happy Easter!
welcome happy morning!
Mama's gifts to Harvey were the sheep and some Easter clothes. She'll post more about that later. Our gift to her was letting her sleep in for a bit while we played outside (she was up with Harvey in the night).
Note the new boots as well:
pj model
Happy Easter everyone!
Easter clothes!
It's only when I stop and reflect on years past that I realize how much my sewing prowess has come along due to our sweet firstborn and his tendency to outgrow clothes in a manner of seconds. Last year I only managed to make him a measly pair of pants for Easter clothes. This year I pulled together a set of pants, a vest, and a tie, all the week before without too much sweat.
playground catalogue shot, courtesy of Harvey not being able to sit through church
The pants are the same pattern I keep using over and over, which is to say an elastic-waste pattern drafted from a current fitting pair of pants. The vest uses an online pattern from burda style, and the tie is someone's temporarily free online pattern which I found and drastically reduced in size (be warned if you're trying to make this one - it says toddler tie but it's really quite too big for a 2-year old.)
You may recognize the orange fabric from last year's eater pants. I bought 2 yards of this fabric in Ithaca the summer before Harvey was conceived... I saw it in a sewing store and immediately pictured a beautiful baby dress for my hypothetical one-day daughter. That daughter not yet materialized, over the intervening years the fabric went to a dress for someone else's baby, the lining of last year's pants, and then this ensemble. This project pretty much decimated the rest of my stash: the vest is completely lined in orange and the back is orange as well, and that teeny tiny tie ate up a huge chunk of fabric as ties surprisingly do. I'm not sure if the bits and pieces I have left will be salvageable for a baby dress of my own. It's sad to see it all gone, but somewhat gratifying as well. I can't just use the same orange every Easter in perpetuity, after all. And as Dan lovingly encouraged me, "You'll find other fabric you like some day."
I also made Harvey a critter for an Easter present, which I guess is becoming tradition too. Last year it was two bunnies, this year it was a sheep.
baa baa
I used this pattern, which I also used in miniature at Christmas for Harvey's nativity sheep. The pattern calls for strips of fabric to be sewn on as wool, and while I'm sure that looks lovely in quilter's cotton it just looked stupid in the fleece I had on hand. So I scrapped that idea and embroidered little curly-cues to represent the sheep's wooly tendrils. Perhaps you can't tell from the picture, but there are three colors of embroidery thread interspursed over the body of the sheep. Yeah, it kind of took a long time, but not as long as say knitting a sweater. And in the end all that matters is that he picked it up and hugged it.
mama made all of it
So a rather successful day for crafting all around. Dan will write later about all the fun things we did today. I only provide the wardrobe.