Spring KCWC Days 1-4

Finally finished my first projects for KCWC, they've been mostly done since yesterday, but I just put the finishing touches on them tonight and attempted to take photos of them on my squiggly almost 2 year old... See photo evidence below!

So after seeing numerous cute version of this pattern, I finally bought it and made it!  The Sailboat top and pants are actually my first time working with an Oliver + S pattern, and I totally understand why people rave about them!  Very straightforward and cute!  The pants seemed complicated at first look, but the totally are not!

The only maybe tricker part is all the button holes that need to be made.  While I have pretty well figured out the buttonhole functions on my machine, I'm still not 100% happy with their appearance.  And you'll notice I went all crazy and sewed them both up in red thread!  Does it work? I think so!

I attempted to do some adjustments to the sizing for my skinny shortish kid, with some success.  I made the shirt in 12-18 month width with a 2T length (I dislike short shirts!) and it worked.

The pants were the 18-24 month size, but the 3T length (I'm expecting him to growth spurt soon, and in the meantime I like the idea of the pants not being cropped.  I figure by the summer they'll be shorter, which will be perfect! but for now they are just long enough to be ok in the still sometimes chilly weather up here.  I will need to take in the back elastic on the pants, but other than that, they fit pretty good!

And finally the fabric!  The pants accent fabric and the shirt fabric are from Sarah Jane's Children at Play collection.  I had only bought a 1/2 yard of the shirt fabric, not initially intending for this, but I was pretty proud of my myself for cutting the whole shirt out of it, with the exception of one of the bottom facings!  The pattern calls for a least a yard!  My mother would be proud, she's always been the master of cutting things out of the least amount of fabric!  Maybe it's her Dutchness, but it definitely rubbed of!

So what shall I make next for KCWC?  I need to go figure that out!

Soul Blossom Mariposa Tee

After some distractions such as emergency roof repairs and planned foundation repairs, I finally was able to finish my second top for Made by Rae's Spring Top Sew-along.

I've been wanting to sew more with knits, and the Mariposa Tee by Meg of Sew Liberated seemed a good fit.  A cute way to add some splash of pattern and colour!  When I bought the pattern I scoured internet sewing land for other examples, but only one appeared, which is too bad as it is a neat pattern. (I'll add though that as of yesterday another version totally showed up in Rae's Spring Top Sewing-along pool, finally, yay!)

Anyway, back to my top.  It's made from a piece of organic t-shirt knit I bought on sale last summer.  The accents fabrics are 2 different Amy Butler prints from her Soul Blossoms collection.  Originally used to make Christmas gifts.  I put some serious effort into centring the tulip flower on the back piece seem below as well as the front side pieces, worth it I think!

I made the 0-2 size for my skinny self, but cut the length to the largest size as I suspected it would have been to short with out it (I have a pretty long torso)  And i think the sizing works.  It's definitely meant to be a floaty unfitted top, which will be be super nice and cool for the summer!

So while the pattern isn't hard per-se, I found it pretty finicky.  It was somewhat tricky to get all the little accent pieces, pressed nicely and lined up correctly when sewing.  The inside of the front piece was particularly tricky as one could imagine.  But it worked out, it's just isn't what I would consider a quick sew.

Uh oh! please excuse the visible thread in the above photo, but I thought I'd show you a detail and all the top stitching, which isn't completly bad :)  Also, I didn't have the steam a seam stuff the pattern tells you to use to but the two pieces of the sleeve together, I just top stitched them together which seemed to work fine.

One last awkward pose to end the post!  And now I now I think I might start back on prepping to sew some new things for little M!  Elsie Marley's spring KCWC is just around the corner!