Camo kids

The big kid recently put in a request for some camouflage fabric cargo pants. he doesn't ask for much, and only seems to grow upwards, so any sewing is always worth the effort.

He's wearing cargo pants from two years ago cut off and hemmed to shorts, so there's plenty of wear in one garment. Ok, I'm onto it...

Camouflage fabric is not something I usually shop for (trust me, if there was any chance this inner-urban city kid could be mistaken for someone who shoots things, these pants would NOT have happened!). The only place I could find any that was offering pandemic appropriate click and collect was Spotlight. It's described as "novelty print drill". So yeah, weird, chemical smelling painted fabric, but it fitted the purpose.

Only after I'd cut them out did he tell me the pocket was too small for his phone and asked for it to be deeper. I'd already cut something else from the leftovers, so the leftover-leftovers were small and the pocket couldn't be recut, but was extended by about two inches with a nifty diagonal addition.

The pattern is the Oliver + S Field Trip Cargo Pants (his all-time favourite) in size 12 (largest size) with 2" extra length at upper thigh and 3" extra length at the hem. The next pair of cargo pants will certainly need to be a different pattern. :(

The little kid was watching with interest and wanted a camo fabric garment of her own. 

We'd recently been talking about re-making the Hopscotch skirt, with its cute cargo-esque pockets, so that seemed the obvious choice.

Also a size 12, although this is a pattern that would be very easy to add width and length to, and keep using for some time to come.

It's the little folded pockets that look like noodle boxes that make this skirt pattern something extra...

And I figured it would both suit the fabric and styling, and save me the trouble of buttons and buttonholes, if I used snaps for the front placket. Just a few minutes with some antique brass press studs and the bench top snap setter and it was done.

She went on to make her own scrunchie out of the very teeniest leftover-lefotver fabric, but I've been remiss and not photogrpahed that.

(if the brown long sleeved tee looks familiar, it was my Metro tee from last year, that proved it's pure wool-ness by failing to survive the washing machine. Damn. I'd loved that top. Anyway, now she does too)

Grade 6 Graduation

Today was the "graduation" day for P's grade 6 class. I'm yet to see or hear much about it, as we weren't able to attend in person, and I was working when the live video feed went up. But I do know what he wore, cause I made it...

The dress code was "smart casual" and he didn't really know what that meant.  We talked about whether he wanted to wear a suit - some kids did, or a button up shirt - he thought he might. But eventually he decided he wanted a t-shirt with a collar and his all time favourite cargo pants.

I was running low on fabrics suitable for pants, so I hit up the Brunswick stores and picked up this blue drill for just a few dollars. It's a cotton/synthetic (judging from the weird smell when ironed) and is sturdy but also lightweight enough to be summer long pants.

Then came the fabrics for the top which were picked from the stash. The pattern is the Oliver + S Parachute Polo shirt. It's a great pattern for a polo shirt using a woven fabric for the placket and collar. The only thing to note is that the interfacing on the back of the placket would be visible if it were worn wide open. I usually peel it back off to the edge of the placket after construction. I should just remember to cut a thinner strip.

The cotton for the placket and collar is a cute Zonen09 fabric from years ago that I purchased from Maaidesign and made this shirt.

I'd just seen Kylie and the Machine's new Sweary Sewist labels and P and I bought a pack from FibreSmith and agreed that we'd sneak a couple into his outfit.

He approved f the "I didn't fuck it up" label in the polo as it applied to both my sewing and his 7 years of primary school!

I did make him promise not to show anyone, but I'm not sure how well that worked out. The label that I put on the outside was this "Quality Shit" one, slipped into the pocket of his cargoes:

The Oliver + S Field Trip cargo pants are his all time favourite pants. I've just cut the bottoms off the two pairs that I made back here (and here), and turned them into shorts.

This pair are a size up from those (size 12) with 1" extra length mid thigh, and another 1&1/2" length at the hem. That pretty much puts us at the end of the pattern sizing. I'm not sure what's more alarming for me: his finishing primary school or his outgrowing the Oliver + S pattern sizing

Details:
Patterns: Oliver + S parachute Polo and Field trip cargo pants
Size: Shirt: Size 12 with 1" extra sleeve length beyond the short sleeve line
Pants: Size 12 with 1" length added mis thigh and 1&1/2" extra length at the ankle hem
Fabrics: Grey cotton lycra, Cotton lawn for collar, interfacing and buttons all from stash. Mystery synthetic/cotton drill from one of the shops on the east side of Sydney Rd

Field Trips, Hippos and comfy cushions

I can not bear to leave something unfinished, or even worse, in a state where it had technically defeated me.

Those terrible Ottobre pants had to be rectified. But before I did. I enjoyed some sewing with the same fabric and therefore the same sewing thread.... A lovely pair of Oliver + S Field Trip Cargo pants

These were the exact same size 10 with size 12 length that I had made back here. The fabric is essentially the same too, being a different colourway of the identical mystery $4/m drill from Eliza's.

