Spring Baby Outfit

Foofy really doesn't need clothes. Seriously, does NOT need clothes. But when I came up with a sweet outfit idea a couple of weeks ago, I had to make it for a baby, and she's available and adorable!

  Here's my initial sketch:

  For this outfit, I made a little dress:

  A diaper cover:

  A cardigan:

  A hat:

  And some shoes:

  I used Girl Charlee's faux leather (I refuse to call it vegan leather- that's just too pretentious) for the shoes, since the vintage machine I'm using won't sew real leather. It can't top-stitch on this fake stuff either unless I smear oil on the pleather, but it sews decently from the wrong side without skipping every stitch!

  I altered a pattern I drafted for Foofy's tiny feet a while ago... she'll be 5 months old tomorrow and just now fits newborn-sized shoes! The pattern I drafted is actually part of some footed tights that I haven't posted about yet, so I connected several of the pieces for this and added scallops to the opening.

  The buckle is closed with a snap, but this faux leather is so thin and delicate that even with interfacing under the snaps I can't open them back up without tearing it... luckily it's also stretchy, so I can slip the shoes on and off anyway.

  I kept these super-simple and didn't line or interface anywhere except the snaps, so they are very lightweight and dainty.

  The hat is a simple beret, with the brim made from scraps of this shirt,

  The rest of the hat is made with mustard ponte knit, bought in 2014 from Girl Charlee.

  The cardigan is made using the same mustard ponte. I started with Peekaboo Pattern Shop's Play Date V-Neck shirt in size 6 months and modified it. (This is not a pattern I recommend. I just used it because I already had it.) I deepened the neckline just a tiny bit, created a front opening, cropped it, and added a slight overlap to the front. I also left off the sleeve cuffs, and hemmed the sleeves at 1", which made them just the right length for Foof.

  I made facing pieces for the neckline and front opening, and mitered the connection to the hem:

  I sewed the facing down with a scalloped stitch and purple thread on my sewing machine:

  The scallop goes all the way around, so it adds some detail to the back too.

  I would have preferred to fold the raw edge of the facing under, but my machine was already balking at the seams, so I just left it. It's not pretty, but at least it won't fray.

  The sleeves are also hemmed with the scallop stitch:

  I added a purple KAM snap for the closure... it's not the right shade of purple, but it's closer than anything else I had.

  This cardigan turned out just like I hoped it would, and I'm pretty happy with the mitered corners! =)

  The diaper cover is made using Dana's free pattern in the 0-3 month size. This was my first time using this pattern, and I will definitely be using it again. It looked huge while I was sewing it but all the elastic shrank it down to just the right size!

  I finished the raw edge of the legs with a lettuce-edge hem instead of folding them under, and shirred the openings with elastic thread to make the cute ruffles:

  I used slightly wider elastic at the waist than called for, but kept the casing the same size because I was using knit with 4-way stretch.

  Speaking of which, this knit is also from Girl Charlee (are you seeing a pattern here?)- this coral, and also bought in 2014.

  The dress started out as Brindille and Twig's basic bodysuit pattern in size 0-3 months. (I don't recommend this pattern either.) I added width to the sleeves to create a puff sleeve, cropped the bodysuit to just above Foof's waist, then added a waistband and a circle skirt.

  I bound the neckline with some more of that coral knit and the same scalloped stitch I used on the cardigan.

  The sleeves are lettuce-edged and shirred:

  The hem is also lettuce-edged. =)

  The knit for this dress was, yet again, from Girl Charlee in 2014 (but sadly no longer available)... I bought some of this to send Call Ajaire when I participated in Challenge Create and loved it so much that I bought more to make a shirt for myself, but never got around to sewing it. (I still have enough fabric if I decide to actually do that at some point.)

  I really love how everything turned out, and I think all the pieces look darling on Foof!

  Of course, it helps that she's ridiculously photogenic. ;-)

  So much so that I have almost 40 photos of her wearing this outfit after deleting as many as I could bear to.

  But I'll try to keep the photos of her to an acceptable level in this post. ;-)

  She'd probably prefer that I posted them all:

  I'm linking this up to Project Run and Play for the Signature Style week, because this outfit includes a whole lot of my signatures!

  Lettuce edging, dresses with circle skirts, shirring, knit, pattern modification, and puffed sleeves... all things I love!

  Oh, I guess she has had enough with the photos!

  There she goes! ;-)

  Thanks for stopping by,

Snowflake Outfit: Accessories

  This is the final post of the snowflake outfit... all the pieces I didn't include in another post! ;-)

  First, the hat. This was super-simple... just two felt circles with a hole cut from one, and some glitter waistband elastic. Oh, and a tulle pom-pom. =) The hole is very slightly larger than the circumference of Booper's head, and the whole circle has a radius 2 inches larger than that, plus seam allowances.

  I sewed the circle and 'doughnut' together along the outer edge, and turned them right side out. I sewed the elastic, which I cut to fit around Booper's head, into a loop and top-stitched the seam allowance down on both sides, then zig-zagged it on, one edge of it overlapping the right side of the hole's edge. The pom-pom was made using an approximately 2" by width of fabric strip of tulle and a pom-pom maker (which, though completely unnecessary, makes the process much faster).

  Next,the muff! Also super-simple... this is a rectangle, sewn the same way as an infinity scarf would be, but with different proportions. I don't know the measurements because I didn't measure... I just used my hands to guess at the size.

  I used a curly faux-fur from Hobby Lobby... I tried to cut it properly, just through the backing, not cutting any of the fur, but this particularly fur is pretty stretchy and a little bit slippery, so I ended up using a rotary cutter in order to get a straight edge. The curliness hides the cut portions pretty well, but it did leave shiny, soft, strands everywhere!

  The boots were a gift from my husband's grandma.

  I painted the backdrop... I looked at a bunch of snowy photos first to get an idea of what I wanted to do then started adding a lot of white paint to my grey backdrop paper. The paper isn't really ideal for this... it wrinkles easily and is extremely absorbent. It was kind of like trying to paint on a wad of paper towels.

  Then I added rough trees, and was trying to paint the snow on them and it was looking pretty awful when my husband came home. He watched for a few minutes and then showed me a way to paint it that worked much better! I added pale blue for the shadows in the snow, and a slightly greyed version of the same blue for darker shadows, and dry-brushed white across the 'sky' for a blustery look. It's not a very realistic painting, and you'd probably never guess that I spent hours on it (it's just so big and the brushes I have are not!) but it was pretty close to what I wanted for these photos!

  I put cushions in a few spots on the floor, covered with white fabric and a layer of batting, for snowdrifts:

  Then I strung white pom-poms and a few small paper snowflakes from invisible thread, which I taped to a piece of white foam-core board. Then the hardest part of all, trying to hang that contraption from the ceiling! I was standing on a tippy rolling chair, trying desperately to push a thumbtack into the ceiling while holding up two separate loops of string to keep the board balanced and utterly failing. The thumbtacks just would NOT go in! I even tried hammering them, but they only bent, and I finally flopped down on the ground and declared, 'I give up!' But I'm annoyingly stubborn and no matter how many times I say I'm going to quit I usually just can't. So I brought out the finish nails, and pounded some into the ceiling, and bent them to make hooks. Then I tied on the strings, added the empty board, and taped all of the invisible thread pieces back on (after spending quite some time untangling them). It would have been much easier to just tape the strings of pom-poms to the ceiling. And they aren't even noticeable in the photos! But at least they gave Booper something to play with!

  So there you have it, the most detailed outfit I've ever made. =)

  I'll be back in the (hopefully) near future with an outfit I made for Foof. =)

Thanks for stopping by,