Easter shortie

I made this romper for Gabe for Easter this year.  Gabe looks adorable in orange and this fabric is perfect for him.  It has great colors but it also sort of a linen fabric so it is really light and lets him climb, jump and be his free little boy self all he wants.

I have used this McCall's romper pattern

many times before and appreciate its simplicity more every time I make it.

I love Easter

Happy Easter!!  He is Risen!!

Easter is by far my favorite holiday.  Preparing my heart for the celebration of Easter is amazing, too.  I love seeing the new flowers and thinking of how we are new creations in Christ and how His blood over us makes us pure and beautiful before our heavenly Father.

Making new Easter outfits for the kids is really fun for me.  

I love dropping the heavy flannels and corduroys of the winter and finding the light cottons of spring and summer!

I will post individually about each outfit in separate posts for those interested in the sewing info; this post is just to show you how they look on the kids and hopefully inspire you to get sewing!

Flannel fun

These rompers are from my favorite romper/shortie/longall pattern (McCalls 6304).  I won't go into details about the pattern since I have done that before in a previous post.  All I will say about the pattern is that it is a SOLID romper pattern that I would recommend to anyone, even a beginner sewer.

The flannel fabric here is so soft and warm and makes me want to snuggle with my little man Gabe even more than I already do! 

 I had so much fun with the applique on these two rompers.  Aren't they cute?

I made this NY Giants romper for the Super Bowl this year.  Go Blue!

Before I made these three flannel rompers, I made this fish one last week:

Wild about fish

My son rarely gets excited about fabric.  He gets dragged to the fabric store and then has to watch as I pick out fun fabric for little girls.   He spends most of the time trying to touch every single fabric in the store.  Recently, we were in the fabric store and Gabe started squealing and saying, "Momma, I love this!"  Well, I whipped my head around who had mimicked Gabe's little voice perfectly.  Lo, it was Gabe with this sweet smile on his face touching this fish-themed flannel.  This mommy heart melted and I bought some on the spot (woops - impulse buy!).

Gabe hammin' it up for the camera

I got to work later that night and knocked this McCalls' romper out pretty quickly.  It does not have pockets because I ran out of fabric but they can always be added later (and they will be since all little boys - especially mine - love pockets to hide their treasures in).  

This McCall's pattern is really easy 

and I have used it many many many times before for both shortalls and longalls.  I encourage you to use it if you are looking for a solid romper pattern.

Beach cuties

As I write this post, I am in Central Asia visiting one of my best friends. I am missing my husband and my kids a lot so it feels good to write this post about the beach trip we all had together this past summer.

I have put a hold on making dresses for the girls for a few reasons:

• Isabelle has STRONG opinions on what she wants to wear and it is not a battle I want to fight at this time so she gets to wear what she wants. I am reluctant to make a dress that she won't wear. She has about three or four dresses she really likes to wear right now and I am content letting her pick those out. So, no more new dresses recently.
• Isabelle has so many dresses at this point for warm weather that I am a little burned out from sewing. I know - it sounds strange, but it does happen from time to time.
• This past summer was so busy that I hardly got any sewing time.

Even though I haven't been sewing matching dresses, I am still not immune to buying some when I see them. I found these adorable matching dresses in the summer at the Chez Ami warehouse and had to get them! When I was packing for the beach, Isabelle wanted to bring this dress so I thought I could get a cute picture of the girls there. Then, I thought about getting Gabe in on the matching action. I pulled out this romper

that I made a while ago from fabric my mom-in-law bought me and it worked really well. I have made this romper so many times before and I really like it. Gabe especially likes the pockets now and I think he looks so cute with his hands (and toys) stuffed in them.

I hope this beach picture gives you an idea of how you can take an existing dress you already have for your daughter(s) and make a quick romper that is really cute to match.

A long time favorite romper pattern

I have used this McCalls 6304 pattern for a long time. It used to be McCalls 2033.
It is a great romper pattern! It is very easy to make! Some comments I would make about this patter are:

• when you cut the lining pieces for the top, do not use the tissue paper pattern to do it. Use the fabric pieces that you have already cut for the main parts of the garment. This way, you make sure that the lining shape matches the garment shape and it will be easy to match them up when sewing.
• Use fusible interfacing!!! Don't mess with having to use sew-in interfacing (Ugh!!).
• When when cutting the lining pieces, don't cut a curved bottom. Just cut a straight line across. This will make finishing the bottom edge of the lining easier.

Here are the rompers I have made over time with this great pattern.

Shorties

Easter shortie in orange linen

Fun spring/Easter shortie

Fun Steelers shortie

Classic navy gingham shortie (no pockets)

Orange seersucker shortie

Longalls

Christmas corduroy longall

Feeling fishy in this flannel longall

Cheering on Big Blue in flannel longall

Sailing away in nautical flannel

Train flannel

He is Risen!!!

