Monday, January 13, 2014

A couple of gifts

I've been a very good girl since my last post and have made two handmade gifts. In my house we have birthdays in January, February and March so I thought I should start early to get organised.

It's my husband's birthday next week and I told him I wanted to make him a shirt. He wanted a crazy Marvel comic or Star Wars print but when I went window shopping, I calculated it would cost over $50 in fabric to make. I'm way too much of a cheapskate to spend that much on fabric so I went to good ole Spotlight and grabbed some checked cotton from the sale rack. 3 metres for $12. Much better than $50!

I've never made a proper shirt so I used this casual shirt pattern that I purchased last year with the intention of making a shirt for my son (obviously that never happened). It's a great little pattern. My boy will be getting some cool shorts from this pattern for his birthday.


 

It was a super easy pattern to follow. Construction is pretty simple. There is no button placket- the front has facings instead. The collar is one piece. It was pretty tricky to put in but that's because I'm not super experienced with collars. 


Click on the photo and spot the pocket. Yep, pretty pleased with my pattern matching here!

The hardest part was the pattern matching. I made sure the pocket and centre front matched but every other seam looks crap. I probably picked a bad check for my first attempt at pattern matching- an even check would have been far easier. All in all I'm happy with it. I'm not letting Husband put it on until his birthday so this is the only pic I have of it at the moment.

Now that Birthday #1 was sorted, I was ready to start on #2- my little girl's fourth, which is in exactly a month. I decided on a dress, a hat, and a soft toy. This is the pattern I chose for the dress- I've had it in my stash for a while and hadn't used it yet.


 

The fabric was a gift from a friend and has been in my stash since my girl was a baby. I'd been waiting for the right project and I think I chose well.



The dress took about 3 hours all up including cutting. Much longer than I would normally spend on a child's dress! There were lots of fiddly little bits. I hated the pockets- it tells you to cut two pockets, stitch around the edge of each then fold along the stitching in press inwards. It would have made much more sense to cut four pockets and construct each one by sewing them right sides together- it would have given a much nicer curve to the bottom of the pockets. Anyway, I love it and I hope she does too! I made some little matching hair ties.

Next up is the hat which I will make this week. Stay tuned!








2 comments:

  1. You are so good! I have a shirt to make for my husband and haven't even found the pattern yet!!

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    Replies
    1. Don't feel bad...my hubby has had 2 pairs of pants waiting to be hemmed for months. That's no fun so I keep putting it off!

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