Kids Clothing Week!

Have you seen that it's Kids Clothes Week this week?  It is such perfect timing for me, I wasn't paying attention that it was this week but I had just sewn several things for Esther on Sunday and was excited to do more sewing on Monday when I found out it was that time again!  I have enjoyed reading about KCW in the past and following along as others sewed, but this is my first time sewing along myself, now that Esther is 7 months old (I think there was at least one other KCW since she's been born but I wasn't up for it at that time).

I sewed her a few clothes when she was smaller but mostly tried to hold off - she has been growing so fast (already wearing mostly 12 month clothes and some 18 month!) and so it seemed silly to sew things that she would outgrow right away.  I am hoping that she is going to slow down her rate of growth a bit now, though, and I also find that clothes don't always fit her right because she has a very long torso but not so long arms and legs, so it seemed like a prime chance to sew her better fitting clothes.

I had sewn her a number of pairs of leggings when she was smaller (I think I have some cute pics of her in them so I will try to find those and post them later), and I had been meaning to sew more, so I sewed up two pairs over the weekend and another pair on Monday. The pattern is self-drafted, just tracing a pair of leggings that fit her well. These grey striped leggings were a favorite shirt of mine that had gotten a hole in the front near the hem (this happens to me all the time, I think its because my pants button rubs them? I'm not sure but it's super annoying). They are kind of lightweight but so cute on her! I also decided to try sewing her a little shirt... I traced a cute long-sleeved t-shirt that she has and used it to make the pattern, but added snaps to the front instead of buttons. The snaps were a bit of a fail because I didn't reinforce the fabric enough and now I don't think you could unsnap it easily without ripping the fabric. Luckily it still fits over her head without unsnapping so I'm just calling them decorative and going with it.

I really liked the way that shirt fit so I used the same self-drafted pattern to sew another very similar one on Monday, but this time with buttons, and I added a bit of length for our extra-long baby. I should mention that for all the leggings and these two shirts, I have been upcycling t-shirts (most bought at the goodwill outlet bins here in Portland for super cheap!) and I try to reuse the hems as much as possible - saves time and frustration hemming knits and gives them a more professional look. These pants are Anna Maria Horner's Quick Change Pants from her book, I made a number of pairs of them earlier and will have to share more about them later too!  I love the green and coral in these pants and so it's so great to have a shirt that goes so well with them - I think both of these shirts will get a ton of use, which is great!

I also sewed her another quick pair of leggings yesterday, and added this stamped tag in the back which should help tell the front from the back.

Finally, the project that I made yesterday that I am most excited about is this ruffle peplum tunic!

I started with the same self-drafted long sleeve t-shirt pattern, but cut the front piece on the fold (eliminating the buttonhole placket fabric), and put a buttonhole on the left shoulder instead of the seam.  This fabric is from a weird pair of lounge pants, believe it or not, so there wasn't enough hemmed fabric to recycle for the body of the shirt, so I left it unhemmed under the ruffles, which are also unhemmed (and cut on the bias mostly to maximize their length - still would have preferred it if they were a bit longer, but these were the longest pieces I could get diagonally across the bottom of the pants).  The shirt was cut to the same length as the regular t-shirt pattern and the ruffles are each 3" wide - one is sewn on about 1/4" about the bottom hem, and the other is sewn 2" above that.

I love the little flower button I found in my collection to use here - I think it helps it look a bit more fancy and special.

The tunic length is great on Esther since she is so long - I don't have to worry about her shirt riding up immediately when she scoots around.  But speaking of how much she is scooting it does make it tough to get good photos of her in the outfits, particularly an outfit like this that is hard to see when she's sitting down.

Not to mention that she is always on the move and tends to immediately crawl over and try to grab the camera so there are a lot of shots like this:

I kind of can't believe that I sewed two tops and a pair of leggings yesterday, I really had a fire under me! (And the baby cooperated by napping well and going to bed on time). Today I didn't dedicate all my free time to sewing like yesterday but I did cut out and start sewing another tunic length top/dress for Esther that I am really excited about! I hope to finish it tomorrow and maybe start another top for her. I am kind of tempted to keep using this basic top pattern to sew tops until I run out of ideas but I should maybe stop myself after I make a few more or I'll have more tops than she'll ever wear. Not to mention that I have more ideas of other things I want to sew!