Procrastinated green

Well, the making of this was not procrastinated, but the posting of it was...although...maybe "forgotten about for a while" is more accurate than "procrastinated"...

Anyway.

We've established that my go-to clothing items to make for the kiddo, in terms of "things he will wear," are jackets, yes?  So, hey, guess what I made for him...

And, yes, it's green.

Blue Cat

So after I made this jacket, the kiddo thought it was great fun to pat the fluffy sleeves.  I had a bit of the blue left over, so I asked if he'd like me to make something for him from it.

He said a jacket.

I said there wasn't enough for that.

Then he said a blanket.

I said there definitely wasn't enough for that, although maybe there was enough for a scarf?  He was not impressed with that idea.

Eventually I thought of making a plush of some kind and asked if he's like a blue kitty.  He did indeed like that idea.

I initially thought I'd use the old teddy bear pattern, copied ages ago from a 1980s craft book, that I've been known to make the ears pointy and add a tail, hey presto it's a kitty.  It's not very large, though, and I'd still have lots (relatively) of the cloth left.

Then I remembered the Nunodoll cat pattern that I'd enlarged to 150% a few years ago...  I had to get creative and shorten some bits and ignore the nap on other bits, but I made it work...more or less...

I improvised the "eyes" and nose, and, yes, that nose and the insides of the ears are made from the pink velour used for the same jacket.

This pattern looks a bit daunting--at least for me, who is most definitely not inclined to making plush animals--but it's well-drafted and goes together easily.  I had to fold a bit of length out of the neck/shoulders area (and corresponding part of the chest piece) and didn't make the fold transition as smooth as it could've been, so there's an awkward angle in the back that I didn't notice until I was in the stuffing stage, so I decided it didn't bother me enough to fix (even though it would have been very easy to fix...)

 

The ears are hand stitched--I've tried, in past iterations, sewing them into the head seams.  The result is a bit too dog-like, so it was worth it to do the hand stitching.  I also machine sew a bit of the head to the neck, just so I don't have to hand stitch all the way around, because I am me.

It's a bit large for that actual pet collar, but I did print it at 150%, so that's not surprising.

 Chip wants you to know he was in the sun first.

Roll over the new year

I'm making an effort to actually, y'know, sew from my stash (this isn't a new year's resolution--I don't do those...partly because I still haven't broken the resolution I made going into 1987, which, made to annoy my cousins, was to not watch Top Gun.  So.)  I have another hoodie for the kiddo lined up to make, but I decided to do a ridiculous jacket for myself first.

At the end of November, I thrifted another grab bag of cloth.  It was mostly woven cotton quarter yards of various shapes, plus a bit of upholstery weight cloth and an abandoned baby blanket (probably) project that consisted of a square of pre-quilted brown sewn around the edges to a square of minky dot in...let's call it aqua.  (Sky, turquoise, robin's egg, or light teal are also possibilities.)  I picked apart the stitching and have been thinking about using the quilted brown in a coat for the kiddo (there's...there's not a lot of variety out there when it comes to sewing for boys, and he really likes jackets, anyway), but had no ideas for the minky dot.  I decided I should use it soon, somehow, just to get it out of the stash--bulky minky takes up lots of room, after all.

There definitely wasn't enough of it to use alone in a jacket, so I shuffled through the stash and ended up with some pink velour that was thrifted a while ago with, yes, no clear idea what would be done with it.  So!  Together they'd go.

But what about a pattern?  My initial idea was for something that would have the minky as the sleeves and also across the chest, and, while I do indeed have a pattern or two that do that, they were more complicated than I wanted for this project.  Raglan sleeves, though, I decided, would be just fine.

'course it turns out that the only raglan sleeve jacket pattern I have

does not do anything else I wanted.

However...the shirts in this same envelope...

Periwinkle and red

So I thrifted a few yards of a...sorta...dusty periwinkle heavy knit, and decided I'd use some of it to make a hoodie for the kiddo, once again using Burda 9672

(yes, I know, the separating-zipper view is not the hooded view.  Minor quibble.)

 The only separating zippers in the appropriate length I had were white, gray, and bright red.  I couldn't decide between the white or gray, so I showed all of the options to the kiddo and let him decide.

He chose the red zipper.

Well...then...

Huh.

I'm sure he would have had no problem with a purely periwinkle hoodie with a red zipper, but my brain demanded that something else be done so the red zipper would 'make sense'...somehow.

Ah, but, I had about a half yard of a red double jersey knit!  As to what I did with it...

Scrappy

I like making patchwork...but generally only in the spirit of "use up this cloth you already have and probably won't use any other way."  This does extend to the tub full of scraps left over from other projects, of course...but...since most of my 'other projects' are 'making doll clothes,' which can use some rather small bits anyway, my scraps can be...small.

This still doesn't keep me from filling up a 53 gallon storage tub.

OK, actually, no--this is the scrap tub after scrounging through it enough to assemble (most of) a (roughly) 37" x 47" panel, plus four more 10" square patches.  I put it all together with some vaguely-coordinating cloth I thrifted in the form of a roll end cut-off (just visible in the lower left of the tub photo.)

And it looks like this (57" x 67")

...yeah, yeah, I go into projects like this with the expectation that there won't be enough of anything to make good proper patchwork blocks, with traditional designs, so I just...start sewing' stuff together.  Then I realize I could get into the "doll cloth" dresser and pull out larger pieces left over from other projects, which means I probably could have made proper patchwork patches, but...too late, la la...

I have an old sheet to use for the backing, but no batting and no real inclination to get it all put together, so it's folded up and put in the top of the cloth closet with the other patchwork blanket tops I've made and also have no idea when or if they'll ever be finished...

Arachnoleopard Cheer

A few months ago (what?  longer than "a few"?  surely not...) I posted this picture

with the note that I would post more about it later, after I gave it to the person for whom I (surprise!) made it.

...which I did a few months ago...  And now I'm remembering to make a post about it--the year's not done yet.

Don't be so angry little bird

I've decided--once again--that it's maybe time to stop acquiring random cloth and patterns and to start actually making things (well...non-doll things.  I'm still always sewing for dolls, as my Flickr shows.)

So, of course, I start with a re-fashioning of a thing I made a year ago...  The kiddo likes big piles of blankets, which is something we have in common, and I go through phases where I'm happy to sew lots of blankets.  I decided I'd use his too-small Angry Birds and Bad Piggies t-shirts to make a little t-shirt quilt...only...yeah.  I rushed it, and not a thing was on grain, and I tried to force it to align with the backing cloth...and it didn't...no matter how much stitching I did through all layers...

I don't think I ever showed it here, so...taadaa:

...and looking relatively nonwonky thanks to the magic of photography.  The camera lies.

I presented it to him and he immediately forgot about it, so I eventually--quietly--removed it from his blanket stash.  I didn't know what I'd do with it, but the time I'd taken to make the patchwork seemed to make it worth saving.

Since he loves jackets as much as he loves blankets, I decided I'd see if I could squeeze a jacket out of it, once the backing was removed, and I chose this pattern

which is from 1977 (and which I acquired in that gigantic grab bag'o'patterns from the summer.)  The kiddo likes hoodies, so I went with view 2...well...more or less...