It has been quite a while since I buckled down and worked on a batch of baby shoes. But I’m feeling inspired to make baby-ish things these days (gee, I wonder why?) and I really have been wanting to repopulate my shop a little.

I couldn’t help but pick a couple pairs to keep for myself. I have several more pairs of shoes in various stages of completion, and I am itching to buy some more cute prints.

Shop update

I finished sewing two pajama shirts for Gavin last night.

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The bad news:

I started them a full year ago, and he has long since outgrown them.

Sigh. At least the next kid can wear them, right?

Lately I have been sewing on my 1955 Singer 99K. It is a straight-stitch machine, so if I want buttonholes, I have to do them by hand. I made a 1940s-inspired skirt lately out of vintage fabric and buttons, so I thought the hand-stitched buttonholes would fit right in. They’re certainly not the most beautiful buttonholes I’ve ever seen, but they work and are mostly hidden by the big buttons anyway.

I’ve put together a photo tutorial on flickr, but I don’t have time to add captions until this evening.

Click here to watch the tutorial as a slide show.

Pattern: Kasia from BurdaStyle

Fabric: 36″ wide corduroy from my Baba

Buttons: 1″ buttons found behind the cabinets during my parents kitchen remodel (score!)

This is my giant bag of scraps from all of the sewing I’ve done since moving here (so about a year’s worth of scraps). Olga knows that anything in this bag is fair game for her to play with, sew, or snip, so she spends a great deal of time rummaging through it, and then begging me to make something for her. This week she wanted a kitty. She’s been talking about kitties for AGES, and we’ve even talked about getting a REAL kitty soon, but for now, a fuzzy scrappy kitty will do.

The pattern is from one of my favorite sewing sites, put together by a very talented Japanese lady (and translated rather strangely in parts, so some general sewing knowledge is required to decipher some of the instructions). This kitty is actually made from an odd-ball bath towel we’ve had for a while, and which I had already put in the give-away pile. We stuffed the body and head with scraps from the scrap bag.

Olga picked out a couple of buttons (thank goodness I haven’t packed my button jars yet!) and I added some whiskers using vintage six-cord (a very heavy weight thread). And there it is, a sparkling new friend that didn’t cost a dime to make.

It’s funny, but even though I don’t consider myself a very good housekeeper, I always accomplish so much more on a day that I get down to cleaning. I know that my Dad will get what I’m trying to say. It’s like my brain has to be organized and put away before I can be really productive, and organizing my surroundings is the only way to do it. Today, for example, I did two loads of laundry (Olga matches and puts away all of her and Gavin’s socks and underwear), all the dishes (Olga puts away the silverware), scrubbed all the gunk from around the sink (gunk seems to build up very fast in this climate), cleaned out the refrigerator (Gavin ate most of the cheese and tomatoes before I could put them away again), vacuumed the main areas of the house (both children run around squealing … very funny), made two loaves of bread with my cooking helpers (wheat yeast bread and banana quick bread), and even attempted to remove some stains from the carpet (unsuccessful, as of yet).

And then after breakfast ….

Just kidding, but actually I got all that done by three in the afternoon, and then I swilled down another cup of coffee and played for the rest of the afternoon. And by play, I mean I dug all of the sewing machines out of the closet to fiddle with them. My old Viking and my Singer embroidery machine have been in the closet since we moved here, because my sewing desk is only comfortably big enough for two machines, and really, I can’t sew on four machines at once anyway… In the back of my mind I remembered that there was something wrong with my Viking since the last time I took it in for service, and hauling it out of the closet revealed all — it is caked — CAKED — with grease. I don’t know what kind of “oil” the technician used on my machine, but he certainly gobbed enough of it on there to keep it from rusting… and enough to attract every particle of fiber in the county to stick to the gears. So this evening I cleaned it out, then ran it hard for a while to heat up the oil and get it flowing. Now it’s running great, and all that is left to do is to change the light bulb, which blinks on and off.

This machine is great. My mom bought it at a thrift store for around $20, if I recall right. It was my very first sewing machine, and I used it to make a LOT of stuff in high school, including the first shirt I ever made for Erik, back when he was only 15. It’s a Viking 4700, probably built in the 70s, if the color scheme is any indication (dark brown, tan, orange). It’s a machine that would make any do-it-yourself kind of person proud: it’s so easy to open up to get at the guts that I’ll probably never take it to the shop again. The body and innards are all metal, so unless it gets hit by a truck, I doubt I’ll ever have to worry about replacing any parts (except for that light bulb). And the best thing of all about this machine, is that it makes such beautiful, consistent stitches. Even my newer Viking, which is my every day machine, can’t quite match up to this one. Because it’s mechanical, and not digital, I can fine-tune stitch length all I want and not worry about presets. Really the only drawback I can think of is that it’s difficult to sew slowly, so I use the hand wheel a lot more with this machine…

Oh, sorry… you all must think I’ve completely lost it to be oozing over an old sewing machine, but the truth is that I fell in love with it again today while I was tinkering with it. I did see a close cousin, the model 4500 for sale, which is only a slightly scaled down version of my machine. If I needed another machine, I’d definitely snag it.

