Monday, August 22, 2011

Sewing with knits: apparently not really my thing

Before Adelaide was born, I had visions of sewing up lots of cute, functional rompers and pants and such using old T-shirts and the like. I had a small stash of old grown-up clothing to cut up for fabric. I even bought a couple of patterns to use.

stripey pants (on the baby)

As with so many things, I didn't quite get around to it pre-baby. And then I continued to not quite get around to it post-baby. Until the very end of my maternity leave, when I finally cut into this old shirt to make a pair of pants.

stripey pants

And I finally finished those pants last weekend.

stripey pants
stripey pants

Why would such simple pants take nearly a month to sew? There are a few possibilities here: (a) I am doing it wrong. (b) Knits are cruel. (c) My sewing machine hates me. (d) My sewing machine hates knits. (e) My sewing machine hates babies. Although I hate to admit it, I'm pretty sure (a) is the most likely option, though I will surely be on the lookout for any telltale signs pointing to (e), because you can never be too safe when it comes to baby haters.

stripey pants

Things I like about this project: I used the pocket of the polo to make a little back-of-pants pocket (extra fun detail, no extra work required!). I rolled the cuffs and just tacked them in a couple of places, which saved me from having to hem them, will allow me to easily let them down as Adelaide gets taller, and looks pretty cute to boot (but I think everything looks pretty cute on this kid, so who am I to judge, really). They also successfully perform the primary pants function of covering the legs and tush (so far).

Things I don't like about this project: Sewing with knits, generally. The not-matched-up stripes on the front side (I did much better on the back, at least). The part where I accidentally cut out one of the front pieces facing the wrong way and didn't have enough shirt fabric left to recut. So, though you can't see it in these photos, the fabric on one side of the front is inside-out.

The pattern is McCall's M6223, by the way. And it was easy to follow and put together, aside from my whole inability to cut and sew the fabric thing, but that is not the pattern's fault. Unless someone is willing to let me blame it on the pattern. Anyone? Anyone? No, I thought not.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

SEWR! (those are your initials, if you hadn't caught the catchiness of them yet) I can't BELIEVE you cut up that shirt! That was a fabulous shirt!!!! I am only not angry because it's now on cutiepatootie's bum. Sigh. Goodbye, shirt.

Sarah said...

RGW! (I assume that comment is from you, as I can't imagine that anyone else feels such an attachment to that particular shirt.) I regret nothing!

Anonymous said...

You 2 crack me up. LPW is sitting here in tears seeing the cut up shirt! But he is oh so happy that the cute baby is wearing it now!

annette said...

That dark pink polo made some pretty darn cute baby pants people!
I would blame all sewing difficulties (including miss-cutting the one half of the front) on the sewing machine. I always blame my machine, because really the machine causes such headaches as to make the person operating it into a crabby mess.
Adelaide looks fab in the pants btw.

Sarah said...

Thanks for the back-up, Annette...for both shirt-cutting and sewing-machine-blaming :)