Sk8tr bois (Burda 9592)

After much pestering from my boys, I finally got round to making the 'leather' jackets that I'd promised them last year.

I used Burda 9592 (now discontinued) that I picked up for $5 at the shop where I was having my sewing machine serviced. Some time later I found this dark, chocolate brown pleather for 40% off in Spotlight. I bought it and it sat in my cupboard for several months, through the long, hot summer, while JJ (seven) periodically asked when I was going to make his jacket. When the weather turned cold I ran out of excuses, so I set to work on View A (times two).

The pattern I had was for age 10-15. That was fine for LJ (ten), but too big for JJ. Some down-scaling was in order. To do this, I used a very handy method from SewStylish.com that I had found ages ago and saved for just such an occasion.  

Source

The method involves drawing lots of radiating lines on each pattern piece and applying simple maths to work out where the lines on the smaller (or bigger) pattern should be drawn. The resulting, scaled-down pattern seemed to go together well, so thumbs up for this method.

The next obstacle was that the pattern specified shearling-type fabric (leather with sheepskin backing) for View A as this view is styled with raw edges to show off the wool lining. Well, even in sheep-rich Australia I don't know where I would find such a fabric, much less afford to buy it for children's jackets! And besides, I'd already bought this pleather so I had to make it work. In the end, I used some brown polar fleece to underline every pattern piece. This gave the jackets warmth and allowed the raw edge design detail to be utilised. 

Suffice it to say that the pattern re-sizing and cutting out the pieces for two jackets in pleather and fleece took a blinking long time!

Raw edges on cuffs, pockets and hem.

I have to say that JJ really helped the process (not) by popping into the sewing room at regular intervals and asking when his jacket would be ready!

Raw edges on collar and yoke.

Once I started sewing, these jackets went together reasonably quickly. I treated the fleece and pleather together as a single layer for each piece, which worked fine.

I like the contrast provided by the fleece on the inside of the collar and on the raw edges of the hem, cuffs, pockets, collar and yoke.

The boys are very pleased with their jackets, so Yay for Mum-sewing! I wanted them to pose by this graffiti wall for the pictures, so I had to bribe them with a visit to the adjacent skate park. 

I had to take these photos in 2 minutes flat, before they raced off to do this:

and this:

That's my boys :)

A birthday present for Grandad

I always struggle to find presents for my Dad, but this year I did have an idea. My sister and I had bought him an ipad for Christmas, so I decided to make him a bag to carry it around in when he went on holiday or to the cafe.

To make the bag more personal I got my boys to draw a picture each and I transferred the pictures to the bag using free-motion sewing. Unfortunately the boys are going through a Bart Simpson phase so the pictures were not quite what I had envisaged, but that's what they wanted to draw for Grandad, so that's what I used. It's funny how children don't quite see things the same way as we do!

I made the bag from an old diving wetsuit made from very thick neoprene. It is nicely padded, but was a nightmare to sew. I am not happy with the seam finishes but they were the best I could do after several attempts. I decided to put together a tutorial for this as I did work out some tips for sewing with neoprene. So here goes.

I folded the top of the wetsuit with side seams together so I could avoid the zips and joins as much as possible. I then drew around the ipad to get the right size and shape for the bag.

This is what it looked like opened out with holdes cut for the handles.

I used this striped fabric to cover up the wetsuit logo.

I traced the main lines of each drawing on to baking paper (or use tissue paper) placed the paper on to the neoprene fabric and stitched along the lines using appropriately coloured thread.

Needle and thread: I found the best needle to use was a very thin (70-75) ball point needle for knit fabric. All the other needles I tried caused skipped stitches. Poor quality thread also resulted in some skipped stitches, but sometimes you just have to use what you have in the right colour.

Once I had the basic outline (above), I set the machine up for free motion sewing (lowered feed dogs, darning foot) and 'drew' and 'coloured in' the rest of the picture. I love the freedom of this type of sewing. It's really fun to see what appears as your hands move the fabric.

Once the pictures were done on both sides, I used a strip of lycra, 2.5cm wide. to bind the inside of the handles. After several attempts, I found the best result was obtained by stretching the lycra quite taut as it was stitched in place. I also sewed a strip of velcro below each handle to hold the ipad inside.

