed with their texture and weight. Made from floor rag material and embellished to my heart's content with fabric scrap borders they are great sewing practice.

And yes I know sewing buttons on dishrags is terribly impractical but it's pretty and that's very important.

First real project

Aside from silly projects like curtains, pillows and a snazzy Disney L*ghtning McQ**n duvet cover with satin backing (he goes with me to the fabric store you see...) I have yet to attack any real sewing until now. Today I made a t-shirt!!

...for Leo.

Leo is a sort of joke really. He´s my dou-dou my mom bought me since Seb is away so much. Seb is a Leo and my mom thought it was very funny to buy this lion for me to sleep with when he´s gone. He´s very cute and soft and he kind of looks like Seb with all his crazy lion's mane, but he has this awful soccer shirt made of polyester and I´ve been wanting to make a new shirt for him so he looks better on my bed, or rather more likely on Little S´s bed.

This first shirt is experimental, made with my old pyjamas and in jersey cotton . Ugh jersey I hate you! This is the worst material to sew with ever. On Project Runway they always disqualify the person who makes the outfit out of jersey because it always puckers and turns out a disaster. I know firsthand now...eww!

Anyway, even if it has some puckering and major basting problems (oops...and now you know why the pictures are small) I´m proud of my work sans pattern. It really is pretty easy to make your own patterns if you are willing to rip stitches from an old garment.

Next I´ll hopefully be moving on to a size bigger, baby girl dresses! But first maybe another shirt for Leo so he has some different looks.

Revamping

The old, ratty white car seat pad for our beloved Bébé Confort stroller was starting to look positively gross after two babies (two because it was a hand me down) so I bought this pretty flower print to match the eggplant color on the seat and had a go at it on the machine. I embellished the top trim with some cute pink velvet flowers with pearl centers that I hope she doesn´t eat.

I really like this print and will probably use it in some other projects. We feel a lot spiffier now when we're out and about!

Who sews, sue sews!

Even though I´ve been really, really tired lately (many recent complaints about that on my other blog), I have become a sewing demon lately. I have not only started and finished one project, I have nearly finished two others. I love sewing! Who knew?

Sewing for me is a a little intimidating. My mom is the expert on this and she always had a sewing room. Growing up I'd play in the room while she sewed and I'd make doll clothes. Mom always wanted me to sew to and she often threatened offered to buy me a machine and has I think every year since my 10th birthday. I have always hated that she wanted to do that and I always replied with "oh god no!" or something along those lines because the idea of being caught sewing made me feel like the girls I saw with their mothers in the fabric stores (their mother made their clothes ::shudder::) and I was secretly frightened of turning into that girl. I was always too cool for sewing and I did not want to do something my mother wanted me to do because that would have made her happy--as if ! When I´d go out and buy curtains for an apartment or a little house I was renting with my boyfriend my mom would always say "if you had a machine honey you could make those so easily" (cue twenty-something eye roll).

Now that I´m older and wiser I see that sewing is adddictive and fun. I have enough chops from being around it all my life too know pretty much what I´m doing. I hope I can continue to know what I´m doing but if not there is always the internet where there are a ton of projects (and of course there is good old mom).

Soooo it seems that sewing is in my blood after all! I totally surprised myself last night because I actually jammed the machine with a huge ball of black, tangled thread and I was able to take it apart all by myself with a screwdriver and very calmly fix it. All that hanging out around sergers and Singers has rubbed off on me after all.

Mom will be proud.