When Life Gives you Lemons...

Make a diaper with it anyway!

Yesterday I decide to sew up the dino dudes diaper cut that I had purchased off of etsy. A very cute Michael Miller print. I was a little bummed when I received it(my fault totally) because I didn't realize I was buying a woven PUL. I like my pul a little stretchier. Anyhoo, I decided to cut it out anyway, carefully placing my pattern, paying attention to which dino was on the front and how the tabs would look. One of the colors matched my favorite microfleece, so I was even more excited, because it washes up so well and feels just heavenly(well I would imagine it does, it's not on my bum!).

Tristan was in a good mood, he was beside me in his bouncy seat just a playing and laughing. Start putting snaps across the front of my diaper, almost done with them, going well and what? could it be??? how did I??? Attach the snaps through all layers of the diaper???? Surely not! Oh, yes, that was exactly what I did.

No fear, no crying(not at this point), I just cut out another microfleece for the inside and decide this will be a night time diaper, very fluffy!

Sit down at the sewing machine, start sewing, everything is going beautifully, remember to leave a turning spot open, yep, check! We are singing Hello, Goodbye(Tristan's very favorite Beatles song!), we are both in a great mood, go to turn out the diaper and what? could it be?? how did I??? Sew the fleece to the wrong side! Making it impossible to turn out unless I want my beautiful Dino Dude pul on the inside of the diaper!!!!!

So, what do I do? What does every good seamstress do at this point? I cry! I throw a fit! I show my rear you know what!! I'm afraid I said things that no babe should here at this time in their little lives! It was bad. Yes, I am embarassed looking back.

Did I stop? Did I throw in the towel and walk away?? NOOOO! I got back onto my saddle(my sewing bench) and I decided to pull out some of the stitches, so I could get elastic into the diaper and serge it instead of turning it. Does this thrill me? Why no, because there is nothing more I detest when sewing diapers than to sew in elastic in the blind! I am NOT good at it, not one bit! And once again I threw a fit! But finally, after a few fits and crying jags, I did it! The elastic was in! Not even, mind you, but in, so that maybe it would contain poop!

Thankfully serging went well without any incident because by this point my little Tristan was tired of looking at me and hearing me cry!

So here it is. My diaper that almost wasn't, maybe wasn't meant to be, but just is! And wow can it hold some serious pee! No leaks either!!

Here is another diaper I made this morning. Not quite as exciting, but I did use the new Ottobre diaper pattern for it. Not sure that I like it, seems a little too fat in some places and not fat enough in other places. The outside is retro car PUL, with a hidden layer of cotton velour and the inside is microfleece. The soaker consists of 2 layers of bamboo fleece and topper of fleece, which when folded over give you 6 hefty layers. Tristan is sleeping now, so I will have to let you know how it goes. But judging by the thickness of his diapered bum it looked like it would hold pee for a week without needing a change(well not quite that long, but close)! We will see!

Happy Saturday!!

Organization 2011!

I USED to be very organized when it came to my sewing space. A place for everything and everything in it's place, yep, that was my motto when it came to my sewing studio! BUT, along came Tristan and I seemed to have derailed the organization train somewhere on the tracks! I hadn't thought about it really until another sewing mama had posted about her sewing space. I took one good look around me and realized WOW! where did my tidy little corner of sewing Heaven go to??

I am now determined to take the next couple of days and clean whenever I get the opportunity. I know I will feel so much better afterwards and my creativity always goes into overdrive with a clean studio! So here I go!!

Here are some before pictures to let you know how bad it is. YES, I realize it's probably not the worst sewing studio on the face of the Earth, but for me, it is really bad.

Here is outside of my sewing studio where the scrap bucket has spilled onto the floor in attempts to find great scraps for Tristan projects!

My cutting table, holds scraps that I have coveted for Tristan. Lots of ideas no time to sew them!

And this is a view into my sewing studio.

Here is the floor in front of the wall shelving, too much fleece here. Need to purge some. All of the bins on the floor, well those are supposed to be neatly organized and on top of the shelving unit. Which now has this pile of denims and cords that I have no place for.

This is my current projects rack, also the place where I keep the tees that I find to be recycled. You can see that it has spilled over onto my thread storage. The top shelf holds fabrics that need to be purged.

My chair, now full, no place to sit. This is supposed to be empty so when one of my kiddos needs to talk to me they have a place to sit!

What a mess! Hopefully the next time I post the mess will have dissappeared for good!

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!

Japanese Super Hero Raglan

Today's project was an easy one. I decided to sew up a matching raglan for the superhero beanie that I showed earlier this week. I traced the #1 papana raglan from the ottobre issue 4/2010 to see how I liked it. Super easy to sew up and all the seams matched up perfectly the first go around. Great pattern.

I'm not sure about the fit yet, little man decided he would nap for me today! Yeah! I think it will be great though based on Tristan's measurements. Going to change him after his nap and let him wear it when we pick his bubby up from school today.

ETA: I added some pictures after the tee was on little man. Great fit. Not a lot of room to grow though.

