Sewing for Baby Elizabeth

Above are 3 little outfits for Elizabeth.  2 pair of the pants are made from flannel scraps, the last pair started out as a pair of sleep pants that were too small for Nina.  

 Little baby pants sew up very quickly and use very little fabric.

The tops are just a pack of $6 onesies.  I decorated all 3 with rick rack, and used some of the pants scraps on 2 of them. 

Of course Elizabeth needed some Thanksgiving outfits.
I decorated this little onesie with a turkey made from some fall themed fabric scraps.  I sort of copied a design from another blog, then used HeatNBond to iron the pieces to the shirt, then machine stitched around them for a little more stability. 

Nina did this shirt.  She used brown Rit dye to change the white onesie.  She made the slice of pie from my scraps.  The "cutie pie" embroidery was done by some home-ec students practicing with a sewing machine that does monograming. 

Bobby's altered hoodie

This is my son, Bobby, the very helpful floor tiler.  He will try to do just about anything.  Right now, his wife is the singer for a hard rock band and they are doing lots of concerts and shows, not my first choice but their dream is to  make it big some day and maybe they will.....

Anyway, he grew up watching me sew and trying to do just about anything.  He showed me some very expensive rock-type clothing made by a company called Road Bone - I tried to link to them but their sites seem to be for friends only. They sell alter jeans, jackets and hoodies for $200+ 

Their clothes are regular clothing items that they just alter, by dying, adding patches from old jeans or leather clothing or fabric,  some ripping and fraying. 
I showed Bobby and Bridgette how it seemed to be made. They got a few fabric scraps and rubber stamps from me. 

Here is Bobby modeling his first original jacket, it started out as a plain black sweatshirt hoodie. 



a sleeve - he made the sleeve more fitted by taking in the inside seam, cutting off the knit cuff.  The design is made using a star stencil and spray bleach.



back of hoodie
he sewed stars and strips fabric inside the hood

front side - he added some brocade fabric and pockets from old jeans. 
very simple sewing - see the frayed edges?  that is how the expensive items at Road Bone are done too.



this is the bottom front. Bobby sewed on a jeans pocket but he left the top part unsewn so it still works like a pocket. 



If you have some young adults needing gifts,  you might want to be like Bobby and try making some altered clothing. 

One way to spend a weekend....

Friday evening,  move all the furniture out of living room.  Then rip up the "white" carpet, tack strip and pads.  

Buy a big pile of supplies - many boxes of tiles, a saw. things to measure with, buckets, rags. sponges. grout, mortar, spacers, gloves, knee pads -



take all your furniture and smush it into other rooms -

more displaced furniture...

Be very happy and thankful that your hardworking son comes to help -I think "help" does not even describe how much work he did, he was so willing and did everything he could

We started just before 8 a.m. Saturday morning,  this end of the room has straight sides and it went pretty fast.

That end of the room has several angles and nooks and took lots more measuring and cutting.

The last tile was laid in place just about 3 Saturday  afternoon. 


The mortar dried overnight.
Then today,  we grouted it and cleaned the grout.  Later this evening,  we moved some the furniture back in.

Sorry, there are not "after" pictures.  We've put some things back but this house is no way ready for pictures.

Tiling is hard and messy,  not difficult though and no prior experience is really necessary.  However, we are sore and tired after completing this job.  Having the house in disarray is uncomfortable too
But we all feel really satisfied we accomplished this.

and NO MORE big jobs that involve any major effort will be going on at this house for quite some time.