Friday, September 24, 2010

(nearly) Instant Gratification

I love the instant gratification of making kids' clothes.  Ok, so I suppose it's not instant instant, but they come together faster than big projects like quilts or embroideries.  I love that I can start a project on my lunch break and have a finished item before bedtime.


This is a cashmere sweater that Nate refused to wear.


For Peter, I've been focusing on upcycling clothes that Nate and I don't wear anymore.  I don't want to spend money on new clothes for him this year.  Not only does he outgrow them so fast, but kids clothes are expensive considering how small they are.


In progress
 So, I cut up this sweater as well as a green knit fabric I had left over from another project to create the Urban Sweatshirt by Heidi and Finn.


I thought all the colorful little pins looked cute.

I did make a couple of minor adjustments to this pattern to save time and because of constraints I was presented with.  To save time, I used the existing ribbed trim on the bottom of the sweater and the sleeves and I found out my sewing machine won't sew a button hole on this particular fabric, so I left off the buttons as well.  I still think the resulting toddler-size sweater is super cute.



All done!



Action shot!

The length is a little long on Pete, but it will fit him for at least 2 years this way and that's a-okay with me!  The only downside to making his clothes is that when he grows out of them, I'm so sad.  Oh well.  I'll hang on to them--at the very least, they'll make nice heirlooms to pass on to Peter when he has his own little one someday. 






6 comments:

  1. That turned out soooo awesome! Hopefully I can whip one out for Phoebe this week so they can match :)

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  2. oo it's adorable! and very neat that you can make such wonderful use of out an old cashmere sweater!

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  3. I love this! I've recently begun upcycling my own clothes, mainly turning skirts into tank/shells to wear under cardigans & jackets. I have an awesome, huge thrift store by my house where I've found a ton of great skirts to do this to as well. I've bought the skirts but not done the actual transformations yet, will post them on my blog when I do. Also, I'm excited to try 2 other upcycling projects - adding ruffles to t-shirts as is the trend right now, and cutting out the graphic part of old, favorite tees and adding the graphic to the front of a hoodie so I can keep the graphic & memory but get rid of the shirt.

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  4. Ashley, those sound like awesome ideas! I love all of the ruffled knit tops I see, but I haven't tried it myself. Kat, that sweater was only, like, a year old and Nate looked AWESOME in it. He just refuses to wear sweaters, so I said I was going to use it to make some Peter-clothes. Emily, it would be so cute to take some pics of the babes in little matching sweaters. LOL!

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  5. Lisa, here's the original tutorial I was sent. You can search through her blog to find different ruffle designs. Looks doable!

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  6. Doh! http://tearosehome.blogspot.com/2010/01/tutorialruffle-shirt.html

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