Category: baby sewing

Sometimes the crafting is for the baby, and sometimes the baby is just an excuse to try something new. 🙂 Today was completely a case of the latter. I bought a lightweight jersey fabric, and decided to try my hand at sewing a baby hat and pants. The hat was from the SouleMama pattern here, and the pants are based on the instructions here. All of the stretchy stitches on my sewing machine are uncharted territory for me, so it took a lot of reading the manual before I felt confident in my stitch, needle and presser foot choices. For the hat, I sewed the side seams using the serger stitch. I have thought for ages that you actually needed to buy a serger to manage this – I didn’t realize my machine was already capable of it until I sat down and read the manual for the nth time. Very exciting!! I used the overcast presser foot, which is a marvel. It’s the oddest looking thing, what with the pair of center bars and the little fronds on the right side, but I’m so impressed at the cleverness of it.

To hem the edge, I used an overcast stitch right at the edge. (I had to rip my first effort where I’d tried to set the seam in about a ¼ inch – the stitches and hem margin couldn’t have been more variable if I tried – straight seams and stretchy fabrics aren’t a skill I’ve mastered yet, apparently.) I should have hemmed first, then sewn the side seams so that they would have lied flatter – something to remember for the future.

The pants were much faster, since I didn’t have to rip and redo nearly as often. The casing for the elastic is a little bit wonky, but they’re pretty good for a first attempt, and as Kevin pointed out, we don’t think the baby will notice that the stitches aren’t perfectly even. 🙂

A pretty cute set to go over a onesie!

I have a few more cuts of jersey, so I may make more if I feel inspired. The biggest question mark from the whole experience is whether my tension was off. The serging stitches pulled through a lot to the back, and the fabric was puckered together in a ridge under the stitches. I’m curious if using the zigzag foot would have prevented the pucker? Or different tension? The jersey was extremely light-weight, so it wouldn’t surprise me if the settings I used would be ideal for a stiffer fabric, but just not for this one.

We ended up with quite the stash of plain white onesies. A few years ago, I’d needed some sort of baby clothes as a size reference for a sweater I was knitting for a gift, and the packs of white onesies were the cheapest option by far, so I bought five short sleeve and five long sleeve. Then Kevin’s mom sent us two more packs of four in newborn and three month sizes, and it started to feel a little bit too institutional. My original plan was to applique cute things by hand.

But it took way too long and looked sort of wonky, so v2 was geometric shapes and the sewing machine.

Here’s the first batch:

And the second:

Not professional grade sewing, but colorful and happy. I realized after the fact that I probably should have used a walking foot (or something along those lines?) because it was very hard to keep the stretchy onesie fabric lined up properly with the non-stretchy cotton. Oops.

My knitting friend Diana is due in October, and she decided to have a sewing get-together on Sunday to make maternity pants. I’m actually in good shape for pants, but it wasn’t hard to come up with a list of other baby-related sewing projects. I ended up bringing over this fun:

A few years ago, I bought onesies to use as a size-gauge when I was knitting baby sweaters as gifts. The packs of 4 plain white onesies were cheaper than the singles, decorated ones, so now I have a small stockpile of baby clothes that could use a bit of color. I figured I’d try an appliqué-meets-embroidery mix. I don’t have any after photos yet, since the hand-sewing wasn’t terribly speedy, but it was a fun afternoon and the colors made me happy.