Sewing maternity clothing, take two

As you may have guessed by the lack of posting, I didn't really follow through with this edition of KCW. Whoops. I finished the sun hat (yay!), but then I was all "It's sooo hot and I'm sooo huge and tired," and I gave up on everything ever sewing for the rest of the week.

I don't know whether it's the heat (oh my god, so hot), the fact that there's a toddler to take care of, or just me being a couple of years older this go-round, but damn, the last couple weeks of this pregnancy have been so much harder than I remember from any of the pregnancy with Adelaide. I can't help but complain about it a little bit (sorry), but at least I am sparing you pictures of my puffy feet and such. Instead, I will show you pictures of something I made for myself before KCW and the horrid heat wave of doom.

This skirt may not be much to look at, but it is quite comfortable and filled an immediate wardrobe need (the need to not wear the same skirt to work every single day). It took about an hour to sew up and used about a yard and half of fabric (some of the same purple interlock I used for Adelaide's shorts). It adequately covers me, is really comfy and breezy, and doesn't fall down, so I am rating it a total success. Hey, look, not all my homemade maternity-wear has been a complete failure!

I just winged it, but there are a ton of tutorials out there for similar skirts (both maternity and non), so I'm not going to bother with a more detailed how-to. Basically: rectangles. Nice.

KCWC: Stripey T-shirt Skirt!

It's time for the Kids Clothes Week Challenge over at Elsie Marley, and I am actually managing to join in this time! (Unlike in the fall, when I totally was going to but, whoops, didn't.)

The idea is to do a little clothes-for-the-kids sewing (or tracing or cutting or whatever) each day for a week. So far, so good! Monday's work didn't really end up going anywhere, unfortunately. But Tuesday I put in about 20 minutes and made Adelaide the easiest skirt ever. For real.



After the big project of sewing Adam's shirt, I really needed a popcorn project (you know, like when you totally punt and make popcorn for dinner, except with sewing/crafting) to reset my sewing mojo. And I have been hanging on to one particular ill-fitting T-shirt of mine for ages with the plan of turning it into a skirt for Adelaide.



Easiest project ever:

1. Cut off the bottom off of a women's T-shirt. Keep the existing side seams. Keep the existing hem to serve as the bottom of the skirt. 
2. Cut a piece of coordinating wide elastic a smidge bigger the size of your kid's waist. Sew the ends of the elastic together to form a waistband. 
3. Zig-zag stitch the elastic waistband to the raw top edge of the T-shirt piece, really stretching the elastic as you go. 
4. Force your kid to put on the skirt in the morning before heading off to day care, despite the fact that no one in your family really has time for this, so you can snap some evidence photos for your blog.

As you can see, the skirt is rather big. I started this project after Adelaide was in bed last night and didn't measure her at all. I based the waistband on a pair of her pants and took a wildly inaccurate stab at the length. So, yeah, it's really long, but the waist is big too, so at least it's kind of proportional. Let's pretend I meant to do it this way so she'd have room to grow.

Instant gratification

Well, I've done all the cutting for the dress, but I've been feeling too lazy to get to the sewing-it-together part. All those instructions! I feel too weekendish to devote that kind of mental exertion to it today.

But I did feel like doing some sewing. Just nothing very difficult or time consuming.



So first I stitched up this little cuff with some linen (leftovers from an old skirt I had previously deconstructed), a few buttons (sitting in my sewing box, from who knows where), and a cute cotton print (bought this winter with no project in mind). I like it.



Then I took a look at the remains of this denim skirt, which I had hacked the bottom off of for this apron. Now it should make a pretty good skirt to throw on over my swimsuit for trips to the beach. Nice. This stitching is ostensibly to keep it from unraveling at the bottom too quickly, but really it is just fun to do. It's like scribbling, but cooler. I wish I had more stuff to stitch around on like this.