Purple Check

 I did it! I made a for-me version of the pieced checkerboard sweatshirt I just made for the kiddo.

Orange Check

 The siren song of the Walmart mill end precuts enticed me into getting two yards of vivid orange knit, with the idea I'd use it to make something for the kiddo.  What would that be?  Enh, I'd figure it out.

And here we are.

Klax!

The kiddo is a big fan of somewhat obscure older games, and a bigger fan of art for those games rendered in dubious style.

I had cut out pieces for a sweatshirt for him in November, and did not want to make another plain gray garment for him, so I asked him what graphic he wanted for the front.  I figured I'd make another freezer paper stencil, whatever it was.

Time passed and I asked if he'd chosen an image yet; he had not.  This repeated a few times, until I got an all caps email, subject line AWESOME, text PUT THIS ON THE SHIRT

So I opened the email and was confronted with...this

He likes Klax a lot, so I wasn't surprised he chose a graphic related to it...but...that it was this, and not the simple "highly stylized hand held up vaguely like the letter K" graphics that are more common...yeah.  I wasn't going to do this with freezer paper stencils.

Granted, I was willing to try, but I knew it wouldn't go well.  However!  I have a hobby friend who has access to direct transfer film printing and set me up with a professionally printed image fused to black synthetic knit.

Now...I hurried a bit in my eagerness to get the graphic sewn to the front piece.  But!  I did get it centered, so that's something my experience has improved over the years, and then I sewed the shirt together in no time

Cool Splat Sweatshirt

Here's another project made (mostly) with fabric gleaned from the last trip to the craft thrift store.

This one's for the kiddo!

Blue GuGuu

 The kiddo was bored at a school in-person testing day (he's still doing remote school, so he doesn't have many chances to be bored at school) and drew a very sarcastic picture of Puyo Puyo Carbuncle.  I thought the drawing was fantastic so recently copied it onto freezer paper to make a stencil...which ended up not sticking well to this Walmart mill-end precut synthetic fabric, so my copy ended up with Issues.  I did consider adding more decoration to obscure it, but decided not to over-complicate things.

I turned to the Puyo Nexus Wiki to reference how to write the various forms of "goo" that Carbuncle says, drew the hiragana really fast, and made another freezer paper stencil...which I tried tacking on with masking tape.  The masking tape stuck fine to the slick back of the freezer paper, but not to the fabric, so I ended up holding the paper down with various paint pots.  I did a base layer of white paint for both, and used fabric medium, and still made a mess.  The kiddo thinks it's funny, and that's all that matters.

Carbuncle Gonk Split

 I forget how I was introduced to the concept of a split shirt--I think it may have been a snarky Discord post, with the first examples being AliExpress offerings where the graphics were very obviously printed after the front fabrics were sewn together, and very obviously misaligned with the seam.

The idea of making a split shirt from scratch bubbled in my back brain for a while, and then I realized I had the perfect opportunity to make one for the kiddo from the fabric left after making the previous two pairs of pants--I had been able to eke out a short sleeve shirt for me from the remaining cloth after a previous pair of pants made from a 2 yard pre-cut, so I knew there wouldn't be enough left over to make a traditional sweatshirt from a single color (and the fabric is all wrong for short sleeves.)

So...maybe...this could be the opportunity to try a split shirt?

And then I cut out the pants and it seemed like there might possibly be enough left of each one to make two slim fit sweatshirts for a skinny kid

but

no.

I would not second guess myself and I would make that split shirt.

Which of course brought up the question of what graphics?

I decided this would not be the time to surprise the kiddo and asked for his ideas.  I specified that I'd rather not do memes, because, when he is over a meme, he is over it, and I do love him but I don't really enjoy making things that he won't even look at once he no longer finds them funny. (Shrek shirt, I'm so sorry you weren't appreciated longer.)  So, yeah, I wasn't willing to do anything related to Better Call Saul (which no-one in this household has ever watched.  He just likes the memes.)

Outside memes, he does like his mildly obscure video game characters.  He emailed me images of his chosen two: Puyo Puyo Carbuncle and Lego Star Wars Gonk Droid.  I made freezer paper stencils and sewed everything together and presented him with this

Ties Dyes

 No, I didn't do the tie dying--I used tie dyed shirt parts that were in the things the friend brought from the relative's stash (thanks!)  There were several tie dyed shirts that had areas cut out, probably interesting graphics to use for other projects, leaving 90% of a (seemingly) usable shirt, so I decided to combine things back into a single loud shirt for the kiddo.

 

A Calm Shirt for the Kiddo

I found a few useful-looking pieces of cloth in the Walmart mill end precuts last weekend.  I did not need any more cloth.  But.  They were one piece of black and white stripe knit and two pieces of french terry, one black and one a sort of...sagey muted mint green color.  My tendency to go for loud prints on sturdy cottons plus the Walmart mill end precut section's tendency to present mostly pure polyester means I don't have a lot of plain knits, so I went ahead and got them. (yes, one is striped and not plain, this is not about that.)  

