Sewing for my boys...

...makes me happy!

WARNING - you are about to enter a very long post about my recent sewing projects with lots of photos and boring details. Partly this is because I am too lazy to repeat myself over in my flickr sewing groups where I share my creations with other sewing enthusiasts. If you have arrived from flickr - welcome to my blog! For those family members more interested in your grandson's latest tricks - you may return again in a few days.

So earlier this year I set myself the challenge of trying not to buy new clothes for the kids when I could make them myself instead. (In case you are wondering this is less about taking the moral high ground in terms of consuming less and more about indulging my passion for sewing/creating and trying to improve my sewing skills. But it DOES feel good on the inside too I must admit...)


In terms of pants, for their winter wardrobe at least, I have just about got it covered. Making 4 pair in a row of the same pattern is certainly good for honing those sewing skills. If you look closely you'll see they aren't perfect, but I'm doing much less unpicking and making way fewer irreversible boo boos than I used to. Practise really does make (almost) perfect. It's the Oliver+ S Sandbox Pants pattern by the way. Size 18 to 24 months for H and size 4 for D.

So what have we here? Below you can see the pants I made for Little H. He's been wearing the beige cords for a few weeks now without any shoddy workmanship showing up! The stripy ones are new this week and being lined (and toasty warm) I think will get a lot of wear. It was my first attempt at fully lining an item of clothing and not anywhere near as tricky as anticipated.

Here's the lining, on the left -soft green fleecy fabric from the pile mum gave me the other day. Thanks mum. H stomped through puddles wearing these the other day and when I took them off before getting into the car they were still dry on the inside. Me thinks I may be lining more pants with fleece in the future. On the right is a back view, obviously. A quick run down of fabrics - Beige cord from Spotlight. Drawstring and pocket lining is stripy beige and white fabric from a fat quarter, also Spotlight. The other pair are made from stripey brown cotton from the Salvo's and fleece from my mum. The brown canvas for the pockets is from kelanifabric.com.au


Below are the ones I made for Little D.


The pair on the left are made with the same beige coduroy as H's. These have been seeing plenty of action and again, they're holding up fine! (I don't know why it is such a surprise that homemade clothing should actually function as well as store bought clothing...but it gives me a buzz to see them surviving!)




These were even snazzy enough for D to wear to a double Christening we had last weekend. Thanks to Granny Kim's collared dress shirts which she gave the kids last year - we pulled off our perfect Sunday Best! A task not to be scoffed at by this daggy family whose mummy dresses her boy in socks and sandals...


Notice they're a bit baggy on my slim little guy? Well...I am so pleased with myself. For the blue pair I adjusted the pattern to make them slimmer. I've never made an adjustment to a pattern before and I didn't know if simply reducing the width of the front and back leg pieces would work. But it did! How cool is that? Made from more corduroy from spotlight but this time a very thick cord which feels really velvety and warm.


The pockets are the reverse side of the corduroy. Lined with an aqua-ish coloured thin corduroy. There's a lot of corduroy around these parts it seems.


D wore these today and loved them. He told me so when we had our morning coffee/iced Chocolate fix. I think the skinny jeans look is good on D - finally the kid has a pair of pants that are tailor fitted. By me! Whoo hoo.



Phew. There you have it. 4 pairs of pants for 4 busy legs to get around in this winter. I'm not the worlds fastest sewer - it's taken me about 3 weeks to complete them - but damn it was satisfying!