There is a lot of mustard coming up on the blog at the moment because I cut a whole selection of things for the whole family from this fabric! Lottie gets another turn today with a Poppy and Jazz Maple cardigan, which is one of the new to me patterns on my make 9 plans.
This maple cardigan was cut and planned to coordinate with Lottie’s footed trousers and a second hand ready-to-wear vest that we were given. I’ve been enjoying looking through the things that we have been given and planning one or two extras to coordinate with some of my favourites.
It is such a simple pattern to sew. If you have made other t-shirts or jumpers the construction should be pretty familiar. The main difference is that the waistband and neckband need to open rather than being sewn into a circle so you need to align the ends with the front edge.
It’s currently a roomy fit with a quite bit of space to grow. She is on the smaller end of the size bracket still so hopefully she will get lots of wear out of it before she grows too much!
The pattern has you interface the front band where the snaps are fitted, so these feel much more secure than ones I have done in the past. I chose these aqua blue prym ones as a bit of a contrast.
Lottie seems to like it. She is getting bigger and smilier all the time! I think it will coordinate with a lot of her clothes at the moment so that is great.
I made this cute little romper ages ago to coincide with the #sewtogetherforsummer2019 challenge, but have been thwarted when it came to taking proper pictures by a bout of chicken pox and lots of cold weather. Now a heatwave and our holiday have coincided perfectly and given me a chance to revisit it for some modelled pictures!
This is the Raspberry Romper from Poppy and Jazz and I made a size 12-18 months. Toby is over 12 months now (where has the time gone!) but does tend to be a bit smaller than the clothing size guides so this is still a little big. I was able to use the offcuts from my Spoonflower Alder dress to cut the straps and the bib, but there was no way that I was going to get those massive leg pieces out of the odd shaped bits that I had left, so I rummaged in my stash and found this old blue duvet cover as a nice bit of contrast.
It was a super easy sew, and baby clothes always seem to come together especially quickly. I definitely appreciate the snaps at the crotch for easy nappy changes, and chose plain white prym ones for simplicity.
I’m not sure if the legs look a bit too massive still. I’m tempted to try to slim them down a little, or maybe even take them off completely and redraft something slimmer based on some of Toby’s other dungarees. They look very cute in all the promotional pictures and on some of the younger babies that I’ve seen online, but I’m not sure they are the most practical for a very active walking and crawling toddler!
Even with that in mind, they are a cute look. I had suitable coordinating buttons in my button jars for the straps. The straps are a little long at the moment though, so I might put an extra set of buttons on as another option.
Even though I wasn’t able to get proper pictures at the time, I did manage to get a couple of unmodeled ones and actually won one of the prizes from the #sewtogetherforsummer challenge! I’m still choosing which of the Sew Over It patterns I will use as my prize- if you have any particular favorites let me know!
The last few months I have been off to a flying start with my make 9 plans, so I decided to keep that going by sewing up this Honeydew Hoodie for Toby. He is growing so fast at the moment and has already grown out of the Dandelion Dungarees I made him before Christmas so it seemed like a good time to make him something new.
Like the dungarees, this is designed to be a reversible pattern so I needed to choose two co-ordinating fabrics in a similar weight. It seemed like a good time to use up the remnants from my Oslo cardigan, and I chose this grey, black and red camper van print for the contrast. Both have the same grey and black colourway so I thought that they would look cute peaking out from the cuffs and hood.
I decided to go for the 12-18 month size to give some growing room. Toby often seems to have shorter arms than things are designed for, but because the cuffs are designed to be turned back to show the reverse I thought that he could just grow into them when he is ready.
In the midst of the creation of my Taylor Trench, I fancied a quick win, which is why I paused it to work on this for a few days. It was very quick and easy. Just 4 pattern pieces so both quick to cut and simple to sew.
I’m still not certain that my snap setting is perfect. They sometimes feel a bit delicate, so I think I need to reinforce the jersey a little more in future. These star snaps are pretty cool though. They just have plain circles on the reverse to go with the printed fabric side.
Doesn’t he look cute. He is growing so fast, and moving quickly too which did make our photo shoot a bit tricky!
This gets me to between a third and halfway through my make 9, so pretty good for the first 4 months of the year. See my Oslo Cardigan and Virginia Leggings for my other completed projects, and I’m part way through sewing up another at the moment.
I love the new year for having a chance to reflect on where you have come from, and where you hope to get to. Last year I set myself some sewing and blogging related goals so I thought I would see how I measured up.
Sewing
I created myself a make 9 list last January, though it actually started with just 5 patterns on it and room for some wildcard pattern additions. This did really work for me because it gave me room to review during the year and adapt my planning as I went along. By the end of the year, I did have 9 patterns on my list and I completed 8 of them.
The only one which went unfinished was my Taylor Trench (top left) which was definitely the most ambitious project, and while I did lots of the prep work sourcing fabric and notions, I knew long before the end of the year that it wasn’t going to get finished (or even cut out)! I am planning on adding it to my plans for this year, and I think Rebecca Page will be hosting a sew-along so hopefully that will help me to get going on it.
