Prosaic sewing, boy's pyjamas, Burda Style 02-2013-146

Not so long ago, I went to a sewing social event, Frocktails, with the Brisbane Spoolettes. I thoroughly enjoyed this evening, despite my usual introvert inclinations, but being recognized by my blog, although highly flattering, was also a bit strange, particularly as the impressions people hold about my life from my blog are not quite what I expected. For instance, apparently in the blogsphere, my offspring are my 2 daughters, who sometimes are only 1 daughter.

 Just for the record, here is my poor sewing neglected son, in one of his favourite photo poses - headlessly unidentifiable. No wonder he has a limited virtual presence.

 These are some of his thrilling new pyjama shorts, made from recycled business shirts. This particular pair are made from a custom shirt I made for my husband (who also may or may not exist in my blog identity, according to my Frocktail sources) The other 2 pairs are mostly composed of fabric sourced from purchased shirts. My husband is very fond of luxurious shirts. One of the shirts was made from gorgeous Italian cotton, far too nice to throw out just because the collars had become shabby, and the other is a boring regulation cotton chambray. I sort of used the trousers pattern from Burda Style 02-2013 (146)

http://image source:www.burdafashion.com/images 

I eliminated the front pockets, the pleats, the darts, the back welt pocket, the fly and made my own waistband, but the crotch curve may still be the same ;)  For the first pair (pictured) I added a draw string to the elastic in the waist, but I was told this was an unecessary detail.

These trousers run to a size 158, which is not terribly common for Burda, smaller boy sizes are much more common. I cut the fronts of the shorts from the sleeves (size 12 boy, size large shirt) and the backs of the shorts from the fronts or back and front of the shirt. There were a few shirt backs left over - these have been used for the waistband of the shorts and also as the lining for a hat. The much washed cotton is beautifully soft for both these purposes.

 Woven cotton sleepwear is far superior to any knit things or poly wovens you can buy for the subtropics. Sewing is so useful. That was my mantra. I had to keep telling myself how thrifty and useful I was being the whole time I sewed these.

My son, despite his overall lack of interest in clothing other than for practical purposes, is quite particular about how his clothing feels. I have used flat felled seams throughout the main part of the shorts, and enclosed all other seams. Hopefully this will give the pyjamas frequent use and some longevity. You may notice that they are perhaps a tad large, this is also for longevity. I have heard that growing out of all their clothes overnight is an issue with 12 year old boys

Making pyjamas should give me a very good excuse for some sewing frivolity, but not just yet. I am in deadline December, despite telling myself I would not sew any presents for Christmas this year. Apparently my nieces feel that I have to live up to my reputation as the sewing Auntie!

Loud Kiwiana shirt Burda Style 03-2013-147

I am so pleased that my son has a penchant for loud shirts, as unfortunately I find sewing for males generally tends to the unbearably boring, or impossible interestingly challenging to both the seamstress and her precious sewing machine (kayak skirt anyone?), but a cheery fabric vastly improves this state of affairs. Who could be bored with busy Kiwis?

This shirt is the result of some souvenir fabric shopping by my boy (well, he has to do something whilst his mother hangs about in these shops), barely moments (in fabric terms) after we got home from a rather nice family holiday to our next door neighbours in New Zealand.
This particular fabric was purchased because we did not manage to see a real ornothological Kiwi this trip, and he was a tad disappointed. This is entirely our fault for managing to see one on our previous trip, which was very lucky indeed.

The shirt, you may be surprised to hear, is from an entirely new-to-me pattern, as Burda kindly printed a larger size bog standard boy shirt pattern just in time to compensate for the pernacious effects of a growth spurt on my previously well used pattern from many years ago. The pattern, Burda Style 03-2013-147 has a collar with stand, contrast yoke, which I did not use, and long sleeves, which I also did not use, and a cut on button placket, which again I did not use. It is a nice slim cut, unlike Big 4 children and youth patterns, which is a good style to fit my nice extra-slim son. Your mileage may vary.

technical drawing from http://www.burdafashion.com/fr/Magazines/burda_Style

The only real difference from the previous bog standard smaller boy shirt pattern is the nifty buttoning pocket flap, which conveniently contains his public transport card in the otherwise uselessly small chest pocket which still seems to be taking up rather a lot of the actual chest (see above about slimness of boy).

