Say Grr Sewing: Baby Overalls

I can finally share what I've been working on! I gave you a peek of the pockets on Friday, and here is the rest:

Two pairs of little boy overalls, and two shirts to match. =) These went to my sister-in-law at her baby shower yesterday... she is due with twins in a month and a half. These are size 0-3 months, but they look closer to '3' than '0' to me, especially since twins often start out smaller.

I'm so pleased with the way these turned out! I used an existing pair of overalls as the base for a pattern, and added some room in the bum area, as the twins will be wearing cloth diapers. I also added back pockets, made all my pockets real instead of fake, and used snaps instead of buttons.

I made one pair with red topstitching, and a red envelope-neck shirt to go with it.

And the other has orange topstitching, with an orange shirt.

The shirts were originally going to be onesies, but I realized halfway through making them that you don't need to worry about tucking in so much with overalls, and having the onesie part of the shirt would just make changing diapers more difficult. Speaking of diaper-changing ease:

I used snap tape in the inseam of the overalls, to make that a bit easier. Turns out snap tape is not so fun to work with. I couldn't get it in without wavy seams, and that was even when I used a zipper foot. Besides which, the stuff is $10/yard! Get 2 yards and you can afford a pair of snap pliers!

I had a lot of trouble putting in the larger, western style snaps too. They were tricky to get in tight enough because I kept hitting my fingers with the hammer. I actually ended up buying a pair of heavy-duty snap pliers just for them, but that turned out to be a waste. Those pliers worked for about 2 snaps, but the internal springs were weak and they didn't do anything after that. I finally got smart and used a pair of pliers to hold the snap tool so I'd hit them instead of my fingers. It worked pretty well!

The lower set of snaps on the bib don't snap to anything, they are just for looks. I used the backing of those snaps on the straps though, so there are two lengths.

As if the looseness and the broken pliers weren't enough complications, I accidentally put two of the snaps in backwards. =( They were REALLY hard to get out without ruining the fabric! I ended up smashing the post backing into as small a shape as I could with the pliers and gently wiggling it through the hole. It did weaken the fabric some, so I fused a tiny scrap of interfacing to both the back and front before putting in some new snaps.

Here is what the back looks like:

I was originally planning on embroidering the boys' names on the cuffs of the pants, but I was pretty burnt out by the time I got to that point, so I left it off.

After spending over a week on the overalls alone, I was amazed when I was able to whip out both shirts in just one day, in spite of some seam ripping. Again, I created the pattern from some existing baby shirts, using an envelope neck style so they would be easier to pull over the head without fastenings.

As you can see, I made the front neckline a little too high, as I forgot to factor in the added height the binding would give until I had sewn the binding, but it's not a major deal. Other than that, these came out just like I expected, which makes me happy.

On the overalls all of the topstitching is done with a single needle in two parallel rows, but on the shirts I pulled out my twin needle so the hems and necklines would have some stretch to them. I also used the stretch stitch on my new machine everywhere else.

So! That was my latest big project! Here is another picture so you can admire all the time and effort that went into these one last time: