A Make a Month – May

I know!

Having taken a couple of months to make a top for myself, during which time my body changed enough to make the exercise almost futile, I decided to put down the needle with regard to clothes for myself for a while. I’ve still got a hankering to make garments, and realised I have the perfect recipient: Fitz. Being small, his clothes are too, which translates as super-quick to sew.

I was gifted this wonderful book by Kyoko when Fitz came along, which is a japanese pattern book dedicated to sewing with knits for babies.

Knits are wonderful for little ones, especially once they get to the wriggly, shuffly stage that Fitz has reached (so quickly!). It’s also good practice for me to work with the overlocker (or lock machine as they call it in Japan), since I realised that my skills aren’t quite as smooth as I’d like them to be, though I think in part the trouble is confidence, for which the only remedy is more practice.

I decided to make the little trousers on the front cover, since they have a gorgeous flared hem, and a cute inset bottom. Sadly I didn’t have contrast jersey so it’s all one colour, but Mr J offered one of his red t-shirts for next time. I’m yet to be convinced… The sizes in the book are 60, 70, 80 and 90 cm, and I made the 80cm – wonderfully, even if they did turn out to be a little long, Fitz is going to continue growing. Rather splendidly, the trousers are called Monkey Pants, which I was compelled to call out several times during the making of, just because it sounds so joyous. I’m still compelled to shout it whenever I put them on him. I really ought to find other ways of being entertained.

Florence has just done a great post about japanese pattern books, so I won’t repeat anything about how simple they are to follow, especially since I hope you can see from this picture how indecently easy these were to make. (One thing I will mention though – I so want the little plastic clips used throughout this book instead of pins. So clever!)

Monkey pants! A little long, but no matter. He seems happy enough in them, and in all I think they took less than an hour to make. It might have seemed longer but that’s because I made the pair of shorts on the facing page at the same time. See? Indecently easy.

They’re not pressed due to ‘must make the baby wear them immediately’ excitement, hence the slightly wibbly looking seam – it’s not wibbly really. I’m going to make another couple of pairs, which will hopefully save some more of his better going out of the house clothes from weaning disasters (weetabix, tomato based sauces …) and give us go to house pants for days when we can’t be bothered to get dressed. Cheap, cheery and above all, replaceable.

You know, I kind of want some for myself…