Burda has the pocket in a contrasting fabric in their version, with the flap in the main fabric, which I reversed, but I am inclined in retrospect to think I should have made the whole thing in one fabric - the Kiwis don't really need any complementing here, being sufficiently visually stimulating without any other distractions, but what is a loud shirt without some questionable pattern matching?.
Talking about pattern matching, I made no attempt to do this across any seams what-so-ever, which was strangely liberating, and I don't think it detracts too much from the appearance of the garment.
There is no doubt that I will be using this pattern again, Burda prints some great basics. I am wondering what interesting print I will be using for the next one.

Burda Style 02-2013-146 Self Inflicted Emergency Sewing

I am sure there are people who have calm and unrushed mornings, and have all their children beautifully organized.
I am not one of those people. On Thursday morning, my son arrived in the kitchen, fully dressed, which sounds like a good start. However, I sent him back to his room, as he was supposed to be wearing his sports uniform.
This did not go down well.

"I'm not wearing my sports uniform"

"Yes you are, I just got a start of term note from your teacher saying sports uniform on Thursdays and Fridays"

"That's for girls, I can do sports in my normal uniform"

I saw his point, sports uniform being woven nylon shorts with knit poly shirt,and formal uniform being woven poly shirt and woven poly shorts (dresses for girls), these poly shorts having been sneakily exchanged for woven cotton shorts by his heat conscious mother. However, I don't think annoying the school about uniform is appropriate behaviour, so we continued the conversation through his bedroom door.

"I hate my sports uniform"

"Tough"

"The shorts are too small"

"Rubbish, the last time you wore the shorts was only 3 weeks ago, last term, how can they be too small"

He emerged from the bedroom. I had to eat humble pie. The shorts were far too small.

My son then told me that he had been wearing his formal shorts all last term for sports.
I had not even noticed (admittedly, both sets of shorts are supposed to be knee length and navy blue, and are not particularly distinctive, other than one having a waistband and fly and the other having an elastic waist without fly front.

My son and I discussed the reasons for informing his mother about too small clothing at times other than immediately before school.

I wrote an "I am a disorganized mother, who cannot send her child to school in the correct uniform, please don't give him detention" note to the teacher.

He cunningly left this behind.

Having the morning off work, I made a new pair of sports shorts, instead of more amusing sewing, under the influence of maternal guilt.

They are an adaptation of Burda Style 02-2013-146, which are actually a pattern for formal trousers for boys in my son's size range. (The previous shorts pattern stopped about 3 sizes ago, and I thought it was time to stop lengthening it and trace out a new one)

(See the grimace on the the boy model? There was a grimace like that on my boy too, when I took the photo, but he doesn't want it on the blog)

 I left in the front pleats and back darts, my son's girth being lower on the Burda size chart than his height, but did not use the fly front, and added elastic to the waistband. I also straightened the leg a little for a more baggy sports shorts appearance.

I was quite pleased with myself.

Then I discovered two pairs of child's size 10 uniform sports shorts in the hand-me-down box.

Sigh

Report from the sewing doldrums

Breaking your right thumb is pretty bad for the sewing output. I wasn't able to trace for a few weeks, or cut with scissors, which has been rather annoying. However, I could knit with a broken thumb, phew! See my luxurious new mitred square blanket

 I could also bake - not so good for the waistline......
Here is my broken garment sewing to go with the last dregs of my broken thumb.

Once upon a time, these were last years' most favoured winter pyjamas (cotton flannel, RTW), that had mysteriously shortened in all lengths over the summer . However, due to the peculiarities of growth, they were still exactly the same relative dimension to the wearer in girth.

I added them to a nearly unworn windcheater, suffering from the same relative dimension changes, but fortunately having started out as a rather long-in-the-body style, and have made this year's most favoured winter pyjamas with very little effort, and a side benefit of a glow of thrift!


