cutie pies and quickie fun sewing

my college roommate (and very dear friend) drove out (across several states!) to visit us (with her two kids ages 2 and 4!) a few weeks ago.  while she was here, i snuck some of her kids’ clothes out of their suitcase make patterns so that i could try out my new 90-minute shirt tutorial (well, really just the rib-knit-plus-serging-as-binding trick) on bigger kids’ clothing.  i first tried a shorts and top for the 4 year old (she helped me later to freezer paper stencil a heart on the top) and they worked okay except that I put the folded fabric on the wrong edge of the shorts pattern (making the seams on the outsides of the legs), so they look a little odd to me, but since they’re knit and stretchy, she swore they were comfortable.  here she is, wearing the outfit and clomping around in my big shoes.  what a cutie!

then, i made one of those cutie rompers for her son and i really love the way it turned out:

(love the lighting in that first one of him!  must remember that spot on the porch….) both of these were made from thrifted shirts.  the boy’s outfit was an especially thick and soft polo shirt and it had those little stylish slits on the bottom-edge sides of the shirt and i somehow managed to preserve the original slit on one side, so i made a matching slit on the other leg and i kinda like the effect.  one thing still has me puzzled–can anyone tell me why my collars with this method don’t seem to lie flat?  they sort of flare out a little.  would a nice hot iron fix that?  or am i stretching the fabric at some point in the process or …???

my other new favorite pattern-making trick that i tried out with these projects and ended up really liking was using plastic cereal box lining bags to trace the patterns onto.

They’re see-through, so you can place them on top of the item you’re making the pattern from while tracing and they’re less prone to ripping than paper and they come in sheets that are larger than 8.5×11″ and using them in this way saves them from the landfill!  next, i might experiment with ironing two sheets of the plastic together (between scrap fabric or parchment paper or something to prevent melting plastic sticking to my iron) to make larger sheets.  if i ever get around to actually doing that and if it works, i’ll get back to you.