Baby Boy Gifts

  My brother's first child is due to arrive very soon here. And it's a boy! Which means I got to sew boy baby things.... my last chance for that was the overalls I made for my sister-in-love's twins, nearly 3 years ago. =)

  I was waiting for a chance to buy some cute boy knit at Girl Charlee, when I remembered that I had quite a bit of camouflage fabric leftover from Christmas sewing, and decided that it would be perfect for a onesie. (The camo shirt in that post was for this little guy's mama!) =)

  I've been hearing quite a bit about the pattern company Brindille and Twig lately, and decided to test out their basic bodysuit pattern to make this.

  The pieces fit together decently, but overall I wasn't impressed with the pattern. In addition to the pattern instructions that were obviously cobbled together from other patterns (which resulted in a lot of information that simply wasn't relevant to making the onesie) there were a lot of seams that would be poking out if I hadn't altered it, as well as 'cut to fit' pieces. Also, the pdf was assembled in a way that felt awkward and would be easy to mess up.

  I added a hem instead of binding the sleeves, sewed everything in a slightly different order to keep the serged edges from poking out, and semi-followed this tutorial for the bindings. I made my bindings wider, and left some of the width on the inside of the garment, instead of wrapping the whole thing to the outside. I should have made the leg binding even wider for this size snaps.

  I love how it looks on the neckline though!

  I added a tag again, made with iron-on transfer paper (affiliate link).... only instead of ironing it on to another piece of fabric and sewing that fabric into the seams, I ironed it directly to the shirt. I hope it lasts! =) The end result is pretty cute, but I won't be buying from that pattern company again.

  Next up, a pair of pants! These were actually made some time last year.... I decided I wanted to sew pants for my twin nephews, finished one pair, and set them aside until I could finish the second pair. And then I got distracted sewing other things, never finished the second pair, and the twins grew out of this size by the time I remembered I'd sewn the first pair. I thought they might as well get used. ;-)

  I used Peek-a-boo Patterns Classic Chinos for these, and only swapped out the back welt pockets for patch pockets. This is another pattern I wasn't particularly impressed with. The instructions were not bad, but the pieces had some real discrepancies, and I had to majorly fudge the waistband to actually catch the faux-fly in it. That, and it has to be printed in color, since the lines are all solid.

  I did some fun stitching on the back pockets... luckily my new nephew's last initial is the same as the twins'! =) I used some red quilting cotton for the pocket lining and unfortunately it's peeking out a bit along the side edge.... I should have tucked the opening in better!

  The other change I made to the pattern was top-stitching, and lots of it. I'm happy with how these pants turned out in spite of the pattern issues, although I realized as I was photographing them that I should have added a back yoke to make them look even more like jeans.

  I sewed in a last-minute tag before taking these photos... I didn't just iron it to the denim, because I didn't think it would stick well. I ended up hand-stitching it in the back, since all of the seams were sewn solidly down and I didn't have enough of this color of thread to re-do any top-stitching.

  I was originally going to make these with a real fly, but realized just before sewing that I didn't have any zippers that would work, and decided an 18-month old wouldn't really need it anyway.

  Finally, I added a toy to the gift mix! This one is pretty simple... a basic ball, with some fun horse fabric for half of the panels, black broadcloth for the rest, and a rattle inside.

  It's a little lumpy in spite of my careful stuffing job, but I doubt a baby will notice. ;-)

  I used this free pattern from Grand Revival Designs in the smallest size for this one... though I wish I'd gone one size up to fit the horses a bit better!

And that's it for the baby boy gifts! I've been participating in KCW this time around, but I have yet to finish anything, let alone take pictures. I'll be back just as soon as I can!

Thanks for stopping by,