The original sleeves were slashed to made the new sleeve insert - added to the windcheater at a similar section of the sleeve, and the appliqued motifs on the front.The original pyjama shirt back and fronts turned into double folded cuffs for the pyjama trousers.

There was also some rotary cutter friendly + already traced pattern sewing.
Here are multiple pairs of yoga pants for different members of the household? 

 

Jalie 2215 in wicking polartech 100 ? powderdry with fold over waistbands from wardrobe culled t shirts and/or cotton lycra. I have sewn these so the waistband seam has enclosed edges on both sides to minimize chafing. The district rep. cross country runner in the family was not available for modelling, but she wants another few pairs. Dull, dull, dull, but terribly Useful and Practical.

I know, doldrum sewing - yawn.
Quick, I will show you some more knitting.

Lovely warm socks. I have not been completely craftless.



Very soon, there will be dozens of finished objects bursting from the backlog of projects this hiatus has caused. Naturally, being limited in sewing, I have been buying sewing things instead.

This removed the thrift glow fairly quickly and has completely undone my stashbusting streak, but I have decided that guilt has no place in my sewing life. Wait until I show you my Chanel knit boucle! It will make a lovely contrast to boy's pjs.

Burda Style 03-2013-151 t shirt variations. How to annoy your son.

Just after I wrote a whingy post about how few patterns exist for boys outside the very small stages (come to think of it, there is a dearth of patterns for tween girls too..), Burda included 3 patterns for boys sizes 134-158 in their March 2013 issue. Naturally, having got out the overlocker and coverstitch for my own t shirt, it was my clear duty to use these machines for something else, so as not to waste all that threading time. See, I do plan my sewing.....



Burda's t shirt is a nice raglan shape with a curved hem , and contrast sleeves.



 To maximize fabric use and cutting out efficiency, it was second nature to make 2 t shirts with the opposing colours. However, this is where efficiency left me.

I am taking the Alabama Chanin class on Craftsy. This has no dull old t shirts in it, but there is reverse applique leaving curly raw edges. Can I claim this as inspiration for the stripe effect here?



Unfortunately, although I think this t shirt looks great, and the teenage fashion panel agrees, the verdict from the recipient is that the reverse side of the coverstitch is ITCHY.



It is clearly boy torture to force someone to wear this t shirt. However, I am ruthless and told the boy he should wear a singlet.

The next t shirt was pure whimsy, and involved very little effort, as I embraced the deliberately messy style I see in most RTW for boys (no doubt because it is very easy to sew!). I am very pleased with how it turned out.





I don't think the cyclist is working quite hard enough going up that hill, but otherwise this turned out quite well.
It has a slightly lower boy torture rating from the recipient, in fact, he said it is quite nice.

The next t shirt is seamstress torment. My son asked for another t shirt, not so fancy thanks Mum. I suggested contrast binding? contrast stitching? A tiny bit of decorative coverstitch?
No, plain.



Now he is happy.

Stashbusting statistics, about 2.5 m of cotton lycra jersey 2012

BurdaStyle 10-2010-147 boy's shirt

There are a lot of people who regularly sew for their sons. I am not one of them, being easily distracted by more-appealing-to-me feminine clothing. However, I often intend to sew for my son, sewing for someone being an expression of true love IMO, and when he goes fabric shopping with me (a thankfully rare occurrence, due to a fabric appreciation duration of approximately 5 minutes) he likes to pick out fabric for himself. He has a good eye for colour and loves a loud shirt print, which are quite fun to sew, really, once I get started. This fabric is a souvenir from New Zealand (January 2012 fantastic family holiday), being pure Kiwiana quilting cotton with a print of the endemic toi-toi.

  

Getting started on this fabric was quite tricky, because he has outgrown the largest size, + 2 uptracings of the shirt pattern I use for him. I got rather distracted whilst pursuing my Burdas for a boy's shirt, but after only half a dozen projects or so, came across this pattern in the October 2010 Burda. 

