Progress report...

So I have been somewhat diligently sewing...I finished one more christmas gift, two coming home outfits (one for each sex), and a wearable jacket muslin for my ds. Here you can see the jacket collar. I had a terrible time with the binding. I was trying to use my binding foot, but every time I hit a join, the denim was too thick to go thru nicely. I finally ended up using the foot to create the binding, then just sewed it on.

The other snag I ran into was putting in the snaps. I used size 20 buttons snaps from Snap Source but ruined 7 of the set of ten when I put them thru the binding. The long prong snaps are great, but they were done in by 4 layers of denim + the bulky bonded denim/fleece that the coat was made with...I ended up cutting thru a couple layers and sticking open prong snaps on a few of the spots. It is definitly wearable, and it is a bit on the big side, so it will work as a "church coat" for the rest of the winter.

The next item(s) I finished were the "papa shirts" that I had been promising to make for my son. He had one t-shirt just like papa's...which means gray with writing on it. My husband had culled some of his older t-shirts this summer and I have been meaning to make my son a few toddler sized shirts out of them so that he wouldn't be begging to wear the same t-shirt every day. It is getting a bit cold, so I figured a onesie style body shirt would be even better if I could fit them on the old shirts. The latest Ottobre had a pattern for a body suit with lapped shoulders. I made the first one in that style, but ended up just making regular shirts for the next two since the lapped shoulders were bulky with the thicker ribbing that I had. I used a size 86 cm, which fit lengthwise, but found that I needed to add an extra two inches in the center to fit the words across. That worked well, since he needed the extra width around anyhow.

I moved onto my baby sewing, and finished up the two coming home outfits. I used patterns from the last 3 winter Ottobre magazines. They all had the size 50 patterns I wanted to use for newborn clothes. I made a little sleeper in a cotton interlock for a boy, pairing it up with a hat and jacket in knit terry cloth. The little girl's outfit is a lavender terrycloth with some cute knit rickrack that I found in my stash. I need to add ribbons for the girl's hat, but I can't remember where I put that spool of lilac ribbon I got recently...Both of the outfits have back zippers, which I have decided that I really don't like. They are very stiff. Next time I will use snaps!