Baby Pants

Right now the baby is asleep, the house is clean, and I feel like I've been in possession of super powers for the past 2 days.  This afternoon two dear friends from my Stitch & Sew days came over for a visit. One of them is due to have her second boy in about a month, so I racked my brain over the weekend for what gift I could get for him. I wandered around the mall on Sunday, but nothing looked special enough. I finally decided that I'd have to make something.  I doubted I could get anything significant done by Tuesday afternoon. Still, I had to try.

Should I make a quilt or a blanket? A toy? Bibs? Burp cloths? ... I remembered I had a pattern for some adorable baby pants. I could make a whole set! So yesterday morning I dug out the pattern, copied it onto Swedish tracing pattern (the best stuff ever!) and after the Fredster's morning nap, we took a trip to the fabric store.  I washed and dried the fabric and managed to get it almost completely cut out by the end of his last nap.  After his bedtime, I went to work.  He fell asleep at 7pm and I was done by 10:30. Hurray!!

The pattern is from Purl Soho. It's so quick and easy! I used the overcast stitch on my machine to finish the seams, so they should hold up in the wash. The only difficult part was sewing the gusset, but with lots of pins, I didn't have any problems.

Storybook Burp Cloths and Bibs

This weekend I'm attending the baby shower of a friend from college. It's the first shower I've been invited to since becoming a mom, so I wanted to make something special and useful that wouldn't take too much time in the sewing room.  (I'm also playing the piano for a school musical this week, so I've only had a few nap times to spare.)  I decided to go with something that I use everyday, many time times a day: burp cloths.  I had a fat quarter bundle of 'Storybook' lying around. The soft blues and browns would work for a boy or girl, which is perfect, because this baby's going to be a surprise.

I lined the burp cloths with one-sided terry cloth. I've seen it called 'baby terry' or 'French terry'.  It's thick enough to absorb various consistencies of baby fluids, but thin enough to tuck a whole burp cloth (or two) into your pocket. I made the burp cloths about 10-inches by 16-inches—a much more practical size than the long skinny cloths I've seen in stores.

My son, Freddy, is a few months into eating solid foods, and we are going through a couple bibs every day.  So I decided to also make a set of matching bibs, using one of Freddy's bibs to make a pattern.  I traced his bib onto Swedish tracing paper —(which is seriously the best stuff for making or copying patterns, go buy a roll!)—and I added about a 1/4-inch seam. In retrospect, a 1/2-inch seam would have been better. It was difficult to make sure that I had securely closed the hole for turning when I did the top-stitching.

Instead of cutting the terry cloth out with the pattern piece, I just left it as a big rectangle. This saved me the hassle of wrestling with it through the machine.

I sewed 1/4-inch from the edge of the cotton (again, a 1/2-inch seam would have been better), and then trimmed away the terry.

A hammer is a necessary part of every sewing room, don't you know.

The finished gift: 6 burp cloths and 6 bibs. I used 6 fat quarters, ~1.5 yds of terry, and six size 15 snaps.

Freddy agreed to model one for me. :-)