Technical drawing from http://www.burdafashion.com/fr 

  

This is not a boy's shirt pattern, but a shirt dress/tunic, but as it is just an elongated shirt, and thinking that 10 year old boys and girls do not differ greatly, I went ahead with it anyway, in size 140cm, this being correct in height and only a few cm too big in girth for my son - in the boy's sizes in Burda. I shortened the tunic by 10cm, according to the finished length desired, but made no other sizing changes.

  

 The shirt does fit, but rather too perfectly for a new item for growing child, which is entirely my fault. Apparently 140cm boys are about 4cm thicker in girth than size 140cm girls, according to Burda, and I should have made him the next size up in the girls' size. Fortunately he is slim for his height, in an entirely masculine way of course ;).

  

 You can see that I have made a few adaptations to the pattern.

  

 I shortened the sleeves, for more use in a subtropical climate (also arms grow very quickly out of long sleeves with cuffs), and used contrast fabric for the inner collar stand, inner yoke, and added to the top of the pocket. I constructed the lined yoke by machine using this method. For the front placket, I used a 3 layer cut on folding technique as described in David Page Coffin's book Shirtmaking. I did not try to match any of the pattern, other than cutting with nap, and cutting the fronts so that the pattern lined up horizontally. I also used a fancy topstitching pattern of 3 stitches alternating with a single stitch, as I did not want the topstitching to be lost in the loud print. 

 

 I like the contrast details, and although he looks rather grim in the photographs, I believe this has mild garment approval from the recipient.
 This is another item for the February Stashbusting Challenge, using 1.2m of stash. Unfortunately there are some rather large scraps which I am putting straight into a bag for my quilting mother. There, gone!

psuedo BWOF 09-2008-143, another embellished t shirt

I sat down last night with the dubious dress from the last post, and thought quite hard about deepening the neckline, adding a stay, shortening the skirt and unpicking the waistband to add a new, contrast colour belt. I am very appreciative of this good advice, please don't think I took no notice, but I am a weak woman.
Thinking about doing it was rather exhausting, and lasted about 5 minutes. I put the dress in maybe later pile (AKA the wardrobe) and got out an elephant stamped piece of knit fabric instead.
It was much quicker than retrofitting, I'm sure :).



I embroidered around the elephant with stem stitch, varying between two and three strands for different emphasis, and left some thread ends for the tail.
Then I sewed it into a t shirt, using the boy's woven cossak shirt pattern from BWOF
09-2008 again, coverstitching at neck and hems in pale grey elephant colour thread. The fabric is a nice medium weight cotton/lycra knit.

Unfortunately the elephant had wandered a little off centre during the sewing process (I was rather tired). I added some flattened grass at the rear, and a little upstanding grass to the front to explain the wandering.

I am quite pleased with it, but the boy would not model the t shirt. I hope this means that he does not like modelling, rather than meaning he does not like the t shirt.

Shirt of rocks and school holiday mess making project

The making of new shirts has exceeded the photo modelling capacity tolerance of my son.



Here is the last BWOF 09-2008-143 for the moment, now that there is one to wear, one for the wash, and one for spare in the right size.



The print is allegedly a quilting cotton but is tightly woven, has a very slight sheen, and is a little more thin than your regular quilting print. It is cotton, no poly. I think it is more like a nice shirting cotton. I don't suppose that fabric printed with lots of rocks (or my husband says potatoes) sells as shirting fabric very often though.



The contrast print is regular quilting cotton. I used this print for the tabs, which are inspired by Carolyn's shirt posts. (She is not to blame for the print, I meant the tabs) I was finding the unadulterated boy shirt a little dull, even with such interesting fabric.

I had the day off work yesterday, in order to spend quality time with my younger children, and managed to convince them that playing with fabric would be fun. Much more fun than making another shirt
They took to it with considerable enthusiasm, and mixed results.





I wasn't thrilled with my fabric painting/stamping/stencilling. I think I should stick to sewing when I play with fabric!
I have a few t-shirts to make now, with crafty insertions.

