Blog Favorites: Sewing

September is National Sewing Month, so I thought I’d showcase a few of my favorite sewing tutorials - some simple, some challenging, some for hand sewing and others for machine sewing. I’ve linked to shops run by these wonderful bloggers in the cases where I am aware of their existence (if I missed your shop, let me know and I’ll edit this post to include it). When using these tutorials, please follow requests made by bloggers with regards to fair use. Most bloggers restrict their tutorials to personal, non-commercial use. Now, on to the blogs:

• LiEr at ikat bag has a fantastic collection of sewing tutorials for toys, clothing, and hair accessories. You can find the full list in the sidebar on her blog. She also recently opened an etsy shop.
• Get instructions for a sandwich wrap that doubles as a placemat from the Frugal Family Fun Blog. Valerie has a few sewing tutorials, including this apple printed lunch sack and instructions for making a bib from a pair of old jeans.
• Deb from Works in Progress shows how to make a bag from a vintage sheet. I also like the pram bag she made using two pillowcases. She also recently opened a shop – based in New Zealand, but ships worldwide.
• I love this repurposed girls’ ruffle front shirt from Make It and Love It. Ashley has a TON of tutorials for sewing projects – just check her left sidebar. She also has an etsy shop.
• Beth from be the thread has a great two-part tutorial for making adorable onesie dresses here and here. She has a few other sewing tutorials here, and an Art Fire shop.
• Katherine at One Inch World has wonderful sewing tutorials, including several for felt food. Just check her sidebar. I think her ravioli tutorial is especially clever as it is the most efficient way of making felt ravioli that I’ve seen. Many of Katherine’s tutorials can easily be sewn by hand, so you don’t even need a sewing machine.
• Favorite tutorials from homemade by jill include her ruffle shirt, taggie animals, and very adorable quiet book. See her sidebar for more templates and tutorials.

This blog has sewing tutorials for baby wipes, crayon rolls (the giveaway for a crayon roll is open until Friday morning), instructions for repurposing jeans and t-shirts into toddler shorts, a doll bed mattress, a pattern for Christmas stockings, a winter toddler dress, and a princess gown, Also hand-sewing tutorials for princess shoes and patterns for felt food here and here.

Do you have a favorite sewing resource that I’ve missed? Please link up in the comments, I’d love to check it out!

From worn-out jeans to toddler shorts

MATERIALS:

• One pair of old jeans
• scissors
• elastic (for waistband)
• thread
• sewing machine (optional, but highly desirable)

Place pattern pieces (or, alternately, an existing pair of shorts to use as a pattern) over jeans, avoiding the more worn-out portions of the garment.

Cut, allowing for seam allowances and the increased/decreased stretchiness of new material if using an existing outfit (the shorts I used were made of a woven material, while the jeans I was cutting up were the stretchy type). I’m keeping the outer seam of the jeans for these shorts, and so I didn’t allow for any seam allowance there.

Make any further adjustments. This pair of shorts was cut to be about an inch longer than the pair used as a pattern. I also made the rise slightly higher in the back and slightly lower in the front as you can see in the photo below. I considered adding pockets, but didn’t really want my son to fill them with anything so I left them off.

Stitch together and photograph the end result (optional). If you look closely, you will see that I am still learning how to properly use the blind hem on my serger, and that I lazily left on the yellow thread even though it didn’t match. That’s the beauty of making play shorts for an 18-month-old out of old clothes – you can practice sewing and be lazy about thread colors.

Johnny liked this pair of shorts first try, but got them seriously dirty, so no photographs of the model in them until I do laundry.

Repurposing clothing: How to turn a shirt into toddler shorts

Massachusetts has had a bit of a heat wave this week, and Johnny’s wardrobe was woefully unprepared. I hadn’t taken stock of his summer clothes at all, and discovered AFTER the warm weather arrived that he had one short-sleeved t-shirt that fit, one that was really too small, and a single pair of shorts that I could barely squeeze him into. I had an old t-shirt sitting in my fabric pile, so we took that and improvised it into a pair of knit shorts. It worked really well and was super quick to sew (I kept some of the t-shirt seams and the bottom hem so I was able to skip those steps). I definitely plan to turn more t-shirts into shorts in the future!

