Finally! A Sweater Pants Tutorial

It's happening.  I'm bringing my sweater pants sewing technique to the masses.  (Okay, maybe not "masses", but like, 4 people.  Still.)

You'd be excited by these, wouldn't you?:

Before we start, here are the Four Horses of the Sweaterpants Apocolypse:

1.  Pin, pin, pin.  It it isn't pinning right, it isn't going to sew right.

2.  It's sweater you're sewing, so go slowwww.  If you've got a ballpoint needle, you should use it.

3.  Use a long stitch so your waist will have give.  By long, I don't mean basting stitch of course, but like, longer than average.

4.  Do not fear.  Sweater pants can smell fear.  If they smell your fear, you will make a Thneed.


(Also: for your entertainment, I will occasionally use my expansive knowledge of rap, hip-hop and lite rock lyrics to guide you along through this journey.  You are welcome.)

Pack it up, pack it in, let me begin.-- House of Pain

I like big butts(eams) and I cannot lie-- Sir-Mix-A-Lot

Tuuurn arouunnd...-- Bonnie Tyler

Cut bitch, camera off, real shit blastin'-- Eve

I put my thing down, flip it and reverse it-- Missy Elliott

Baby what a big surprise.  Right before my very eyes-- Chicago

Pin that crotch seam one mooore time.  Once is never enough-- Captain and Tenille

Knowin'...that you LIED, straight-faced, while I cried-- Rod Stewart

Smack it up, flip it, rub it down- Oh nooooo-- Bel Biv Devoe

I got nothing here, folks, but a sudden revelation: what does it mean that our American songbook is so anemic when it comes to turtlenecks.  SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT.

Back, front back, fr-front back, ft-front back, side-to-side-- T.I.

I got it mastered man, in the hood I'm like plastic, man.  Stretch. -- 50 Cent

Did you ever know that you're my heeeeero?-- Bette Midler

Bring it, cute face.

It's Happening Again. Terrible Hats 2.0

Aww, poor little guy thought I was over that embarrassing thing where I work on winter hats an make the children try them on when they're in the pattern fitting stage.

He looks at old pictures like this one of Phinny and laughs, thinking ha ha, you really got the worst of mom's bad sewing didn't...WAIT!  WHAT?!:

Sucka.

Who's laughing now?

Your sister, that's who.

She comforts you, gently whispering, "It's okay little buddy, she won't make you wear this out in public- it's just a rough draft.  Just a rough draft, little buddy.  There there."

This hat is yet another expression of my inability to believe in the limitations of old sweatshirts paired with double-sided fleecy whatever that stuff is called.  I will update you on further humilations iterations of this hat.

Isn't it just terrible what I do to my children.  Terrible.  But when you force a fifth grade tomboy to wear a handmade approximation of Annie's orphan dress and participate in a "Little Orphan Annie Personality-Alike" contest and she wins a Jackson Browne LP and a coupon for unlimited Mr. Turkey hotdogs, this is the result.  It seeps down through generations.  

No one will ever be safe from Mr. Turkey.

National Treasure of Sewing Know-How, Right Up in Here

Is it too pretentious to have two artist references on my blogue two days in a row?  But I get a pass, right, since I didn't post for so long, and because they aren't super pretentious artists, right?

Here's a picture of Phinny after she made herself into a Jessica Stockholder sculpture:

This is what she does when she hangs out while I'm sewing.

That was just for fun.  Now the serious sewing stuff.

All the time all the time I am thinking I should just kick this whole re-purposed fabric thing and make it easy on myself.  Then I can't find any fabric I like, so I'm back to finding the kind of well worn, durable finishes I get from old fabric, and its Groundhog Day.  (Plus there's a whole "Save the Earth" element going on there.)

Here's a recent scarf from striped sweatshirt and a tomato red t-shirt.  I simply sewed a bunch of diagonal pieces of the sweatshirt together and sewed them flat onto the red, leaving the seams undid. Everyone liked it though, so we've designated it a Family Scarf.

And I made this other one out of t-shirts.  

The scarf is not a winner, but in making it, I realized I am the winner of "World's Most Dumb Sewist Award".  Why, you ask?  Oh just this super obvious little thing about it took me like four years to realize that seams with a topstitch will fold over when you sew them against grain.  Oh, so that is why it has happened to every damn knit thing I've topstitched a seam on for the last four years.  

Yeah, I'm a real expert after working almost exclusively with knit fabric for this long.  A reeeeaaal National Treasure of Knowledge right here, my friends.

