Ottobre vests and trousers

Can you take the excitement of yet more baby vests?? I certainly couldn't, these were almost too thrilling to sew ;P More Ottobre 05/06 long sleeve vests for my niece, 86cm this time as she's done that annoying baby thing where they suddenly sprout a few centimetres overnight....

Ivory


Lonesome pink


The coverstitch binder makes this so fantastically easy - when it works that is! It had me ready to throw it out the window when it suddenly decided to behave after refusing to stitch properly for three hours!


And a pair of Ottobre trousers from the scraps, I made this more to check the fit and see if my sister likes the style, I don't really like it in these fabrics. She will look like an ice cream! The pattern is Ottobre 05/06 #3, again in 86cm.

"Nine by Nine" quilt finished!

A fanfare if you please......









Phew! The Boy has been waiting on this quilt for over a year now, he was very very happy to open up the blanket drawer last night and see it there waiting for him. I was very very glad to finally have it done lol! The main hold up this time was the backing fabric, he wanted red minkee. Nothing else would do, it had to be minkee and it had to be RED please. I finally found some at a decent price on Etsy, ordered it at the end of November and it arrived January 11th! Just a bit late for Christmas then. Never mind, it's done now and he's happy so I'm happy :)

I tried straight line quilting on this one, outlining the sashing and the centre blocks of each star. It turned out OK but I prefer stippling or meandering, my straight lines aren't really that straight.

Farbenmix Olivia and Ottobre Vilkas in Ooga

Ah, Olivia, how I have missed you! This really is the cutest little dress pattern which for some reason I haven't made for ages. So here we have one from the last of the pink/orange Ooga Booga colourway that I used for the Baby's Christmas Eve pj's. I happened to spot a pale yellow polka dot cotton lycra in the stash while searching for something else entirely and thought yay! that'll go nicely and do you know what? It does.

Here's the dress on it's own, I made the 86/92 to put away for the Baby. Yes, I know, sewing something that won't fit till next autumn is a bit obsessive but at least it's not too small. I made layered sleeves and decided at the last minute to add the hood, I *love* the hood but the knots bother my kids especially in their car seats. Simple solution, I shall leave it unknotted.



Someone on the Ottobre sewing group asked recently about the difference between Olivia and Ottobre's Hilda/Tilda pattern, the Olivia is much more....shapely....than Ottobre's hooded dress which is very straight cut. Olivia's hood is much prettier too and she twirls very nicely.

I dusted off my coverstitch for the hems, it decided to play nicely and the lovely bright yellow thread is very cheery in the middle of winter.



There was plenty of the polka dot knit left to make a pair of matching trousers so I went back to Ottobre and made a pair of the Vilkas trousers, #2 from Autumn 2008. Very quick pattern, nice bootcut shape and not too high in the rise for my shortwaisted kids. I've left off the waist elastic as these aren't for just now, I'll put it in when they actually fit her. Here's the whole outfit.

Mermaid trousers

Almost overlooked these, two little pairs of trousers from Ottobre 01/03, #5. One each for the Baby and the Niece made from the leftovers from the Princess' nightie fest a few weeks ago.

Ooga Booga!

With the arrival last year of the Baby and the Niece I decided to start making Christmas Eve pj's for all of the kids. I have always loved the Ooga Booga pattern so when a big box of co-op fabric arrived a few weeks ago with four different colourways inside I knew just what to do with it. The girls got to pick which colour they wanted and the Boy was pretty much stuck with the Camo but he didn't complain. I used Ottobre patterns for all of these, thanks to my obsession with keeping old tracings I had everything I needed already filed away so they were very quick to get done.

These were for the Baby and the Niece, the pattern for the tops are 03/04 #1 on the left and 01/08 #10 on the left. The trousers are both 01/03 #5 with a tiny alteration, I cut them two inches short and added a two inch cuff so they looked more like pj's - why is it they're just not pj trousers unless they have a cuff? It never bothers me with RTW but handmade must have a cuff or they look wrong lol! This is my favourite colourway, I had two yards from which I have squeezed the pj's and a Farbenmix Olivia dress with enough large scraps left for decent appliques.



The Princess and the Monkey got more nighties from 06/09, they're not into pj's just now. Again I didn't bother flatlocking the seams, I don't really like the look.



The Boy had the Rudolf pj pattern from 06/09, #37 in a 134cm. They looked absolutely enormous while cutting out, how on Earth did my Boy get to be so big without me noticing???



Here they are all piled up ready to wrap, those little monsters are just so cute!

Baby Rails and Bright Stripes

I finally got these finished about a week ago and hubby has given them to their new homes, they were very well received. Here is the Baby Rails pattern:



I quilted it with an all over stipple, took ages!! It's backed and bound with a Robert Kaufman cotton I've had in my stash for a very long time, a pretty lavender shaded check.



And here is a close up of my favourite of the fussy cut fairies I put at the corners.




The Bright Stripes quilt has been made entirely with leftovers from the Boy's quilt, I added a narrow border as the white was just too white on its own, it really needed something else to hold it in a bit. The backing is another Robert Kaufman cotton that has been languishing in my stash for a few years which happened to match the bright colours of the quilt very nicely. And there was one purple fat quarter left from the pack which was just enough to use as binding.



I tried a kind of loopy quilting on this one, I need to work on my technique a lot. Here's the back, I had one leftover square that I used as a label.

A little more quilting

Bit of a catch up post this one, sorry for all the pics! The Boy's quilt top is almost done, here are the last three blocks:







And here it is with the sashing and inner borders in place - it looks a bit bumpy here, I've since taken off and shortened two of the borders which has fixed it and left it laying much flatter.



I have four co-ordinating FQ's left which I'm going to put on as a piano key border, it is getting there!

There were quite a few scraps left over from this so I made a baby quilt which will be gifted to one of Hubby's work colleagues who has recently had a baby boy. It needs something else as a border, I haven't decided what. I didn't have a pattern for this one, I just pieced the leftovers together and made strips while trying to keep some degree of symmetry.



Another of Hubby's colleagues has had a baby girl in the last week (they're just popping them out over there lol!) so he asked me to make a quilt for her too. I have just the right thing to use, this FQ pack which I was given last Christmas.



All lovely soft, glittery pastel colours just perfect for a baby quilt. I felt like a break from triangles so chose a simpler pattern from another of my secret santa books, the centre panel is a simple rail fence:



Then it has a plain solid inner border and the rest of the rail fence blocks make up the outer border along with four fussy cut fairies for the outer corners.



I'm not sure what to use for the backing and binding, I'm sure something will show up though, it's not like I'm short of fabric in this place lol!

And just a final few pics to show you how tough on my sewing space piecing all these quilts have been!

Hard at work on my increasingly messy desk


Snip, snip, snip....I've been finding trimmed triangle points all over the house!


My ironing space, in front of the shoe cupboard which has been out of bounds for over a week.




Okay, that's it, all I've been up to for this time :)