The other patterns were all pretty successful. Continuing clockwise we have- Brindle and Twig baby clothes, Sew Over It Lily, Poppy and Jazz Dandelion Dungarees, Megan Nielson Amber, Grainline Archer, Seamwork Paxton, Sew Over It Penny and a Seamwork Oslo. I like that they represent a range of pattern companies and levels of complexity so I’m aiming for a similar balance again this year.
I also made plans to reduce my sewing consumption. I think it is very tempting to buy more fabric and patterns than are likely to get made, especially as my sewing time has reduced over the last year. I think I did manage to keep both in check, though I definitely bought more in the second part of the year than the first. I think in total I only bought 6 patterns, most of which were for baby clothes and the Penny dress. I think it proves that they were more carefully selected patterns because 4 have already been made up, and I am definitely planning on using the others shortly.
Blogging
My aim was to keep to a similar blogging schedule, posting every Sunday with occasional extras in between. This was pretty successful too, though there was a month or so when Toby was very tiny that I had a break. I have the same asperation this year, and already have a few blog posts in the bank part written so hopefully I will get a bit ahead! Thank you to all my lovely readers who have made it such a fun and worthwhile year.
2019 Plans- Make 9
I have a new make 9 planned out, though there might be a bit of change throughout the year again. Provisionally it looks like this….
First up is that Taylor Trench. I want to get is cut out asap so that I don’t have any more excuses to procrastinate.
Next is the Grainline Alder. I’ve made lots or Archers, and wanted to branch out so I had the Alder printed by Sprout patterns before they stopped trading. It seemed like a great way to save myself some time in the cutting out phase, and I’m hoping to be able to wear it with leggings and a t-shirt underneath, and on it’s own in the summer.
It only seems fair to make Matt something. I’ve made him lots of Metro tees in the last few years so I want to try out something new. This is the Eugene Henley from Seamwork and should be a fun quicker project to break up the more complex ones.
This first Seamwork Oslo was always intended to be a wearable muslin, but I never got to making any more. I want at least one more in my wardrobe and have some grey and black jersey ready to go.
A couple of years ago I made some Virginia Leggings, but they weren’t too successful. I have some grey and black jerseys ready to make some basic everyday pairs.
I made some Ginger jeans a couple of years ago, but they don’t fit my post baby body. I have some red stretch corduroy to make a new wearable muslin, and if it works out well I would like to make some in blue denim too.
I was given this gorgeous book– the fox the bear and the bunny for Christmas. It has some lovely playful clothes inside and I would like to make Toby a coat- possibly the bunny one before he is too old to object!
One of the patterns I bought last year was the Honeydew Hoodie. I haven’t got to make it yet, so I’m making it a priority this year. It should be another quicker make, and is super cute.
Finally, I’ve left myself a wildcard again to let me choose something during the year that takes my fancy. I’m sure there will be other projects too. I would really like to wear some jersey dresses again so it might have to be another amber dress if it’s while I’m still breastfeeding. I have suitable fabrics in my stash for lots of these, so I’m hoping to use those first before buying anything new.
This is my latest baby pattern attempt, the dandelion dungarees by Poppy and Jazz which is an offshoot of Sew Over It. I thought the promotional photos were all super cute, and I love dressing Toby in dungarees so this seemed like a great pattern choice.
The pattern is reversible so you get two looks in one which is lovely. I really like cuffing the ankles so that you can see the contrast fabric from the inside.
The instructions were really clear, and I think this would be quite a good first knit sewing project because the seams don’t actually need to stretch and get sewn with an ordinary straight stitch. The only tricky part is ‘bagging out’ the legs, but the instructions do explain pretty well.
I did make things rather trickier by hacking these dungarees to have poppers between the legs. It does make it much easier to change nappies, but I can see why they didn’t include it in the instructions because it did make construction considerably more awkward. I’m really pleased with them though, and even chose a few different colours of snaps to close them with.
The straps also have two sets of snaps so that I can change the length as he grows.
I’m definitely going to have to make some more of these dungarees. I’ve been eyeing up all the cute printed jerseys in my stash and working out colour combinations. Even with all the snap setting they were a pretty quick sew. Plus, they were another of my ‘wildcard’ entry make 9 patterns so I’m really onto a win there!
My sewing has definitely slowed down a bit since having a baby, but I do have some plans for the autumn. I need some more long sleeved tops, as does Matt so I’ve gone back to my favorite cotton spandex from Girl Charlee in Sage Green and Dusty Masala.
With regards to my make 9 plans its going pretty well and I’ve decided on a final couple of things to add as my wildcards. I’m going to sew the Poppy and JazzDandelion Dungarees for Toby (and if I get time a co-ordinating Honeydew Hoodie), and I could do with another wintery Archer shirt for which I have a perfect cream speckled brushed cotton from Fabworks last year. So my make 9 now looks like this:
6 made (some several times), 1 in progress, and 2 yet to start. I feel like that is not too bad. The Taylor Trench and Archer shirt are pretty involved makes, though I have made the Archer multiple times before. The dandelion dungarees should be super easy though. I have some cute Fabworks elephant fabric which might work.
If I get time, I could also do with another Oslo cardigan. The one that I made at the start of the year is in constant rotation, and I’ve been discovering that cardigans are much more convenient to breastfeed in than jumpers, and its getting too cold to be without layers.
If I get time, I could also do with another 
Naomi Sews 