Hat Trick, Indeed!

Do you know what a Hat Trick is? I do. Because my hometown is in the middle of friggin' nowhere and all they do there is fish and play hockey. But I digress.

This trick of a hat is born from the carcass of that angora sweater that I made the fuzzy tallpants from. You should always use the whole animal. Two orange wood buttons later and a down-to-the-mat struggle getting the long skinny tubes turned inside out for the hat string, and here we are.

This is the result of that blue hat pattern I posted last week.

See here, bald baby with protective angora helmet:

Tall Pants, The Sequel

I will send out a warning now. This is perhaps only the second pair of tall pants in what might be a full-blown obsession.

Just when you think there's nothing to be done with a turtleneck, I bring you this idea of the tallpants. Tallpants topped with a cozy, stretchy top that hoists up to the armpits is WHAT YOUR BABY WANTS. Trust me. If those pants come from a sweater that has buttons on the sleeves, well then your business is gonna get chic, ladies. Real chic.






A note of caution: If you want to sew from sweaters or shirts that have stripes, lining them up can be tricky, whenever there is a seat panel and especially if some kind of busy-body serger gets involved. You really have to pin with precision and baste your seams and all those nuts and bolts.

Speaking of nuts and bolts. There are a couple of good tutorials on-line that can unravel the mystery of making pants from shirts and sweaters. Get it? " 'Unravel' the mystery"? Live with that joke, people.

For a tutorial on the t-shirt upcycling into pants, thanks to Rookie Moms as I said in a previous post, and if you didn't see it on their blog, here, I am handing it to you. Handing it right to you. So you don't have to do any work. Because you are tired.

http://www.rookiemoms.com/make-some-easy-kids-pants/

And then say for instance you make some pants and you don't want to admit it, but your baby is, well, rotund, or otherwise hilariously and adorably shaped. You can modify the shape of the pants with subtle changes to your simple pattern. Here's a .pdf file to make it all crystal clear. Let's call it a Tuckus Template. You have Sew, Mama, Sew! bloggers to thank for this:

http://sewmamasew.com/blog2/?p=213

And finally, say you will admit to being too much of a skeerdy cat to add a butt panel yet, and your baby is skinny. Then you can just chop the arms off of a sweater and sew them together basically. This page on cafepress called "That's Kind Cool" shows you how, very nicely.

http://www.cafepress.com/thatskindacool/864331

Nubbly

And for the inspiration part of the blog, here's the first post in the series. Nubbly, well-worn textiles are on the top of my list today. Like this little variety here:


Tribal Moroccan Beni Ouarain carpet from Moroctribal.com




A vintage linen cart cover, from Parna.co.uk:






Vintage Japanese boro textile turned pillow and throw at Tricot Naturelle:

It Ain't Easy Being a Milliner's Muse

Let me tell you something about making a hat. Even a simple hat. It requires mad skills in the departments of geometry, sewing and aesthetics. I have a whole new respect for hatmakers. Just attempting a well formed sunhat in double layer linen required me to make about 14, 231 practice patterns to get the right fit. Here was the finished piece which I was quite happy with if only for the fact that I escaped the common pitfall of the frumpy, square poofy top-hat that results from half of the free patterns on-line and also the overly rounded baby-doll floppyness that was the product of any of the other half of the patterns. All in all it was a valiant first effort.





Now that it's getting cold, next up are a series of winter hats. My baby has no hair, you see, so I am going to have to keep her noggin cozy. And so she was patient enough to let me fit her with the first draft of a three-panel hat pattern, which will hopefully spawn some lovely sewn knit baby lids. We'll see.

Bored? Bored of a onesie?

Well then sew a little leaf peeking out of the collar on it. Whynot!

Brrrrrr. Baby it's getting cold outside...

But not for you! In my zeal to create a barrier between my fragile baby child and the harsh elements of winter here in Chicago, I have begun to make warm and cozy things. Things that will engulf the head, torso, entire body of my little bean.

I started with these here pants made from an angora sweater. The ribbed waist (made into the legs) and the tall ribbed turtle neck, made into the top, tall part of the pants. It's all Tallpants from here until April, people. For these pants from sweaters acrobatics, it's best that you have a serger, obviously. Maybe even neccessary. I don't know. I don't actually know anything about sewing yet.

See the cocooned little bundle here in her first ones: