another hoodie 'n' stuff

I'm excited by the success of Clem's purple hoodie... so excited I have a bit more velour on its way in the post soon for the other boys. In the meantime, I hunted around for old clothes to try my hand at re-purposing. I see a lot of lovely creative use of old t-shirts and sweatshirts around the bloggy world and I really admire the ethic.
I dug out an old grey hoodie of Andy's that I'd started embroidering aeons ago, but it was old and ragged and not worth continuing with. And I found another that had a great print but Andy had never really liked the fit (online purchase). And another Spoonflower scrap.
Chop, chop.
Sew, sew.

Clem was delighted by the idea of another hoodie with 'this music thing' on it. (Pattern from Sublime Stitching.)
But it's been too warm here to wear it and he was not in the mood for photos.

Pattern was Farbenmix Yorik again. I lengthened the arms and body a little this time. I'm sure it will be worn in due course.

I've actually been sewing like mad lately and have also churned out some new PJ pants for the almost-11-year-old:

totally Franken-patterned, not worth crediting but the fabric is flannelette 'Boabab by 2 Mod Moms'

and a teeny tiny version of the Envelope Neck Tee from Growing Up Sew Liberated, for my brother's soon-to-be-born little boy.

Wow, baby clothes use up such a tiny amount of fabric! I would never have thought I could get an entire garment out of that little scrap I had left of these toadstools. There was a lot of frustration and unpicking over sewing the neck binding. Not the pattern's fault, it's just I was trying to get all clever with my coverstitch machine. I ended up using the single needle 'chain stitch' feature for the first time. The manual rather unhelpfully suggests this stitch is useful for wovens or other fabrics with little stretch.  Uh, isn't that what you use a regular sewing machine for? So I turned to the good old internet and found this reference to my machine, which shows the chain stitch used on stretch fabric. And yeah, it works. It looks like a regular straight stitch on top, but on the bottom is kind of loopy which allows it to stretch. It's fairly simple to swap from cover stitch to chain stitch and back so I can see myself using it a bit. Now I know what the heck it's for.

And you know what? I really really really should be doing some work that's urgently needed for first thing tomorrow but instead I've been watching Home & Away and blogging and reading Harry Potter to the big boys and having a cup of tea and I can put it off no longer.

See ya round like a rissole!

- Jane x