Snail Sketchbook Shirt Take 2

Posted on July 5, 2015 by oliver's fancy

I’m back with another Lotus Pond shirt for you today. Previous one blogged here. This time it’s the multicolored snails (still available here). Funny story- I had a yard of each of the snail fabrics and asked the boys which one they wanted for their shirts. Eliot immediately grabbed the yellow snails and Oliver grabbed this version. Whew! No fighting for once. So nice when it works out that way- it doesn’t always in case you wondered. 😉

I wanted the boys’ shirts to be a little different from each other, so for Oliver’s version, I accented the snails with this artisan cotton in green-blue from imagine gnats store (it’s similar in weight to shot cotton or chambray). I used the accent fabric on the button band, the collar, and the yoke. This artisan cotton is the perfect contrast to the snails as it has both blue and green threads in it.

Oliver is wearing a size 4 of the sketchbook shirt and has plenty of room in the waist for his skinny little body. I think if I made him a long-sleeve version, I would slim the sides down a bit for a more slim-cut version, but I like this boxier look for a short-sleeve shirt. We were struggling with our photo shoot so I had idea to give him one of our old cameras we have and he had so much fun “taking pictures” of everything. Which led to an interesting discussion of film versus digital cameras as he couldn’t understand why he couldn’t see his pictures on my laptop. FYI his shorts are the sunny day shorts I blogged here. These are his favorite shorts to wear since he found out they match with everything! The drawstring got lost along the way because he kept playing with it and pulled it out so that part is a bit of wasted effort. Such is life, I guess.And now I’ve got to move on to another sewing project that’s easier on the eyes. I’ve about gone cross-eyed taking and editing pictures of these snails! At this point, my eyes are so fuzzy I can’t tell which pictures are in focus and which ones aren’t so I’ll apologize for any weirdness you see. I’m moving on to some selfish sewing now and will have something pretty fun to share with you on Friday- if I can finish up the sewing for it that is!!

Lotus Pond Sketchbook Shirt

Posted on June 29, 2015 by oliver's fancy

I’ve got one last Kid’s Clothes Week make to share with you- bringing my total makes this week to 4 pairs of shorts, 1 tank top, and 1 button down shirt. I had one more button down shirt that I was hoping to get to this week, but that was pretty ambitious so I’m not bummed to have skipped it for now . I’m just happy with how much sewing I was able to squeeze in this week!

This is an Oliver+S Sketchbook shirt (guess I was on a roll with that pattern) in a size 2T for Eliot. Timing wise this worked out well for me because I made Oliver a sketchbook shirt in 2T last spring for Vintage May (blogged here) and so all the pattern pieces were traced out already. Woot! This shirt is about as complicated as the shorts are easy so it was a huge bonus to have the pieces traced- about 7 or 8 of them in total, I think.

I’m not normally a short sleeve button down person but I think it’s pretty cute on little boys. Plus I’m so not motivated to do all the sleeve placket/cuff work of a long sleeve for a shirt that will be grown out of within a year’s time! I’m not a completely crazy sewing mom. lol. Even with the short sleeves, I had a time of it with those sleeves! I don’t normally struggle with sleeve easing, but I ended up with quite a few puckers this time. In the efforts of not being a perfectionist and also not having any more time to mess with it, I left most of them alone and hope no one will be looking closely enough at his shirt to notice them.

Snail fabric is from Rae’s Lotus Pond line for Cloud9. (not sure where I bought this but I found some at Fabric.com) I’ve been saving this fabric for this very shirt ever since I saw Jessica’s version…a long time ago! Side note- we miss your blog and Film Petit very much, Jess (not that she’s reading this but I think Kristin is so I’m speaking to you too 😉 )!!

I was just going to make the shirt straight snails, but as I was cutting it out I had the idea to add some chambray for a bit of contrast. The chambray used is double cloth and quite a nice weight (cannot for the life of me find a link to the exact fabric-sorry)! I wavered back and forth on exactly what pieces to make contrasting and ended up going with the collar, yoke and pockets in the chambray. I posted a picture of my progress on Instagram and was blown away by how much love this little shirt got. Thanks to all my IG friends for bolstering my confidence because I had a moment of self doubt as to whether the final project was actually any good or not. Love my supportive IG community!!

The 2t size ended up fitting Eliot fairly generously- leaving plenty of room to grow, but I’m happy with that because now it will hopefully last him a while before he grows out of it. Two year olds are a bit of a booger to photograph- hence the animal cracker bribes you see in this pictures. Whatever works, amiright? Anything is better than crying pictures. And that wraps up my summer 2015 kid’s clothes week! I didn’t stick too closely to the travel theme but I kinda feel each of my items could loosely work in that framework…I mean, snails are always traveling around to get places, right? 😉

Kids Clothes Week Fall 2013

Posted on October 30, 2013 by oliver's fancy

This past week was Kid’s Clothes Week, and while I am late reporting in on my productivity, I did get a few things finished (or mostly finished) last week. When taking inventory of the boys’ clothes, I realized they could both use some more church clothes. Perfect time for me to try out the Oliver + S Sketchbook Shirt pattern that I picked up during their end of summer inventory sale.

I have been saving Ian’s old button down shirts for this very purpose and got one out to perform surgery on for this pattern. I started out with one for Eliot. Let me tell you, I have decided that from now on, all button down shirts I make for the boys will be short sleeved! Although the little tiny cuffs and button plackets are so adorable, they require way too much time and work! Much easier to make a simple short sleeve and then wear a long sleeve shirt underneath if need be! I actually ran out of time to put the buttons on the shirt so you will see Mr. E wearing safety pins to hold himself together!

The shirt turned out really well but a little big. He’s growing quickly though so I anticipate him getting quite a bit of use out of this shirt before winter is over.

Now as far as my other KCW project, it involved Oliver’s Halloween outfit and I haven’t been able to get good pics of him wearing it yet so expect that post to come up sometime on Friday, after our trick or treating experience. Let me just say that I think it’s pretty adorable even if it is very simple and practical. I’ll leave you with an IG picture as a hint. 😉