MATERIALS:

• Adult t-shirt
• Elastic (for wasteband)
• Thread
• Sewing machine

STEPS:

1. Choose a pair of shorts (pants will work too, just cut the legs shorter) to use as a pattern.
2. Lay over t-shirt and cut, adding seam allowances and extra fabric at the top for adding elastic. Notice that I kept the side seam and bottom hem of this t-shirt – cut down my sewing time for quite a bit and since these are just play shorts I wasn’t looking to make them perfect. You want to copy the backside of the article of clothing, since that piece is typically larger than the front piece. You can trim the front side later.

3. Repeat on the other side of the t-shirt. You can actually use the first piece you cut as a pattern (Preferable - I didn’t do this, and then I had to trim the two pieces to make them identical).

4. Trim the top front of the shorts a little – you normally want the backside of shorts to be higher than the front.

5. You can see in this photo how the back of shorts (right side of the photo) is taller than the front (left side of Image 4). You may want to trim some of the front edge (left side of Image 4) off as well, to prevent fabric bunching in the front (you need less in the front since in the back it is stretching over your child’s bum). If you do trim the left side, be sure to re-cut the little bit on the bottom left to match the backside.

6. Sew the side seams of Image 4 (done in the photo). I used a zig-zag stitch since this is a knit fabric and the stitching needs to have some give.

7. Open the shorts out the way they were in Image 3, but with the seams on the outside of the fabric. Stitch the crotch seam, again using a zig-zag stitch

8. Cut a length of elastic to fit your child’s waist.

9. Stitch down the top of the shorts, leaving an opening to insert elastic

10. Thread elastic through shorts. If you don’t have a elastic threading tool (not sure what the formal name for that thing is), attaching a safety pin to one end of the elastic works pretty well.

11. Stitch together the ends of the elastic, making sure that the elastic isn’t twisted within the band

12. Finish stitching the waist.

13. Put the shorts on your child and send them out to play.

Johnny loves his new shorts, although he doesn’t share his sister’s zest for modeling.

Repurposing clothing: no-sew doll carrier

My inspiration for this came from this post at mamatoto.org.

I took an old women's swimsuit, cut off the top and bottom...
And voila, a carrier for Emma's baby doll! Nothing fancy, but she loves it.

Now she can care for her baby hands-free :)

Is it as nice as a sewn doll carrier? Of course not, but it keeps my daughter happy and that's what matters!

From Rag to Heirloom

My son Johnny is named after his Grandpa, John, who sadly passed away from cancer without getting to meet either of his grandchildren. My husband wore this shirt of his dad's for years, to the point where it was almost completely worn out. I noticed that parts of the shirt (front and back) were less worn, so I thought it would be fun to turn it into a pajama top for Johnny to wear. I like to find ways to make a connection between my kids and their grandpa, especially where they can't meet him and enjoy his kindness and goofy sense of humor.

There wasn't enough fabric in good shape for pajama bottoms - maybe I'll find another shirt or a pair of old pants to use...

MATERIALS:

• old shirt
• thread
• scissors
• pattern or clothing to copy for a pattern

STEPS:

1) Cut out pieces. If you look closely, you'll notice that I actually kept parts of the original shirt (lower hem and front buttons) intact. This means less sewing and makes it more like he is wearing his Grandpa's actual shirt. Here are the pieces. I used a raglan sleeve design. I need to learn to take pictures so the pieces don't look so distorted...

3) Sew all edges with a zig-zag stitch to prevent fraying.

4) Sew together.

5) Enjoy :)

I made this one big - so he can grow into it (he has plenty of pajamas that fit right now) and so that I have some time to figure out what to make the pajama bottoms out of!