New clothes for kids

Sometime ago I got this master idea to cut more clothes at the same time so I could just sew them all at one go. But... you won't cut that amount at one go. You won't even sew them at one go, at least not if you have kids and all the other duties in the house. It took actually weeks before they were finished and then with the summer trips couple more weeks to get the photos here to the blog. I first mentioned them here. But here they are, finally!

These are made out of new fabrics but due to my frugal nature I will never throw away a piece of fabric so I used scraps from my scrap fabric box and of course saved everything that was left from these. First couple things I'm proud of:

The top part is new fabric, second class but the mess that made it second class was easy to work around as it was on the bottom edge of the piece. The hem in this is upcycled from old t-shirt! So easy, no need to sew the hem line, just cut, gather to right size and sew together with top part.

Ah, Frozen. My favourite shirt because of the use of the fabric and my daughter's favourite shirt because Frozen:

I had quite big pieces in my scrap fabric box (big pieces for me are something that almost makes part of kids' shirt) that go nicely together and I happened to find interesting looking pattern from Ottobre-magazine where the shirt was already made out of small pieces. My pieces were so small though that I made also the back part from two pieces. We went to our summer cottage for a week and she refused to use nothing else than this shirt - when she wasn't wearing swimming suit.

I rarely buy new fabric, only if it is in good discount or if I really need something. But what I like to buy are the leftover parts from other sewers. Many sewers don't want to use their time to use all the scraps that are left over from other projects and I understand it, it takes time to cut them and especially it takes time to look for matching pieces. But lucky for me, many of them sale them in Facebook groups! I hope more people would do it, I suspect that many pieces like this go to the trash bin when their owners don't think that someone would have use for them. If you do that and are reading this, can you think about offering the scrap fabrics to someone instead of throwing them away? I usually pay something for them (plus the postage) but only when the price is descent, after all, they are just that, scraps, uneven pieces that you don't know for sure if you can finally use them for something or not. I use these scraps a lot and they offer constant source of inspiration. It is almost like upcycling trash! But don't they say that someone's trash is other one's treasure? So true.

Other dress with the same pattern as the first one (modified from a shirt pattern, hem and butterfly sleeves cut without any particular pattern):

For the hem I used a piece of fabric that was already right size in height. I have used usual zig zag to finish the hem and sleeves.

Leggings for my daughter, pattern from Ottobre-magazine with modifications to height and width. Also the original one had only fake pockets, I changed them to real ones because the fake pockets are annoying, they look like pockets but you can't fill them with stones or pine cones or other treasures like that. The real pockets would have worked better with separate waist band though but they will do as it is. The piece with pink pony is also from my scrap fabric box.

I also added knee patches right from the start and the back pockets I made with the same fabric.

Then to my son's clothes. He doesn't very much like Star Wars, Spiderman, Batman or monsters or anything like that. It seems that 4 year old boys should wear only those kind of clothes with the same colours as the adult men do, dark colours, grey and black that is. What if they scare him and he doesn't even know what those creatures are? I also don't think he needs to know just yet. He likes bright colours, cute animals and sometimes cars and tractors will do if they look nice. Try to find those from the shops, it is near impossible if you don't use tens of euros for one piece of clothing. And as I use rather tens of euros for a bag of clothing they are pretty much out of the question. At this moment it is actually cheaper to make clothes that he likes than try to buy them - if you compare to the small companies' expensive clothes. Don't get me wrong, I know exactly why pants or shirt cost 30-40e, they should if the workers get anywhere near descent salary but I just can't simply afford that. Not especially when the time that the clothes fit is so short. The fabric for all the following either with good discount, from other sewers (some kind of second hand fabric) or again from my scrap fabric box.

Cute, friendly tigers and I thought my son would wear it as soon as he sees it. How wrong can I be? He decided that the buttons were disgusting. These:

I have no idea why but he was pretty strict about it. Then one day few days afterwards I simply closed the buttons and offered the shirt and he approved because after all, the friendly cheetahs (yes, he decided they are cheetahs, snow cheetahs actually even though he well knows what tiger looks like...) are cute. Also great picture to show how I want to save also money and time - I used black thread for all three shirts and also to darker pants. Why change it all the time when it doesn't show anywhere? Also saves money when you don't have the threads in all rainbow colours without lessening the quality of the clothes. No one sees it so it harms no one.

One shirt with vehicles:

The vehicle fabric was just a bit too short so I added the sleeves and hem from other fabric. I would have liked to use something else but couldn't find anything that would at least somehow match with turquoise.

And his favourite:

It is colourful, it has cute, smiling animals and all his favourite colours (blue and green). For all the shirts I used one raglan sleeved pattern from one of the Ottobre's (can't remember which one) and just made some modifications for each shirt.

Some leggings for him too:

The two pairs on the right were approved right away, they both have something green in them but the ones on the left... I thought we might have a problem as the fabric definitely isn't the colour/style he likes but I found it cheap from local store and it seems to be quite nice quality and I thought they would do as playground pants. But no. I was told that he doesn't like them, he won't ever wear them and I was forbidden to put the pants to his closet. They say that the girls are picky with their clothes and boys let you wear them anything you like but that most certainly isn't true. I have a very picky 4 year old boy here.

That was quite some work! But I'm happy, I used many different fabrics and thus making my fabric piles at least tiny bit lower and also used many from my scrap fabric boxes, even upcycled a hem from one shirt. Of course they were fun to sew but the cutting - I don't miss that. And now kids have new clothes to wear for pre-school and kindergarten!

Next time, something upcycled! Meanwhile you can check my eight new worry eaters: http://upcyclelina.blogspot.fi/2016/07/more-upcycled-worry-eaters.html or read about our short summer trip: http://upcyclelina.blogspot.fi/2016/07/summer-time.html