Bobblehead Loves His Striped Pants

This is really pushing the limits of correct human proportions and I would say that, despite the mathematical impossibility of this child's head size, he is one lethally cute little sir.  In the yellow and gray sweater pants I whipped up.  You own those pants, Griffy.

My babies are 1.  As every friend and acquaintance has observed over roughly the last two weeks, I " have survived".  Parts of me have, yes, though parts of me have been temporarily (I hope) subsumed into the Coiled Snake of Bitchery that is Post-partum Depression.  I'm digging out finally though, now that I actually admitted that I have it.  Have had it.  Continue to have it.  Need to get rid of it. 

I won't go into it too much here, but post-partum depression is a sneaky, evil thing to have.  All this time I just thought many bad things about myself.  That I am an inferior mother, wife and person.  That my pain and rage is a selfish matter made of kicking and screaming that my previously over-indulgent and spoiled existence has been interrupted.   But I think suddenly, thankfully, that I get it.   And it's serious and terrible, and there's a new sheriff in town and that shit is on its way out.  NOW. 

I'd love to go on, but this is mostly my creative blog, so I won't because it could get weird.  I kind of wish I had more of a mom blog because I would love to bust that crazy bullshit wide open and say exactly what its like and talk to other moms who have gone through it.  Suffice to say, if anyone reading has been through it, I feel you, girl.  Yuck.

Alas, we have survived, haven't we.  We had a lovely birthday party and I made a quilted "AND", which was fairly speaking, one of the most satisfying micro-projects ever to grace the sewing table.  I don't know why, but it just made me laugh.

 

Our fella and his mom:

Our ladybaby on her special day:

 Happy Birthday adorable little people of mine.  I love you and I promise I am back to you after this brief recent absence of heart.

Wanted: Shoemaker's Elves

OH I ALMOST JUST WROTE "I COBBLED TOGETHER THESE TEN PAIR OF BABY SHOES".  Then I stopped myself.

But I did make these, and by golly they are going fast, y'alls.  It seems that The People want some soft baby shoes that stay on and promote sartorial self-respect at the same time.  I've told you before not to underestimate a baby's desire to dress well.  And look at this way: the better dressed your baby is the more people will want to hold him or her and the more times you can claim you "just have to run to the bathroom" while you hide in the loo and shoot a few rounds of "Words With Friends" on the sly.  Good plan, no?

Now, I need to talk sewing.  Thems be buggers.  I am having a nice time sorting out the technical issues of baby shoes, and there are many, so it may take a while.  Call these the Beta Shuz.

These fit a 6-12 month foot, per the guideline set by those most ubiquitous of baby shoes, the Robeez.  I realize of course that these are not styled so different from Robeez actually, but to me that like saying, "Hey, your t-shirt is shaped suspiciously like those other t-shirts!", as there's only so many ways to wrap a baby foot in fabric.  The difference we have here is in my patented Not So Damn Ugly® feature. Also, these stay one like crazy well.  But the elastic doesn't strangle the baby ankle either.  So take that.






So, it took me a loong time to make all these, because I have like 8,000 kids.  What I need is an intern!  Now that my studio is in the works, I'll have a respectable place to house an intern, and hopefully get this party started some.  For now, these are mostly sold before I posted them, but there will be a few available at Green Genes in Chicago, and a couple on Supermarket soon too.

Next up: the 0-6 month size.  I have to figure out exactly what is smaller about a younger baby foot and what is not.

Shuz II

I lost those rad shoes I made for Griffin!  BLERGH!  I am so mad.  Though I was a Smarty McSmartytown, and made a pattern before I sewed them.  Ha ha!  Take that, bastardly Gods of Lost Baby Shoes!

New Shuz:

Big Shirt, Little Shirt

Here we have a delightful striped shirt styled in the nautical vein.

This was created for tiny Annika Hedy, since this poor little bean is headed for a lifetime of suffering under the Handmedown Regime.  I am going to try so hard not to do that to her.  You can see by the look on her face that she is not prepared to let me do that to her.

Sewing issues at hand:

Made from a man's LL Bean shirt, this is sewn from an O.P.P. (other person's pattern) and I disagree, per usual, with the armscye/ torso proportions.  But I did want this to be a little boxy, so I'll refrain from getting all up in someone's grill about it.

Secondly, the collar- I want to learn how to make collars out of fabric pieces (instead of trims) but I want them to lay down!  I guess I'ma hafta google that shit.  Unless one of my dedicated 37 readers could just throw me a bone here.  Why does that serged edge, even though I topstitched it down, want to flip outward?!  Jerk.