Next it was time to sew up the sides. I used lycra strips again. This time, I sewed one edge of the lycra approximately 1cm from the edge of the neoprene (on the right side) for the full length of each side from a point level with each handle.

The bag was then folded right sides together and the lycra strip was sewn together close to the neoprene. I used the zipper foot to get as close to the edge as possible.

The sides were sewn this way because the neoprene was too thick to fit two layers under the presser foot. This method avoids sewing the neoprene, only the lycra is sewn. Below, each vertical side seam is lycra sewn to neoprene and the centre seam is lycra to lycra.

Lastly, the top edge of the bag was bound all around with lycra, stretching as it was sewn in place.

It's not perfect, but it has character and Dad loved it (once I'd told him what it was)!

I have done two other projects involving free motion sewing, a cushion cover and some boys pyjamas.

Jacket rashies for the beach (Jalie 2795)

We have just returned from a five-day camping trip to the idyllic, beachside town of Dunsborough (approx. three hours drive south of Perth, Western Australia). I knew we would spend most of our time on the beach while we were there, so I wanted to make new 'rashies' (rash vests/sun shirts) for the boys, with hoods to keep their necks protected from the sun.

While flicking through my patterns and pondering how to attach a hood to the standard t-shirt style rashie (like this one I made for LJ, with matching shorts and hat), I came across my trusty Jalie 2795 jacket pattern. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed to be a good idea. The front zip would make it so much easier to get the rashie on and off (usually after swimming, I am faced with a wet child shouting "help!", their arms and head trapped by the too-tight neck of the inside-out rashie. Many's the time someone has almost lost an ear!). Also, this pattern is slim-fitting for swimming and the hood is exactly what I was looking for.

So it was decided. Another two Jalie 2795 jackets coming up quick-smart for the holiday. 

I have a large stash of lycra thanks to a fantastic sale at a local swimwear manufacturer late last year. The boys chose the aquarium print lycra fabric and I chose the black and blue lycra to go with it. I switched the positioning of the black and blue on each jacket so I would be able to quickly tell them apart as I dug around in the swimming bag while running after the boys reminding them to put their rashies on!

I followed the pattern exactly except that I left the pockets off as I thought they'd just get full of sand. I went up two sizes from the measurements of each of my sons. This worked well for JJ (aged 7), but LJ (aged 9) could have done with some extra length in the body and sleeves of the jacket. He is a beanpole. The measurements on the pattern are for a girl (here is a Jalie 2795 jacket I made for a seven-year old girl) and I think the different proportions of an older boy need to be taken into account when deciding on sizing. I'd say the best rule would be 'if in doubt, go up another size or two'!

Before I made these, I toyed with the idea of adding a sun visor to the hood, but I decided against it in case it hampered the swimming. Wearing a cap inside the hood works well on dry land. 

I cut both jackets out together and sewed them one at a time, so as not to mix up the numerous pattern pieces. Once cut out, they took around two hours each to sew and were ready in time for the trip.

These jackets were invaluable on the holiday. They were great for keeping the sun off, but the boys also used them, once dry, for warmth once the cooler evenings arrived. They were light and easy to carry around, looked good and, most importantly, easy to get on and off. Hooray!

Tumble dying with a stencil to make a cool t-shirt

After watching me making my ombre dyed, polka dot t-shirt, my boys were desperate to get in on some Tumble Dye action. After some discussion, they decided on a Party Rock Gym design. There are images all over the internet for this and, after looking at a few, I came up with this design of my own using MS Word and Powerpoint.

If you would like to use my design, you can download it here and resize as necessary.

I printed the design on to normal paper, covered it in clear Contact plastic film (only to keep it strong enough to be used more than once) and cut out the lines with a scalpel.

The inside bits of the letters are saved and stuck to the bottom corner of the stencil. If you can, I would recommend cutting out letters as I've done for the circular part of the design, leaving a bit of paper to hold any middle bits in place, as for the 'P', 'A', 'R' etc. The little connector bits hardly show in the finished product.

