Pirate of the Playground

A while back I posted about the "Pirate Girl" outfit I made for Miss G - she's all about being adventurous and brave and pirates pretty much fit the bill for that. And because Mr. T is so close in age to her, he usually wants to do whatever she does. So when I bought the pirate girl iron-on from Bunte Fabrics before it closed, I also bought a pirate boy and promised T that he could have a "Pirate Boy" outfit. I made the pants in August, not long before Aonghus was born. The shirt got finished in September and I figured I ought to blog them now before I forget to document them!

First up, the pants. I found this super cute medium-weight striped twill at JoAnn's a couple of years ago. At the time I'd thought of doing some cropped summer overalls for T. but I didn't get around to it. Then this year when I was planning his summer SWAP, I decided to make these part of it - sort of. They didn't really go with the general color scheme but he always has a blue or red t-shirt of some kind, so they'd fit into his wardrobe without necessarily needing the pirate shirt. The pants are from Ottobre 2/2005 and they are #23. I chose this pattern because the magazine actually showed the pants made up in a stripe fabric and it immediately reminded me of the twill that I already had. I wasn't sure about adding the knee patches, but decided to do it and used some dark denim from my stash. I used it for the faux pocket-flaps on the back, too. The pocket lining is a navy cotton with white stars. I used red topstitching thread for these pants so that it would pop against the navy knee patches. And although the pattern calls for rivets at the knees like commercially-made jeans have, I don't know where to find those locally or online, so I just did bar tacks at the corners.

The length of the pants makes them a perfect transition garment, for those early fall days when it starts out cooler but warms up enough by afternoon for the kids to want shorts. The elastic waist and faux-fly make them easy to put on and take off, which is nice when you're in a hurry to get into your bathing suit! This pattern is easy to make up but has enough details to make it more than just basic shorts. I'm definitely using it again in the summer.

The pirate boy shirt is Imke from the SCKL book. This version uses the straight-cut sleeve and the rounded, sporty hood. Gwyneth's has the pointy hood with the tassel. I used a red and white stripe cotton-lycra knit for the hood and lower sleeves and a medium weight navy cotton solid. It may have some lycra in it but I got it as a remnant so I don't recall. I didn't have enough of the stripe to do 2-layer sleeves, so these are single-layer sleeves made to look like 2-layer ones.

 On the right sleeve we have the skull and crossbones iron-on and pirate kid ribbon from Banberry Place; the left sleeve features a double ribbon trim, with blue and red star ribbon from Farbenmix on top of a navy grosgrain ribbon with red pick-stitching. Embellished, but not too girly.

Sleeve detail - right.

Sleeve detail - left.

As I said before, I made this shirt because I had the iron-on pirate boy. It looked great the first time T. wore the shirt, but then it lost a foot! Apparently the glue wasn't fully activated. Anyway, here's the look of the shirt-front, minus a pirate foot:

I'm trying to figure out a way to add a new foot that doesn't look too weird, so I'll post an update if/when I get to that.

Boy oh boy!

I seem to have been remiss in blogging the many things I made for my son this fall/winter. So. Much. Stuff. So let's jump in.

Starting off with the pants:

This is, unfortunately, a pair of jeans that Mr. T rapidly outgrew. These are the "Rock Me" baby jeans from the 3/2009 issue of Ottobre, made in a really cool mottled grey and tan denim, with accents of khaki and white star print. The back pockets are embellished with Farbenmix knights ribbon, for a bit of pizzazz. The denim came from fabric.com and the ribbon came from etsy. I have to say that while this pattern is cute, it doesn't leave much room at all for growing. Had I known that I probably would have chosen something different. Alas, it's too late now. Maybe I'll have another boy and get some more use out of these. As it is, I had him wear them until they started to look ridiculously short before I put them in storage. I love how the characters on the ribbon look like the drawings from the book "The Princess Knight".


Next up, sweat pants or "soft pants", as my son likes to call them. As in,"Mommy, you make me soft pants???" My husband is afraid T. will grow up to wear track suits like the guys from the Sopranos, but right now he's all about being cozy and I'm all about the pants being easy to get on and off.



These are made from the same pattern, City Mouse sweatpants from the 4/2011 issue of Ottobre. I had traced a 92 but realized that he'd grown and wasn't going to be able to wear them very long, so I decided to trace up a size. This was a bit awkward, since the pattern only went up to a 92. I used a method from Teri's blog, Mermaids and it worked really well. I plan to use this for other items that I need to size up 1 size. Anyway, the brown pants are brown stretch French terry from Sewzanne's, with striped ribbing from the Ottobre shop on etsy. A very good deal, since you buy a meter but then can divide it up and get different colors. I got orange and brown, as well as orange and linden green and orange and light blue. The second pair is from a really heavy-weight non-stretch cotton sweatshirt knit that I got at JoAnn's. I also got the maroon ribbing there. The drawstrings for both pairs is cotton rib knit that I had in my stash. The third pair (pictured at the top) is the same navy but I had to piece the legs in order to have enough fabric. The green ribbing is also from JoAnn's.

Next up, shirts but I'll do that in a separate post.

Insa and Redondo for Gwyn

She calls this her "Spring Skirt".