Happy Easter, everyone! Easter is my favorite holiday of the year. I love thinking about the beauty of Christ's blood on the cross and the might of Christ's power shown by the empty tomb!! Here are my precious babies in their Easter outfits (which they will wear well beyond Easter so I am not even sure why I am saying "Easter outfits").


I have already blogged about sewing their outfits. Here is all the info on:

• Isabelle's dress
  
• Gabe's romper/shortie
  
• Grace's dress
  

Easter Outfit #1

Gabe's Easter outfit was fun to do because it is the first time I tackled plaid and really focused on all the lines matching up. I have been afraid of plaids before and usually choose fabric that does not require such detailed matching. I decided to do it now because I love the fabric from Chez Ami and it looks great with the other Chez Ami fabric that I am using for his sisters' Easter outfits. It was not as hard as I thought it was going to be. What I learned from this experience is that when you have to match a pattern, you cannot double the fabric over to cut pieces. You need to cut each piece out individually to make sure that the corresponding notches on different pattern pieces line up. Yes, it is a pain to do, but all that tedious work at the beginning really pays off with a nice outfit at the end.

I first made this pattern in Pittsburgh Steeler's fabric for a friend's son. You can see here how I did not match up the notches and how the pattern did not exactly match up horizontally. It did not really matter because the wording and helmets were on an angle anyway. Next time, though, I will be more aware of lining things up better. Oh, how much better we get with time and practice!

The overall pattern is incredibly simple. I still am not a huge fan of pockets but they are growing on me. It is just really hard to make sure they don't shift when you sew them. When they shift, you wind up sewing them crooked and that is really obvious with some fabrics.

I can't wait to see how cute Gabe looks in this romper with his sisters who will be in coordinating outfits. Stay tuned!

My precious pumpkins!!

I have fully immersed myself in fall fever! I love everything about this time of year - the food, family, weather, sports, pumpkin patches, etc. I have so many fun ideas for fall-motif sewing projects. My first fall project was matching paneled pillowcase dresses for my girls.

Here is my latest project which involved all three of my kids!
Can you see the applique'? This is my first applique' project and I look forward to doing it more often and getting better and better at it!! Even though Grace missed out on being in the matching outfit picture, I got some cute ones of Gabe and Isabelle loving on their new sister in their pumpkin outfits.

Here are some sweet individual pictures...

Want to see more pics of this fully-lined romper?

Here are some rompers made for boys.
Here are some rompers made for girls.
Here are rompers made especially for football season.

My first matching outfit order!!

My friend asked me to make her son and daughter matching outfits for the upcoming holiday season (bring on the fall and winter!). She gave me a lot of freedom in the planning and only asked that the fabric be red corduroy that was soft. Well, let's just say that I was so excited to make these outfits and I really hope she likes them.

Her son's outfit was pretty straight forward. I chose a simple romper outfit that I have made before. The pattern is easy and I was sad to learn that the fabric stores don't sell it anymore. Do they bring patterns back every now and then like they do Disney movies??? If you want it, you can probably order it online. This romper pattern is a little different from my favorite romper pattern because it only has a little lining in the trunk as opposed to the full lining in my favorite romper. Because corduroy is warm, I did not think my friend's son needed 2 layers of it. Only having a partial lining reduces the overall fabric cost, too.
Want to see how I have made this same romper in a shortie version? Here you go!!

The daughter's dress was a little trickier because there are so many options for little girls' dresses!! I finally chose the dress that is in the same pattern as the romper for the son. I picked that same pattern because:

• I have made it before
  
• trunk of the dress is fully lined (better for cold months)
• the hem of the dress has a tuck or fold which means my friend can use this for at least a couple of years as long as she just undoes the tuck. I am always an advocate of stretching clothes out as long as possible.
  

The only down side to this dress is that it does require a bit of fabric due to the 2nd and 3rd reasons I just listed for choosing the pattern. I needed 2.75 yards for a 4T dress. Good thing corduroy was on sale at JoAnn's when I bought it!!
I added the ribbon as a trim to the dress because the dress looked too plain with just the corduroy and this dress is going to be used during the holidays. I wanted to add a little pizazz but my friend definitely did not want anything fru-fru so I kept it to a minimum.
***This dress pattern is a little difficult to make and I would not recommend it for a beginner sewing project. The continuous lap placket (aka. "pleat in the back" that makes it easier to put on and off) is hard to understand and the pictures on the pattern are terrible. Also, the trunk lining needs to be hand sewn to the skirt portion and figuring out how to keep the lining separate from the main trunk fabric while sewing is tricky.