Sew Saturday:Sweet Feet

Agh! I thought I would never get this project completed and it's quite cute, amazingly enough and what a relief because I thought this would never end. First of all, it's pattern number two so when I picked up piece number two I thought it was the pattern instead of the piece which is why there is no giraffe. I mean, there is one, it's just on the back. Yeah, you always wanted a giraffe on the back of your shirt, right? Of course! Brilliant! Totally intentional. Sigh. So that was a pain. The hat has a giraffe too, only it turned out placed badly so the neck is by the face instead of the head, just wrong, so I inside outed it so you can only see the thread, and it's not bad like that. If that makes sense, which it probably does. Oh, picture!

  

You can't see anything I'm talking about but that's okay. The booties and the hat are made out of a delicious wool they use for reenactments and shakespeare plays. Really rough weave that makes it almost look hand knitted without the time it takes to hand knit! I used a pattern from Burdastyle, 12/09 for the booties and I've never used their baby patters so I was leery, but it was fine. It didn't call for lining and was made out of flimsy cotton which would not do at all, so I elasticated the tops and made a removable cotton lining that can be used without the wool if you'd rather a light boot. 

And the hat was from Ottobre, maybe fall/11 and I loved how this hat fit. You can never know until you sew it up if it's going to be ridiculously small or huge but it worked! 

The shirt was also Ottobre, a different issue, but it was not my favorite shirt from them. It called for snaps on both shoulders which is lame because what baby's head is so big that it can't fit through shoulders without taking off both snaps. So I fiddled it, combined the front and back binding, put in only one shoulder snap, and the neck hole is still too large. It might have something to do with my not reading the instructions, but I say it's because the pattern was faulty. The double snaps thing was so annoying I'm not going to use this pattern again anyway. I think I'll stick to envelope tops because I don't like the metal of snaps touching skin, you know, metal sensitivities are not fun for babies. This top I double folded the seam over the snaps though so it doesn't touch skin, overall a pain. Hemming this shirt... um, I bought a double needle, very excited to use it, the first stitch didn't even happen because the bottom came off the top. Is that called a shank? Whatever it was called, that double needle is the biggest piece of junk the world has ever seen. I'm going to write a scathing review on Amazon, where I bought it. That'll show them. So I ran my straight stitch around twice. Not a big deal but I was going to be all pro with my twin needle. sigh. I tried this outfit on my baby for fit and photo although it's intended as a gift and not for her, because cute stuff is twice as cute on a cute stuff, or something, but she's not a boy although I like the pea green with pink. It's a great contrast. Maybe I'll try that on me:) WE could match! What do you think? Can you tell how tortuous this was to make?