Our Small Human Being Sew-Along has come to an end (OK, technically it ended two weeks ago, but since your hosts all have small babies, let's overlook that, shall we?), and it's time to round up the final projects for Category 1: Baby Clothes! Cindy of Cation Designs will be rounding up Category 2: Baby Accessories and Clio of Clio & Phineas will be featuring the Category 3: For Parents projects.
We were impressed and inspired by what our participants made — especially since some of you had multiple small children running about, were tired and pregnant, and/or were working mamas to small babies.
I know I personally was so fired up by the sew-along I've kept the momentum going, and have really learned to work in tiny baby-catnap-sized time chunks — tracing a pattern here, sewing a few seams there, doing a little handsewing.
And on to the projects, in no particular special order. I do think I've captured everyone's clothes submissions here, but please let me know if I missed you, as we'd like to feature at least one piece from everyone. (Where I have used links instead of photos, it's due to photo permission issues, not because I didn't want to feature a piece).
The sweet
Lindsay (aka lindsaystitches on Instagram) made a sweet pair of harem pants style leggings for her baby girl due in July, using heart print knit leftover from another project:
Laurel (aka Dart & Gather) made this adorable appliquéd rabbit tee using scraps from old maternity clothes, as well as the Oliver + S layette set and coordinating hats I featured previously:
Lisette of What Would Nancy Drew Wear? made this fantastic rickrack-trimmed romper from a 1950s vintage pattern, Advance 6063:
Dina fought through her pregnancy nausea and exhaustion to make this adorable bear-eared jacket and pants (similar to our sew-along logo!):
Sew-Along co-hostess Clio made a sweet elephant print baby sleep gown for her little Taco baby with a convertible mitten cuff, and wrote up a tutorial for the cuff, too!
Brianne Ramirez made a little floral ruffled romper — oh goodness this is cute!
Finally, Flickr user a2assiramarah made a raglan tee with a hand drawn elephant and coordinating leggings for her second baby girl.
The cool
Which is not to say the sweet items aren't cool, but only that I needed to make some categories here, so... these are cool.
Emily Breck says she feels meh about these footed baby pants, but I think they are pretty awesome:
Masha at the Itinerant Seamstress blog made some awesome outfits for her fourth (not yet arrived) baby — I love her use of stripes!
The free Brindille and Twig raglan hoodie pattern was pretty popular for the sew-along. My friend Lee made two awesome versions—the red is my favorite, I love the striped hood lining:
Laurel made one too!
And I made a bicycle-print one, with matching bicycle fabric pants:
Elena of Randomly Happy loved her Grainline Hemlock Tee so much she made her little guy a mini version:
Ms. McCall of Brown Paper Patterns blog copied a ready-to-wear cardigan and added a hood to her cute striped version:
And Flickr user oes1 made several fantastic outfits using patterns from Ottobre magazine — I love the knee patches here especially!
The geeky
Given your hosts, how could there not be a large component of geek-tastic baby clothes made for the sew-along?
We are huge Miyazaki fans here at Polka Dot Overload headquarters, so I may actually have squealed out loud in excitement when I saw adorable Totoro costume that AJ at Confused Kitty Creations made for her 9-month-old baby (and a matching one for her 2.5-year-old) using an online tutorial. (Like me, she mostly sews late at night when the kids are in bed):
(I am definitely tempted to copy her with a set for my kids... but I know my daughter would far prefer to dress as Kiki from Kiki's Delivery Service.)
Becky of Sew and So blog guesstimated what size T-shirt her (not yet born) baby Jedi would fit into when the new Stars Wars movie comes out in December, and made this adorable colorblocked Star Wars quote top using scraps and freezer paper stencils:
Hannah of Making Rivendell in the Desert made a gorgeous LOTR-inspired baby eleven dress for her baby-to-be. Also: not only is she pregnant, she has three small children, so we were all in awe of her ability to find any time to sew at all. Here's how she did it:
With 3 kids under the age of 4, and being pretty pregnant with the baby that I'm actually making these things for (thus, needing sleep), I found with this sewalong how to get sewing time in: firstly, to sew in little chunks of time (15ish-25ish minutes) during their snack times or when they're in quiet play, the key being always being willing to walk away in a second when the kiddos were unhappy. This meant that I had less negative feelings about sewing, and the kids were happier, and I was happier (and less frustrated)... Also, exchanging my 1 hour or so after the kids go down that I used to spend on Pinterest/internet, for sewing time instead. I would have "sewing days" which were no internet days.
SHB Sew-Along host Cindy went into geeky baby sewing overdrive, and made her little Hobbit a ... Hobbit costume. To wear in front of a mini Bag End. While chewing on his Cindy-made teething One Ring. WOW.
Not to mention a slew of geek-tastic fabric marker decorated tees, including a Firefly "Blue Sun" logo tee:
Meanwhile, I made my little dude a way-too-big blockprinted Lego-inpsired onesie to coordinate with the Lego dress I made for his big sister:
Phew, I think I got at least one baby clothes project from everybody in here? Please let me know if I missed you and I'll edit the post.
Thanks so much for joining us, whether you sewed just a little baby bib or a whole pile of elaborate baby outfits!
There's a lot of great stuff here! And a lot I didn't see in the Flickr group, so thanks for sharing those so the rest of us could see them. :)
ReplyDeleteThe Lego onesie will not be too big for long. In three, two....outgrown!
ReplyDeleteOh my gosh, these are all so fun!
ReplyDeleteI am so impressed with what everyone made. This was such a fun sewalong, thank you for hosting!
ReplyDeleteThat Lego onesie is super adorable. My wife loves the bicycle one. We are expecting our first and we want to make sure that the clothes we get, will set the right tone of who we want our baby to be. The thing that confounds this effort is the fact that we aren't finding out the gender until the baby is born. Anyone have a great shirt design that works for any baby?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.kitsel.com/what-is-a-cool-baby-t-shirt/
That Lego onesie is super adorable. My wife loves the bicycle one. We are expecting our first and we want to make sure that the clothes we get, will set the right tone of who we want our baby to be. The thing that confounds this effort is the fact that we aren't finding out the gender until the baby is born. Anyone have a great shirt design that works for any baby?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.kitsel.com/what-is-a-cool-baby-t-shirt/
This is a great baby outfit! Have you ever considered having some labels for the outfit made? If so CBF Labels would be more then happy to give you a blogggers discount to have some custom clothing labels made for you. You can just inkier at https://www.cbflabel.com
ReplyDelete