Creativity | Sewing | Sewing for the boy

It’s nice to be appreciated

November 25, 2008

Boy clothes – they are a bit harder than girl clothes.  With girl clothes you have various lovely patterns for different kinds of tops and dresses, skirts, pants, gauchos, leggings, etc.  With boy clothes you have pants and shirts.  Not much variety there.  One pattern company I love for their boy clothes is Ottobre.  They are in the form of a catalog and you have to trace the patterns from an enclosed pattern sheet, which looks somewhat akin to the flight patterns of the entire USA.  Just a little confusing, but do-able.  Plus, for around $15 an issue you get lots of boy, girl and baby patterns so they are useable for quite a while and great when you have boys and girls.  Somehow two of my pattern books were recycled last year…after having them shipped from Finland since you can’t find them here.  I’m not naming names as to who did this, but you know who you are. 😉

Since I have one left – the SUMMER one, I tried to see what they had for their boy stuff.  One of the winter ones had these great pants for boys.  *elaborate sigh*  Since I’m just using fleece right now to make him some warm clothes, I used a t-shirt pattern with a curved raglan sleeve and just elongated the sleeve length to fit.  I drew the front pocket and pants pockets, which are lined pieces.  Boys need pockets to carry their treasures.  I used two different patterns for the pants.  The blue One has 4 pieces for both the fronts and the backs, and that seemed like overkill when they were all the same color.  You can’t really tell.  The black one has just two pieces, so that worked much better.

The appliques required a little special attention.  Fleece is synthetic, which doesn’t respond well to high heat.  You may notice a slight iron outline on the back of the black outfit.  Learn from my mistakes LOL!  I had to make sure when I applied them to not go on the non-appliqued surface.  I forgot to use applique paper/tissue underneath while I was sewing on the appliques, too, so the stitching is a bit stretched dang it.  Silly me.

Kailan was VERY excited to see I made him his clothes with his bikes and dragons.  Especially since he loves his “soft pants”.  I made these about a month ago and he loves to wear them.  The first time he wore his dragon outfit to daycare he said his friends “loved” them.  Yeah, dragons are cool. 🙂

Of course, who doesn’t love fleece, too??  If I worked at home I would wear them from sun up to sun down.  Unfortunately my sewing machine did not love the black fleece, which seemed the softest of the bunch, since I had much skipped stitching and broken threads.  At least I just had to hem them on the sewing machine, since the serger did fine with it.  It was still frustrating though.

This past weekend I also replaced the zipper in his winter jacket.  This is winter #2 for his jacket so it apparently couldn’t deal with the stress.  That zipper sure wasn’t going to fall off, though.  I had to rip through 3 seams to get it off.  That was the hardest part of replacing it.  Of course, I had to venture into the fabric store to get the zipper…and it would have been cheaper to just buy him a new coat. 😉  Oh well!

Oh, and go check out New Green Mama’s new etsy shop.  She has some uber cute stuff mostly made from recycled fabric.  I love seeing those types of projects – green AND cute!

15 Comments

  3. Those turned out so cute! I am really looking forward to attempting some clothes for my kids. I have a couple of things planned for when we get back from our Thanksgiving travels. Have a happy turkey day!

  4. Thanks for the linky love!!! Those outfits turned out great. I never know what to make for my son. Girl clothes are so much easier.

  5. Oh, my~ I saw your name was…like mine when I was at Slurping Life, reading the comments–
    I had to drop by to see your blog–
    I also have two cute kids, and they are also about 18 months apart… I also try to sew for my kids… and I have also found that boys patterns aren’t nearly as inventive as girls!
    I have been looking at the Goodwill and St, Vinny’s for vintage patterns– to mix and match different sleeves to other patterns– (Although I was stumped when I came home with a great pattern for a Race Car driver– and no instructions!-note to self ALWAYS check for instructions!)
    I even made a pair of pants from a sheet with — what I thought was these really COOL knee patches– but my son… Alas–he doesn’t like them!
    When you are sewing for your son– do you have him try them on during the process ?
    or do you wait until the end? I always worry that I might need to alter them before the end~
    ah, well… I’ll be back to get creative and inspritational (sp?) input !
    Have a Happy Day!

  7. I don’t understand a lot of the technical sewing stuff, but I do love the outfits – especially the dragon one! So great that he appreciates it.

  8. Ahh…all those extra pattern pieces…I am in the process of cutting out a pair of elastic waist pants from Ottobre. Well, they were meant to be simple elastic waist, with maybe a bellows pocket on the leg. I ended up cutting out a pattern with 8 different pattern pieces. :sigh:

  9. I know what you mean about it being cheaper to buy a new coat than to go to the fabric store! I have become quite the coupon mama as of late… including at the craft store!

    I LOVE the outfits for Kailan! I can see where he felt so cool wearing them!

    Fleece… definitely fleece for this time of year. They look ultra-comfy!

  10. I love that they are so appreciative of your handiwork! That really does make it all worthwhile – when you know that they really like it and understand that it is WORK! They are terrific as always!

  11. The dragons and the motorcycles are definitely cool. I do believe I even purchased some of that same dragon fabric to make a memory board for my step daughter. 😉 There’s going to be fleece sale at Joanne’s here on Friday and my Mom and I will so be there. Have a great turkey day!

  13. I can imagine Kailan loves those bikes and dragons. I think it is so great that you make clothes for the kids. I can see there is so much love put into each and every piece. I am sure the kids really do appreciate it too, especially when their friends comment on how cool they are! 🙂

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