19 Months Tomorrow, Wow!!

My little guy is getting so big!! Well, not really big, but he will be 19 months old tomorrow. I can't believe he has been here that long.

Here are a couple of pics that I snapped this week. He is about 23 lbs now, and a little over 30", definitely the smallest baby we have ever had! But, oh he has come a long way from 5 lbs!!



He is in a pair of fleecy shorties from hyena cart and a matching upcycled tee by momma! The cool part, it was a tee that belonged to my 8 yr old and now my 19 month old is sporting it happily!!

I will have a lot of baby upcycles next sunday available on my hyena cart!

Appliques! Love Them!

I have been sewing for little boys for about 6 years now and I have done an overabundance of applique over the years. Most of the time I opt to draw them out by hand and go around them manually with my sewing machine. Occasionally I go the other route and use the embroidery machine. I think how it turns out really depends on how experienced you are with them or how well the design was digitized if you are using an embroidery machine.

Last night I made Tristan another recycled tee from some of his brother and sister's old tees. The front of the tee has words all over, like Rock Lives and little green rock monsters with electric blue guitars and drums. The tee turned out cute, but I thought it needed matching pants.

I went with simple anti pill fleece for the pants, and the katrina soaker pattern made into longies for the pattern. Instead of plain black pants, I jazzed it up with a hand drawn applique. Super easy, you just draw the reverse image that you want onto heat and bond lite, fuse to the wrong side of the fabric scraps, cut them out and iron them down the way you would like onto your fabric. Make sure with fabrics that aren't pure cotton that you use a press towel so that you don't damage the synthetic material. I used scrap knits for my applique, so that I could straight stitch them without being afraid the edges would unravel. KNIT is my favorite thing to use for appliques. I just keep my scraps in a bag to save for future appliques.

I will have to post a tutorial for applique in the future. In the meantime, if you are doing applique, the most important thing to me is, a good stabilizer for underneath. I used a permanent stabilizer that is nice and soft. After I finished I just cut around the design. With each wash it will get a little softer.

Here is my baby boy in his new duds! Can you believe this guy will be 5 months old tomorrow? Where does time go?

Until tomorrow, happy sewing!

My Favorite Kind of Sewing!

The kids and I went throught their closets and did a little mini purge for the New Year. I had a nice stack of tees from the boys to bring down. Lots of canvases to create new tees for my ZooTZ shop on Etsy.

http://www.etsy.com/shop/ZooTZ

In the past I have only offered sizes 2 to 8, but now that I have a new test subject I decided to give one a try for Tristan. I love how it turned out and will definitely be adding infant tees to the shop! Hopefully I will be able to sew a little more in the coming weeks!


The front of Tristan's tee was made from one of Noah's tees, the sleeves from Skylar's tee and the back from a pair of knit pants that I had fashioned into shorts for Tristan's daddy. So he has a little bit of his sister, brother and daddy throw into the mix! Went perfect with a pair of jeans mommy picked up for $3! Not bad for a rockin' set!



My baby boy has his first cold, so his face is a little puffy in my pics. I had forgotten about the little koi set that I had made for him. I pulled it out the other day and it was almost too small. We managed to sneak a few pictures while he was happy.



And a few pictures of a custom gown that I did for an Etsy customer. I hope that she and her daughter will enjoy the set!

I hope you all have a terrific Sunday with your little ones!