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Welcome to my Blog

I am a grandmother to 4 little girls. I blog about the things I make for them, review patterns, provide tutorials on how I've dealt with techniques or problems, which I hope may help others, and give links to the (mostly) free patterns I use. Every so often, I do a 'Best of..' post listing the best free patterns I've found under specific headings - babies, girls, boys etc. Enjoy the Blog!

Thursday 18 June 2015

Dungarees and Rompers for Girls and Boys

I've titled this 'for boys and girls', because most types of dungarees, romper suits and trousers work just as well for either. So though my pictures in these posts will nearly all be little girls, most of the trouser-shaped clothes will suit boys as well. In any case, dresses and skirts are not so practical for crawlers or bottom-shufflers, male or female.


In this post, I've featured one particular design, but below that, I've also reviewed some other patterns, mostly free on the internet.

Friday 5 June 2015

Postscript to Onesie and T shirt Dresses - and Shorts!



The best laid plans of mice and men .....

In my last post, I wrote about some ideas for baby dresses, especially the type which is based on a babygro or onesie, and mentioned some of the free patterns I've used or adapted.  All the outfits I wrote about earlier went well, with this one exception:




So I'm now prompted to write again, as I've now remodelled this one into a couple of other outfits. Instead of one dress, my granddaughters A and a now have between them a T shirt and shorts, a onesie, and a baby skirt.


Thursday 4 June 2015

Onesies and T-shirt Dresses

I've found a few patterns for T-shirt dresses on the internet, and, as I had some T-shirt material, I decided I would make one each for the girls.





The idea of a baby's T-shirt dress is usually that you attach the skirt part to an existing onesie, encasing the raw edge of the skirt top in a fold in the onesie. Two problems with this for me. Firstly, it shortens the onesie by the amount of the fold - about an inch or so. Secondly, it would be difficult, without the model being present, to work out exactly where the waistline should go. 

So for two of my versions, I made the skirt part separate, using some of the T-shirt fabric to form a waistband. This does have the advantage that if, say, there is an accident with the onesie, you can still use the skirt with a clean onesie. (Or vice versa.) And the skirt can kind of find its own level on the baby's body, so no problem of knowing where the waistline is.

However, I didn't actually use an existing onesie for any of them, because : (a) I didn't have any onesies  to spare and (b) doing that wouldn't use up my T-shirt material. So for two of the outfits, I started by making my own envelope neck onesie - easier than I expected.

I found a number of useful free patterns on the internet for onesies and T shirt dresses. As I almost always do, I found myself using several different patterns to create my own. Some were too small, others didn't have the neckline I wanted, and all of them provided something useful to help with the making up of the garment. Here are my reflections on some of these patterns, as well as the resulting outfits.