There's a fair bit of topstitching and work involved in these pants but their definitely worth it. They look so cool!

The cargo pockets are awesome....

Mostly I just love the fit. relaxed, but not baggy. They pull on like easy wearing track pants but look that bit more put together. Yet there's nothing stuffy and serious-trouser-y about them

So then, with these successfully sewn and being worn, there was nothing for it but to dive back in to those Ottobre pants. I unpicked the belt loops and removed the waistband from 80% or more of the waist edge.

I threw a 1/2" dart at the centre back and at each side seam, essentially reducing the waist by 3" circumference. I took that much out of the waistband at the centre back, then reattached it to the pants.

Thankfully the inverted waist stay didn't need adjusting, it just got eased back onto the reduced waist circumference before the waistband went back on.

It still irks me that the full weight of the pants is hanging on the tacks where the belt loops hold the waist facing down, but at least the waist band doesn't now stick out like late term maternity pants.

The smiling welt pockets are stupidly cute, and I'm glad to have rescued them into a wearable pair of pants. I'll never sew this exact pattern again, but I might steal the pocket idea and put them on a nicer pattern, like the Field Trip Cargo Pants.

This year, at school, P's class have been invited to bring in a chair cushion to make their classroom chairs more comfortable and personalised. Well, it just so happened that I'd been trying to learn to crochet properly and read a pattern. In doing so, I'd made a square of double and treble crochet and thought it would make a perfect cushion cover panel.

I didn't bother lining the cushion, but sewed some navy cotton to back the crochet panel, then added a navy cotton envelope closure at the back.

Spot the crochet stitch error! I can't unsee it, but it was part of learning and now I realise that soldiering on and leaving mistakes will bug me. They say imperfections are the mark of handmade, but I think I'd rather unpick and correct them straight away.

Having the navy cotton in the stash, and using the snap press for the closure meant it was barely an hour's work to cut and sew the whole cushion (he chose grey snaps, I could have matched the navy too :) ). I even ended up having the right sized cushion insert in the stash - a sign that I surely have too much craft stuff stashed away, right?!

I've been really taken with crochet now that i think I've worked it out. I'm excited to show you some of the things I've  made since this cushion front.

Meanwhile, this one will go off to school tomorrow and hopefully it will be used for sitting on, and not for whacking his mates.

Field Trip Raglans

Along with new trousers, P was in need of some long sleeved Ts for winter.

If you've read even one blog post about sewing for this kid you'll know it's all about sleeve length :) That's certainly the first thing that is outgrown with every long sleeved t-shirt. I should just shorten last year's winter tops to make next year's summer Ts - mental note to self.

These T-shirts are the Field Trip Raglan T in size 10, traced off when I had the pattern out to make the pants. If I remember rightly I added about 2" of extra sleeve length, but I should make the note to myself that this pattern does not run as short in the sleeves as the School Bus t-shirt. I can easily add about 3-4" to that one!

Both fabrics were lovely gifts from Sarah  (@fabrictragic) who had received them through an error in ordering and was allowed to keep them. They weren't her thing and she was intending to take them along to the Fabric ReStash Melbourne. When she heard I wasn't coming she pulled these couple of fabrics (and another) aside for me. She picked right as they're perfect for my kind of kid sewing. P loves them!

Both fabrics are merino wool blends. This blue one is a kind of double knit with a thin blue merino knit backed onto a slightly ribbed white weave knit.

I decided to use the reverse side of the fabric for the pocket and neckband. Then I thought it might be fun to give it a distressed edge look. The pocket is cut without the seam allowances and while the top edge is finished the other edges are just stitched on with a twin needle and left raw.

It took a bit of thinking to work out how to do the neckband and not have the lumpy seam inside the folded neckband. The neckband was sewn into a loop and then attached to the top, right sides together with only one of the neckbands raw edges sewn with the overlocker. Then the seam allowances were pressed away from the neckband and the neckband folded to the outside to cover the seam. This was then twin needle stitched in place.

It's a fun look and is no more fiddly than a regular overlock then twin needle stitch.

The orange fabric is more of an athletic knit. It came from the same store and is also a merino wool blend. The reverse side of this one has a very fine loop back finish. Similar to  loop back terry but with much tinier and closer together loops. I think it's very much designed for sportswear. I suspect it will be hard wearing, nice and warm and easy to spot in a crowd - that is to say, perfect for dressing a 10 year old boy!

No pocket or tricky finishes for this one, but the hems and neckband have a bit of rust brown topstitching.

I'm a big fan of raglan t-shirts as they're so easy to sew together. Quick and simple and well fitting and made with free fabric. Can't beat that.