I think I will stay with the HTF Japanese fabric theme for now and go pull another fabric from the shelves. I'm thinking VW vans this go around!

I hope you are having a fabulous Thursday!

Robots for Tristan!

I promised myself that this would be the year to stop hoarding all of the hard to find prints and actually sew them up! What good is buying them if you don't ever use them?? They do make great eye candy on my shelves, but Tristan is so much cuter and will only be this young once! He turned 20 weeks today!

So yesterday I cut into my small piece of robot french terry from Japan. I have to admit that when I received this fabric, I was slightly dissappointed. What I thought was orange turned out to be kind of melon colored and the purple was a little much for me. So I decided to take away from those and used a beautiful turquoise velour for the main print and a green anti pill fleece for accents.

Now for the pattern, I chose 2 new ones that I had marked from Ottobre 3/2004, the autumn issue. IF I were closer to Finland, this is one of the times where I would have knocked on their door and said HELLO, did anyone test this patterN?????? I LOVE Ottobre, but this time they were way off the mark.

The pants are the sweatpants #3. I chose to go with sz 68, but wish I had stuck with a 62 instead. Tristan is right now about 17 lbs, but only about 24" in height. These were way wide, but the other measurements didn't seem too far off. I just trimmed the legs down some before putting them together. Went together fairly easy.

The sweater was #5 and can we say, I think it was meant to fit a really BIG kid! The width was WAY off, the length would have barely covered his tummy. So I kept the width, but added a big band at the bottom to bring the shirt in more. The sleeves I cut shorter, but still they are too long and must be rolled up.



I think I will sew the pants again, they turned out cute. I will just trim the pattern down some. The sweater tracing is going in the garbage. I wouldn't want to waste any fabric on this one again. For now, it's cute on. It would be great for those that need to layer clothing on their baby during the winter.


And here is a picture of my latest moon diaper. Robot pul, fleece hidden, suedecloth inner. Love these!

Beanies for Baby

I realized tonight after Tristan went to bed, that I had nothing new to write about sewing wise for the blog. The quickest functional thing that I know how to sew, and one of my boys' favorite things, is a beanie. I have made my 7 yr old Noah, so many beanies, I really have lost count of them all. He loves a beanie especially when the weather turns cold.

So I dug out my scrap bin and set to work cutting out a couple of beanies for Tristan. This is my own pattern, one that I have sold on etsy once upon a time. I made it up when I couldn't find a pattern, years ago for Noah when he was about 2 years old. Beanies from preemie size up to adult, my almost 17 yr old son loves them too! You can do the lip of the beanie to turn down, like I have done here or it can flip up too.

The first one I cut from some hard to find Japanese super hero fabric. I have some more of this and now that I see the beanie completed, Tristan must have a whole set made from it. Very cute! And the other beanie, made from a tiny scrap of my now non existent Batman and Robin knit, sewn with the serged golden yellow thread face up. Just to add some funk!

These are so easy to do and I had forgotten how much fun! Seriously both were cut out and sewn in less than 20 minutes. Hows that for instant satisfaction??

For now I have pics on the floor, it's late. Tristan is thankfully still sleeping so I have no model. And my coach is about to turn into a pumpkin, oh wait it's now past midnight, Cinderella must go to bed! Good night all, happy sewing!

Mosaic Moon Diapers, My Favorite!

I posted last night about mosaic moon diapers. I had never heard of the pattern until a mama over on sewingmamas had it up for sale. I googled it and it seemed like I should give it a go, so I bought it. Boy am I glad that I did. I think it is my favorite diaper pattern so far and very easy to put together. Here is the link for the pattern in case you want to give it a go.

http://hyenacart.com/prod_details.php?vid=9&id=56561

I did change up a few things to make it better fit my style of diapering. First off, I made the back tabs a little bit longer, my guy is a chunker in case you hadn't noticed! I kept the same width throughout the rise of the diaper, but cut my inner suedecloth more narrow to allow the fabric to roll in. And lastly I added snaps in the rise of the diaper.

The first one that I did was a fitted and requires a cover. I don't know why I continue to make these. I love the fit of this one, but I like to be able to put Tristan in normal baby clothes without a cover most of the time. But for my first one it turned out great and the fit was fabulous!

Then I did a few more, PUL for the outside layer, hidden layer of fleece and the inside suedecloth. I did lay in shaped soakers, the top layer matching suedecloth, then a few layers of velour and the bottom of fleece. They work great! I have had only 1 leak in the 2 weeks that we have worn them AND it was overnight, with Tristan setting a record breaker for us, 9 hours of straight uninterrupted sleep! Love that, didn't mind the leak!

Here are a couple of pics. Ending with my little chunker! He was extremely happy the day I took this picture! Can you believe my baby boy came into the world at 5 lb 5 oz and weighed 15 lb 12 oz at his 4 month checkup! What a difference a little time has made! What can I say I grow em big!


Hope your first day of 2011 was as great as mine was!