After being asked at least 67 times if it was ready yet, I finally finished cutting out the stencil! It was then laid on to a square of t-shirt fabric, placed outside on newspaper and I let the boys loose with the dye spraying!

They were actually really careful and loved doing it.

My tips for children using these dyes would be:

• Make sure the nozzle is pointing in the direction you want the dye to go (yes, we learned this the hard way!); 
• Spray approximately 10cm from the fabric;
• Don't saturate the fabric with dye as it will run under the stencil, just gradually build up to the intensity you want; 
• You can mix colours to get fantastic effects, but be careful not to mix more than two colours or you get muddy brown.
• It's worth dyeing a square of fabric, rather than the actual t-shirt in case of mistakes and resulting meltdowns (we had both!).

When the dyeing was finished, we blotted off excess dye that was pooling on the stencil using paper towel and carefully lifted the stencil away from the fabric. I ironed the designs to set the dye, trimmed the edges, then stitched them on to t-shirts (which I'd also made, it was a busy day!) for the boys.

I used a strip of the trimmed fabric to sew a zig-zag along the side of the t-shirt for extra coolness!! I've been saving all my dye-covered scraps to use as embellishments for future projects.

The boys are SO thrilled with their t-shirts. They wore them to their hip hop class and proudly announced that they'd made them themselves when the teacher admired them!

A very rewarding project, which could be adapted for varying ages.

Man's shirt to boy's pants refashion

I love a refashion and this is one I have done before, although for a much younger boy. LJ, aged nine, needed some pants to play in during the school holidays. I had this old shirt lying around so decided to see if I could get a bigger pair of pants out of one shirt.

Front - stripe at knee is shirt yoke, lower section is shirt sleeve.

Well, it took a little bit of piecing together, but it is definitely possible. I basically followed my previous tutorial. The back pattern pieces were placed on the front of the shirt to make use of the shirt pocket as a back pants pocket. The front pieces were cut out of the shirt back. The shirt was too short to fit the whole pattern piece on, so I left off the lower legs to add later. These were pieced together from the sleeves and other scraps. The shirt was also slightly too narrow for my pattern pieces, so I added the black denim strips to the sides of the pants. I really like the stripes on the finished pants.

Back - lower leg pieced together with sleeve and scrap pieces.

These were easy to make and the jigsaw puzzle made it a bit more interesting. I think the extra seams add a nice cargo-style look actually. They are soft and comfortable to wear on a casual day.

It was quite entertaining taking these photos as the man in the background had dropped his keys in the river. Here he is phoning his wife.

He then spent quite some time trying to fish them out with a fishing net, to no avail.

Eventually his wife arrived with some board shorts and goggles. He dived down and managed to retrieve the keys! I wanted to get a photo but didn't want to embarrass the poor chap further! We just gave him a round of applause instead.

The Mud Monster - bringing a child's drawing to life

She screamed as she glanced back and saw the terrifying creature rising out of the mud...

I've had my nine year old home sick for the last few days. Desperate to get him away from the TV, I finally convinced him to do some craft. I've seen various blogs posting about making children's drawings come to life in the form of a stuffed toy so we decided to have a go.

I started by getting LJ to draw his design and plan colours etc.

I then gathered my (rather large) stash of scrap fabrics, strings, ribbons, buttons etc. LJ chose the fabrics while I worked out the pattern. He was so particular about the exact colours he wanted, so this took some time. It wasn't difficult to make the pattern. I used a cone shape for the body, a circle gathered into a ball for the head and some brown fleece fused to interfacing for the mud. I drew the arms based on his design. Just remember to add seam allowances. I let LJ do some of the sewing on the machine. Then it was all stuffed and hand stitched together. LJ wasn't keen on hand sewing as it took too long for his liking, so he worked on the details of the design while I did the main construction.

LJ cut out the mud globules, mouth, teeth and debris from felt and fleece (non-fraying fabrics are good). We used a straw covered in grey fabric for the pipe and coloured string for the eyes. All of this was glued on with fabric glue (PVA would also work).


That was it. A very enjoyable couple of hours spent creating a really cool little character. I'm all for getting boys to sew. LJ was very pleased with his efforts. His next question "Mum, can I watch TV now?" Aaaarrgghh!