No clever title this time, just the facts. These are 2 skirts I made for Gwyneth a while back and hadn't blogged yet. The Insa skirt is from Sewing Clothes Kids Love, although I confess I already had the pattern and just hadn't used it yet. I'd made one for Maeve last year and she loved it and had planned to do one for Gwyn but just hadn't gotten around to it. Obviously, I didn't use the same fabrics, although I did use a polka dot for Gwyn's underskirt just like I did with Maeve's. And both of those fabrics came from Banberry Place - Gwyn's is the aqua poplin with spring-green dots. The top layer is an awesome ebay find - the famous Oilily suitcase fabric! This stuff is so soft. It really feels like your favorite sheets or shirt that have been washed a million times. I used the same polka dot poplin for the waistband because I felt that introducing another fabric with the busyness of the suitcase fabric would have been too much.



Embellishing is always fun, since I can dig into my stash and put all kinds of things to use and this skirt was no exception. I inherited a ton of ric-rac and other trims from my grandmother and my mom's godmother and I like to use them because they tend to be 100% cotton, as opposed to the polyester kind that is so prevalent now. I made use of a vintage yellow medium ric-rac at the hem of the overskirt and stitched a green dotted ribbon on top of that. I say medium but it's actually more of a large size, I guess. On the underskirt we have new (polyester) rose ric-rac in a smaller size with a wonderful floral woven ribbon I had sitting in my stash for a few years, waiting for the right project. It has all the colors in the skirt, with the exception of the red in the overskirt, and the floral shapes kind of echo the floral shapes in the overskirt fabric. To top it off I found 2 flower appliqués - one large aqua and one small yellow, which I sewed near the underskirt hem. Lastly, I made a cute little tag with my favorite Farbenmix ribbon, which has a flower that perfectly matches the red small flowers in the overskirt.


The Redondo skirt was originally made for Valentine's Day. These are just quilting cottons - I forget what the name of the main print is, "Love Letters" or something like that and I don't remember the manufacturer, although it might be a Kaufman print. Don't quote me on it. The flounces are made from everyone's favorite Michael Miller Ta-dot in pink with red dots.


I love how the skirt looks like a big flower when you spread it out this way. I love this pattern and really want to use it more, since this was only the second time I'd done it. It was also the first time I did the flounces, as opposed to the inserted ruffle. I decided to be brave and use Nancy's method for the flounces, using the inner curve of the skirt gore as the shape for the flounce and it turned out really well. There are a few places where it puckered when I was sewing and didn't see it until after I was totally finished but I chalk that up to being in a hurry to finish it for Valentine's Day, which was the whole reason I made it. I actually sewed this in 2 days, though I only actually worked on it an hour or so each night. The hems for the flounces and for the skirt itself were all made with a rolled hem on my serger, using wooly nylon in the loopers to ensure that the raw edges were completely covered. You can do a rolled hem without the wooly nylon but I never think it looks as good, no matter how much I shorten the stitch length. You can see a close-up of the rolled edge here. Gwyn wore this on Valentine's Day with a red shirt that had a sparkly pink heart and the words "Daddy's Girl" on it. Lucky for me she didn't stop wanting to wear it after Valentine's Day and when it got too warm for long sleeves she replaced that shirt with a pink one that says "Love Bug" and has a ladybug on it. I love that her go-to clothes are almost always things I've made.

More catching up

Okay, I said I would do a little recap of what I've sewn in the past 6 months. First, some things for the boy:

The boy has a slight obsession with robots. He often goes around pretending to be one, sometimes wearing a wire trash basket on his head. I'm not sure why he does that, so don't ask. All I know is, that's his robot disguise. Anyway, I decided that he needed a robot shirt and since I had a cool robot print knit stashed away it was a good time to use it. This is the #18 Hippotamus Hoppulainen shirt from the 6/2010 issue of Ottobre. I made it in a 92 since he's been growing fast. I shortened the sleeves on this, since I wanted him to be able to wear it in warmer weather. The olive interlock matches the green in the robot print, but I felt like it needed something else because it seemed like such an endless swath of green. So I drew a robot and used a reinforced straight stitch to embroider it. I decided to use buttons for the eyes, and sewed them on with red thread to mimic an electronic eye. Tallon loves it.

The second birthday gift I made for T. was this super cape. The girls were tired of him using their Snow White cape as a super cape, so it was a good gift. This is from the 4/2004 issue of Ottobre, made in a size 92. I made a small change to it in that I made a velcro closure instead of ties, since he can't tie things yet. He wears this frequently and everywhere. The shield and T appliqué were done freehand and applied with a satin stitch. I chose red cotton poplin for the cape with royal blue satin for the lining and the shield. My only gripe with this choice is that the satin of the shield seems to want to get fuzz all over the poplin.

It's wearing pretty well despite the fuzz and the frequency of wearing. I haven't washed it yet, so we'll see how it holds up.

The third mommymade birthday gift was robot jammies. I used the same robot knit and olive green interlock with the red ribbing. The pattern is the #34 Night Owl pajama top and the #35 Stripy Legs pajama bottoms from the 6/2009 issue of Ottobre. The pattern calls for a coverstitch to be used on both the top and bottoms but I don't have one on my serger. Instead, I used a honeycomb stitch on my regular machine and it turned out pretty comparable. I also used it for the hem of the shirt:



He loved all of his presents - especially the cape, of course. I have 2 pairs of shorts that I made him this summer, too and I'll blog about those another time. Currently I'm planning his fall/winter wardrobe and I'm really excited about it. I want to blog about it as I go along - we'll see if that happens!