Finishing up with a blurry photo out-take inspired by having watched the World Cup and seeing the defensive wall in a penalty shoot out:

Field Trip Cargo Pants

The second pair of pants I made for the kid with the cold ankles are the Oliver + S Field Trip Cargo pants.

It's been years since I made these pants for him. I use the raglan T-shirt from this pattern all the time, but I've only made him the pants twice before and once for his sister.

I consulted with him about the pattern and then went ahead and ignored his request to not put the cargo pockets on the side. He was good natured about it and we've agreed that the pattern can be a base for some school pants without cargo pockets another day.

The pockets are just really fun. They're constructed with sort of bellows at the edges so they really are as three dimensional as they look in these pictures. It had been a few years and I couldn't help myself but make them again.

Of course they add a fair bit of work to some already quite involved pants. The front is three panels with nice darts at the knee and lots of edgestitched and topstitched seams.

The back has two parts to the leg and regular patch pockets. The waistband is finished with a facing and belt loops and there's an easy to sew faux fly.

I made the size 10 with size 12 length. I only adjusted the length below the crotch seam so the rise and waist height is still that of the size 10. It was a bit confusing to get all the leg panel pieces the right length but luckily everything lined up. They're suitably long and could possibly do with the cuff being turned up once.

Mostly they are long because they're sitting a bit low on his waist. The main pitfall of sewing after dark (lack of sleep notwithstanding) is that I end up guessing at waistband elastic length. He tells me these are a bit loose. Thankfully not so loose that I'm compelled to unpick the casing and change anything. (thanks kid)

The fabric is a heavy duty something (poly/cotton maybe) that I picked up at Eliza's Fabrics for $3/metre. I intended to use it to muslin pants for me or Flipper but it looked perfect for these cargo pants. It's quite wide, so I suspect these are only about $4.50 worth of pants. Although double that figure for the amount of thread that gets used!

Details:
Pattern: Oliver + S Field Trip Cargo Pants
Size: 10 width, 12 length
Fabric: mystery poly/cotton home dec weight 
Notions: thread, elastic, button (for decoration)

NB: It turns out Blogger had some technical bug with commenting when EU privacy laws changed. I have finally found the solution to being notified that comments have been made and are awaiting approval, but sadly all comments now seem to come from a no-reply@blogger address so replying directly to you is getting harder. I'll keep working on it.... or change hosting services.....
Shelley xx

Birthdays mean stencilled t-shirts, right?!

So I guess I've created my own making tradition where the boy gets a stencilled t-shirt with his current favourite "thing" for his birthday. But this year the mid-June birthday crept up on me and I had so much else to do. But jump forward to a week after his birthday and I found time to make him a t-shirt just before his party with all his friends.

And this year's "thing"? The fidget spinner of course. These little, cheaply machined, but perfectly balanced, pieces of plastic that allow kids who are minimally engaged with listening to you to express that by constantly fidgeting with something while you talk to them. Anyway, grumpy old lady rant aside they are the current fad and seemed a fun and easy t-shirt stencil to make.

I found an image via an online search that showed a fidget spinner at an angle that I liked and used that to cut the basic stencil. The different coloured sections and the "steel" grey bits were done with stencil cutting, then all the dark grey highlights on the black background were freehand painted on at the end.

The T-shirt is the Oliver + S School Bus T-shirt with the customary crazy amount of extra sleeve length. From memory it's a size 8 t-shirt PLUS another 10cm of sleeve length. Seriously! Here's the camera phone photo I snapped to remind myself of how much extra sleeve length this kid needs:

I liked the idea of a bit of fidget spinner style colour blocking with sleeves and neckband and had all these primary coloured knits in the stash - well maybe I had to buy more red, but that will always be useful for school uniform tops so it doesn't count as new fabric. :)

In a quiet moment at work I propositioned my boss about making a cake for P for his party. She can bake, I can't, and she's been happy to do my kids birthday cakes in the past. We decided on a fidget spinner cake and started looking online for inspiration. Well there were lots of fidget spinner cakes and we found some that claimed to "really spin". But they were just cakes mounted on Lazy Susan boards and we weren't impressed.

A real fidget spinner cake should have the centre section stationary while the outer part of the cake spins. We needed a cake board with a central hole. It must have been a quiet day rather than just a quiet moment 'cause from that point on I found myself in phone contact with a woodwork supplies shop on the other side of town ordering a lazy susan bearing system to be delivered...

I then bought two cake boards from the local party supplies shop and got out the compass, ruler and pencil. Can you feel an overengineered project coming on? I sure could. Exciting huh?!

The size of the central hole was, of course, dictated by the bearing plates central hole and the shape of the outer was drawn to ensure that the metal parts of the bearing plates would be covered.

I hadn't thought through the "how on earth will I cut this" part and assumed that hardware stores could do jigsaw cutting to order - they don't. Luckily a local furniture restoration guy who repaired and recovered our couch was willing and able to help.