I remember so clearly sitting on my mother’s lap when I was a little girl, helping her sew. I’m sure I mostly just sat there getting my big head in the way, watching the needle form stitches, like Olga does now. It’s hard to believe it has been more than twenty years since then, but here I am now, with my own little girl who seems to love cloth and fiber as much as I do. I know that at four she doesn’t realize what a useful skill she’s learning–for her it is all lots of fun. I hope she always feels that way; I think so far we’re on the right path.

I used patterns from Ottobre magazine to make the outfit. The shirt is from the Spring 2006 (1/2006) issue, design #17, and the pants are from the Spring 2004 (1/2004) issue, design #16 (I used the waistband pattern piece from design #17).

I think this will be very comfortable for lounging around and playing while we’re still in that transitional weather period. All of the fabric is from my stash. The legs of the pants and front and back of the shirt are cotton velour which I bought right before Olga was born. The pants waistband, shirt sleeves, and neck band are pink ribbing from. . . somewhere. I can’t quite remember, but I know it is inherited stash.

The side front panels are cut from the last scraps of this delightful barnyard print. It is a lightweight cotton/polyester jersey from JoAnn Fabrics several years ago.

I only had small pieces of each of these fabrics, so I had to do some creative layout. I shortened the body of the shirt after I compared the pattern pieces to a shirt that fits her. If I decide she needs more length, I can always add a band of ribbing around the lower edge, like a sweatshirt would have.

I also shortened the pants a little bit, so they will be more like capris. Instead of the waistband called for in the pattern, I substituted the wastband from the skirt pattern (below). It looks really comfortable to me. I may have to make it a little smaller, but I’ll let Olga try it on first.

Olga was determined to strike a pose. She’s very happy with her new Summer-time jammies (although she now claims that this is a new outfit “not for sleeping, for tomorrow”), even though they are HUGE on her. Seriously. The top is wide enough to fit me! I’m going to add some elastic to the neck edge to snug it up a little bit. The good news is they’ll fit until she’s 12. Probably. The jammies went together pretty easily. I used my serger, mostly, but did the gathering and neck/arm hole finishing on my sewing machine. The lettuce edge was done with a 3-thread rolled edge on my serger, and it came out perfectly! The pattern called for lace, but this was easier (and softer). I also didn’t put elastic around the legs to turn these into bloomers. I didn’t have any narrow elastic, but mostly, I didn’t think it would be comfortable. I think pattern companies go a little bit overboard with elastic on kids clothes. Sure it’s cute, but cute at the expense of comfort is sort of dumb.

Overall results: happiness.

I’m going to reward myself by staying up late to sew. Olga found an pattern in my pattern box for girl’s pajamas, and requested a set out of some white ribbing I have on hand. The pattern is Butterick 6659. I’m making view C for summer (the sleeveless top and shorts).

This was a “used” pattern, found at a thrift store, and some of the pieces had been cut, but most of the scraps had been saved. I was able to tape the original back together, except for one piece which was lost, but I was able to make a pretty accurate guess on that piece. I never actually cut into my patterns. I trace off the size I need onto STP (Sweedish Tracing Paper), and leave the originals in tact, so that as my children grow insanely fast, I don’t have to kick myself for “ruining” the larger sizes.

I cut everything out a few days ago, so I just have to set up the serger tonight and whip it together.

She decided to make a toy bunny, so we picked out several different fabrics from my stash. She chose white, dark blue, and sage green flannel, and pink ribbing. (We ended up not using the blue.) Since this was a real sewing project, we got out the real sewing tools: heavy duty Gingher scissors, a sharp needle, and fabric marking pen. We used hand quilting thread, since it’s heavier weight and less likely to tangle.

Olga did all of the cutting herself, and as I held the fabric for her, she sewed around the edges with the needle. At first she needed both hands to manipulate the needle, but by the time she got to the ears she was able to work it with one hand, although she still needed a little bit of help to pull the needle all the way through the fabric.

When she finished the sewing, she used a disappearing fabric marker to draw the face, then I embroidered over it with floss she picked out. She wanted to be sure everybody knew that bunnies have belly buttons. In all, this was a pretty quick project. Olga worked on it for a little under an hour, and there was about 15 minutes of embroidery for me. Olga is so proud of her new bunny, and even more proud that she can sew “for real.”