I had wanted to make another sweatshirt for the kiddo, just because.  So I got KwikSew 1650 again

 it goes up to kid size 14, but is a 1980s pattern, so it's a very generous kid size 14.  I didn't measure the kiddo to see what size he'd technically need, because things like t-shirts and sweatshirts have a wide range of "acceptable" in terms of fit.

I used the ribbing of view A and the larger shoulder inset of view B and ended up with this

They're not pajamas if they have pockets, right? right?

The kiddo has a dentist appointment soon.  Like...tomorrow.  And the only pair of pants he has that fits is this pair of sweatpants of dubious style I made for him a month ago.  Which is what he wore to the dentist appointment last week. (That was the regular check up. He has some baby teeth that should have fallen out a while ago, so he's going back to get those taken care of.)  I have suddenly gotten self-conscious and absolutely can't have him wear the Same Weird Pants to the dentist again. (especially since the rest of his outfit was the coordinating cat print stew shirt and the hoodie jacket made from the same fabric as most of the pants.  So.  It was A Look.)

Yesterday I grabbed Kwik•Sew 1650 and some strangely dense, but relatively muted, thrift store woven yardage (may or may not include synthetic fibers), with the intent to sew the pants very quickly today.  Which, I did, but a lot of the sewing happened during the very concerning events of the day.  But, dentist appointments go on, and there was no way I was going to a store to buy pants that fit him, so I sewed while history was being made (derogatory)

Iron it?  Why would I do that?

I'm sure it'll be fine once it comes out of the dryer.

Birb Shirt

 It is a fundamental truth that I will never again assemble anything with quite the same chaos as the stew shirt.

But it also a fundamental truth that the drawer in which I keep cuts of knits intended for doll use is very very crowded.  So.  I decided I would again assemble a patchwork of knits and use Kwik•Sew 1650 to make another sweatshirt for the kiddo.

The nature of the cloth curation for potential doll use meant that there was a clear coherence in the color palette, which I figured would be a mark against this project in the kiddo's eyes, but I guess he still perceived it as chaotic enough

Plus, y'know...birds

Blues Stripes

 Another fast Quik•Sew 1650 sweatshirt, nominally View A but I accidentally cut the length needed for View B and decided to go with that.

 and of course the rest wasn't so straightforward, because it's me

 

The Cat's Sweatpants

 ...which probably will be used as pajamas.  Anyway.  In the continuing effort to both use up remnants in the knits stash and to make clothes for the growing tween Child, I, for the first time, used the pants part of Kwik•Sew 1650 and the green knit left over from the last green hoodie I made for him...which was just a bit short of what was needed, so I called in a bit of that Halloween cat print interlock (turned 90° off grain) last seen in the horrible stew shirt and here we are

Stew Shirt

 Many years ago, I had a 1960s "party idea" book that my friends and I enjoyed because it was mostly, to late 1990s eyes, really terrible.  The idea that I liked the most was called a stew--you'd get every holiday decoration you had and put them all out at once and combine the refreshment and activity ideas of all the holidays as well.

Not being a party kind of person, I never got anywhere near throwing such a party, but this shirt I just made for the kiddo...well...

you can maybe see why I was thinking of that party idea.

Multiplaid

Many of the pieces of fabric that the person brought from the relative's destash over the summer (thanks again!) are very loud and very out of date, and both of those aspects in a way that appeals to my sarcastichild.

So, today I used KwikSew 1650

I don't think I mentioned in the last post that the moto jacket pattern was the first KwikSew pattern I'd used that was printed this century?  It was weird, using a KwikSew pattern that was printed on something lighter than copy paper and had 5/8" seam allowances.  KS 1650 here is from 1987 (which the pattern envelope renders in Roman numerals) and is on relatively stiff paper with tiny seam allowances, which I still feel is what a Kwik Sew pattern should be.

I made view A, omitting the shoulder details (unlike last time) and here we are

Checkered/Past/Sweatshirt

My kid is sarcastic.  It's nature and nurture and a concentrated effort on his part. (He's also ten, so there's not much subtlety to his sarcasm, but I'm sure it'll develop.)  So when I spotted a very probably authentic later 1980s/early 1990s print jersey knit in the thrift store, I knew he'd like something made from it--and I'd already thrifted Kwik•Sew 1650, a kids' sweats pattern from 1987, so there was no need to wonder what pattern to use.

I chose the shirt from view A simply because view B just looks too fussy.  I did consider using the shoulder contrasts from view B, as well as considered omitting the shoulder contrasts completely.

I ended up going with "only do the contrasts on the front and omit them on the back despite what the pattern says" (which is what whoever owned the pattern before had apparently done, too.)  I also chose not to add the eyelet vents, because my eyelet setting skills are not...good. (Except for micro eyelets, thanks to a generous person who passed on their micro eyelet hand crimper to me...I really should remember to use that thing for doll clothes again...)