Then it was just a matter of covering the top board with aluminium foil and attaching each board to the bearings. I'd planned to screw them but Flipper wielded the hot glue gun he'd given me for my birthday (who says romance is dead) and assembled the stand.

Now that we've finished with it I fully intend to replace the aluminum foil, re-glue it and sell the thing on Ebay! I expect it might do well :)

Anyway, Gabby produced the perfect cake, consisting of three different mud cakes and a cleverly iced and concealed tin for the central section.

Voila, we had a real spinning fidget spinner cake.

So then a couple of weeks later it was Gabby's little boys fourth birthday and I figured another stencilled t-shirt was in order. What was his thing? Turned out he is a big LEGO Batman fan. That seemed like a great idea for a detailed stencil:

It's the same oatmeal merle cotton lycra for the body as P's top. This time the pattern is the Oliver + S Field Trip Raglan Tee and a straight size 4. Turns out he's a pretty big four year old and while the t-shirt is fine in width it's barely long enough in the body and will only be a one season t-shirt.


Pity 'cause I'm kinda proud of my LEGO Batman stencil. One day I really should do a screenprinting workshop so I can use the stencils more than once! These are freezer paper stencils and I do it the laborious, but thoroughly enjoiyable way, by handcutting the stencil.

Then each piece is replaced and ironed into position before painting. These kind of one colour stencils are slow to cut but then really quick to paint. The results are pretty cool!

A round up of previous stencils and note son freezer paper and paints can be found here: Stencil blog post link

If you want to over-engineer a cake stand you're on your own but know this: You're my kind of person and I salute you!

Snow play time!

Back at the start of June we found ourselves with a free weekend, which is a rarity, and it happened to be the opening of the "snow season".... So we went to the snow, or at least what there was of it.

Northern hemispere blog readers might find this hilarious, but we had a great time tobagganing on the swimming pool sized patch of man made snow. At least we did until midday when it had turned into the consistency of a 7-Eleven slushie, and parents were seen dragging their kids down the tobogganing slope.

While we might not have serious winter snow falls I was still going to make sure the kids were warm and comfy for their snow play. So, I hit up the fabric stash for the cuts of merino jersey I always buy when it's on sale at The Fabric Store.

P got leggings and a long sleeved t-shirt made form an olive green merino jersey I'd previously used here, and an almost-co-ordinating stripe used for his own jumper here, and some electric blue leftovers that date way, way back. The sleeve piecing was due to fabric shortage.

Patterns are Oliver + S Field Trip Raglan T-shirt and Playtime leggings. Both size 8 but lengthened by virtue of adding cuffs.

I didn't make any notes of measurements. Neither did I bother with stripe matching. Nor did I care at all about the construction techniques. These were banged out fast on the overlocker in order to do the job and make the deadline.

And then A got exactly the same. Size 6, I think. Also entirely leftover fabrics: Leafy brown dress here, pink deer skivvy here and cuffs from another of my skivvies in the earlier post link.

We hired snow suits, snow boots and a toboggan each for the kids and kitted them out in some super warm alpaca socks from Creswick Wool Mills. Perfectly toasty warm and dry for playing in the snow.

Neither of them had gloves, and since the bike commutes to school are getting pretty nippy on the fingers I decided to knock out a couple more pairs of mittens.

The pattern is from Little Things To Sew. I used some of the amazing double sided bonded, windproof fleece that I'd bought for school vests and only used once before, here. It's fun to be able to swap the fabric sides for red on blue, or blue on red.

Each pair of mittens was lined by creating another pair of mittens from the scraps of merino jersey. Then, instead of an external casing for the elastic I sewed a channel of both inner and outer mitten, threaded the elastic in, then closed the channel. The wrist edge of the glove is then finished with quilting cotton bias binding.

Here's the lining mittens pulled out to show. The jersey is so stretchy compared to the windproof fleece that the lining mittens are probably a bit big and wrinkly. I'd also enlarge the thumb piece if I was doing this again as that seems to be the smallest part, especially when doubled up.

I did point out to the kids that the mittens would not be waterproof, but of course they dragged their hands in the snow and got them soaking wet, then complained. Still, now that they're clean and dry, they're in steady use for the commute to school.

...and the thermals? Well they're turning out to be both kids preferred pajamas. Makes sense as the bedrooms in our house are about as cold as that snowfield was!

Which brings me to that inversely proportional law of enthusiasm about a sewing project. You know, the more you care for something, the less they like it. Well, it turns out the most useful things are those that sit right in the middle of the graph. No-one is overly enthusiastic: they're not that exciting to make; they're not what you're going to choose to wear to the school disco. But gee if they're not the most useful clothes of all.

For me, I was just delighted to be able to dig out my old gear and use that all over again. But you can see I did have my matching olive-green merino skivvy underneath.