It's Time For a Talk, My Friends

I am powerless against this bubbling inferno of judgment that has been welling up in my belly for several years.  I cannot stop it.  I will not be silenced.

STOP MAKING UPCYCLED CLOTHES OVER AND OVER OUT OF JUST STRIPS OF OLD CLOTHES.  OKAY?!

We are on the brink of a new frontier here people, and I can no longer abide this misuse of a brilliant era of opportunity and watch such a numbing and simplistic exercise go on and on and on.  In fact, I'll boldly take this opportunity to add that if I see another one of your evil handbags made of old jeans on my computer screen, I will find you and I will smack you upon your face.  If I see one more, anywhere on this internets, I will hire a private investigator to track you from Etsy to your home and I will pound you about the head and neck area with this bag.  And when I come in and rifle through your belongings, you better hope I don't find a pair of unwearable, badly misshapen baby booties felted from a fracking ugly wool sweater either.  Because you will eat those shoes.

Phew, I feel better.  I just had to get that out!  There's more there in the way of complaint, but I'll leave it at that.

As we all know, the economy of reuse is burgeoning and I think it's well time to expect more from designers who are riding the wave.  It's time for the different genres within the new green economy to forego superficial commitments and to dig deeper into what is truly sustainable.

I was having a conversation with my friend Carla Bruni (not the italian supermodel), who is an historical preservationist with an emphasis on sustainability and she agrees with me (and she is smarts) that the current model of "green building", for example, is quickly becoming outmoded .  More conscientious and ambitious preservationists are looking to reuse and re-purposing, among other things, as the "new green".  Well duh.  But I guess it's not so obvious, because I see designers alla time trying to peddle some lethally boring bamboo kids clothing at twice the cost of something that is re-purposed and WAY better designed.  And it sells because people want to do better, in any case.  The bamboo is better, "greener" than new clothing made with the old earth-wasting methods, right?

Yes, but we can do so much better.  How about not wasting all this:

 

Anyway, what is my point (it's always bad when someone has to ask halfway into a written piece what their point is, I know).  I guess it's this:  I hope that there will be more and more designers that possess a talent for a more alchemical transformation of resources, and I hope that the market for this kind of work grows in step.

Right here I was going to post a batch of favorites- things that don't smack of that re-purposed vibe.  And you know what happened when I googled something, meaning to shake down one item I had been thinking of- what the very first thing I came across was?  Can you even grasp the irony that it was this:

"Speaking of blue jeans, here is a very cute idea to make a purse from old jeans.  Once again, being creative and using basic sewing skills can render a unique and treasured gift."

(/insert photo that makes me want to stab my eyes with a stick of hot, burnt marshmallow RIGHT HERE)

It happened, folks.  I am crestfallen.

Whatever.  I haven't the energy to go on.  So much has happened since the beginning of this post.

I guess I'll just have to post a picture of my girl childrens, who are always right on.

"Shuz"

"Those shuz are MINE!"

Baby shoes are really hard to make!  I know you're looking at these little buggers and thinking, 'how hard can it be to take apart a pair of Robeez from the thrift store and sew it all back together?' (Hey wait, that's a good idea).  

Well, since I just always haaaave to line things, these are lined, with a gray suede sole and have 4 different fabrics in them.  Now, if I had an industrial straight stitcher that could power through all this without demons, surely it would have been much easier.  Maybe I should talk nicer to my machine in these times of trial- where I'm holding 4 layers of different fabric together with different stretches and sewing around the curve of the baby-sized heel.  I always berate it.  I'm totally brandist and make remarks about how if I had a Juki instead of a cheap Singer, I wouldn't be having this problem.

Anyway. Shuz.

For the baby boy:

 

Hard to get a shot with shuz in action, but here's a close one (/pegleg).

I Totally Want a Pair of These Cashmere Pants

But my butt is too big.  It would never work.  And, in the words of Dr. Suess: "In an mere ten paces, there would pills in very unsightly places!" Oh well.  I'll just keep making them for bebes.

Because HELLO, so cozy!

 

I learned something very important making these.  That if a pattern is well designed (and this mother better be- you may recall 2011 Battle of the Frontal Butt), that it will be great on a few different baby body types.  I originally created this 12-18 month pants pattern for Phinny when she was shooting up and slimming down.  I haven't changed it here.  (Yes, my not-yet-5 month old son wears 12-18).  I just made sure the waistband was ample for chubs, and let them be long so he can grow into them.  I think that even with the extra length they look right.  I am pleased.