The pointed question. BWOF 09-2008-143 boy's shirt again

Mary Nanna's comments make me laugh. I have here a perfect example of how her insight helps me to keep amusement in my sewing.
I love this fabric. It is a beautiful lawn, and is far more tasteful that the fabric for the last boy shirt, as it was given to me by Hen, when I met her in London.
Unfortunately, it was given to me by Hen, just to make a shirt for this boy, more than a year ago, and boys have this habit of growing whilst their mother allows fabric to mature irresponsibly in her stash because it is special.



I had to cheat a bit on the sleeves, because 7 year old boys are not so consuming of fabric as those who have passed 9. (There is a pocket in that photo too, but despite doing no pattern matching what so ever, it is not terribly visible)
The direction of the cars, I suspected after irreversibly cutting them out instead of some more intelligent option, might give rise to, as Mary Nanna says " pointed questions like, "hmm, did your mother make that..?" ". . I regret this mistake, this does not happen to fabric that is still stash.



When I visited my dear friend this afternoon, with my well dressed boy in his new shirt, I had to explain why her kind question provoked fits of laughter.
She has been kind about my sewing for about 12 years now. I wonder if she will ever be able to talk to me about it with a straight face again?

Loud boy's shirt BWOF 09-2008-143

My son likes shirts made in loud prints, which are rather fun, and I usually make him 2 or 3 each year. He selected the fabric for this one last summer, (local quilting shop) but sadly, his mother has been rather neglectful of his wardrobe lately in favour of fun teenage girl's clothes. I enjoyed the print challenge, especially as I have a sneaking suspicion that there are only a few years left of it.


The shirt is BWOF 09-2008-143, in the largest size 134, which is appropriate to his height.(I will have to look for a new pattern for next year, very sad) His girth is closest to size 122, but having made this shirt previously in a straight 110, 122 and also in a height 128, girth 122, I felt that the shirt is cut rather slim for Australian boy styles, where the shirts tend to be loose, so left it 2 sizes too wide. Men's shirts described here as European cut are more slim through the body, so I guess this would hold for boy's shirts. As in my previous versions, I reduced the height of the collar and the collar stand by 1cm, although this may not have been necessary this time in the largest size - there is no height variation between size 110 and size 134, and I am sure the neck length increases over this height range!

Because I am proud of my pattern matching, here is a close up of the front buttoned.
There may be a little skewifidness of the button placement to assist in the pattern matching, but only a seamstress would notice ;). I would probably have done a better job of this had I considered the lap direction when I was cutting out.

I lengthened the shirt by 7cm, finding it rather short in the body, although the sleeve length is fine. This is the first time I have made a version with long sleeves, but it was a particular request from my son. I think he fancied the plackets on his Dad's shirt, as he asked for a contrast fabric, and selected this one himself. It is not what I would have chosen, but I think it works quite well.





I drew up the placket taking David Page Coffin's placket from Shirtmaking as a guide.My calculator got quite the workout scaling it down, but I did not think the Burda bias strip would have been nearly so satisfying.



The contrast fabric is also used for the inner collar stand.
I used David Page Coffin's method of folding over the fabric x2 for the front buttonbands, and flat felled the side and sleeve seams (dastardly difficult on the skinny sleeves of a boy's shirt, but otherwise left his methods well alone. This made the shirt much quicker than his father's. I used the lined yoke by machine method for the lined yoke, described here.

I made the back lower piece a little wider, planning to pleat it as needed to ensure reasonable pattern matching.
The pleats are very small, but allowed me to line everything up satisfactorarily. I used the walking foot to help with this, and only unpicked once, which might be a record.



Despite his determination not to smile for photographs, my son is quite happy with his shirt.

Boy's trunks

Sewing underwear is not everyone's cup of tea. However, when you are incurably stingy, and there are lots of knit scraps lying about, underwear sewing is strangely addictive.
My poor sewing neglected son has not been a recipient of this sort of sewing in the past, as whilst it is quite easy to chop up a pair of feminine underthings and make a pattern, the additional piecing in the masculine version requires more seam matching than I have been willing to attempt.
Katherineh to the rescue. The skilled and generous author of Blooms Fabric Obsession has launched a pattern blog. How exciting! Her first pattern at Strawberry Milk Run is starting from the bottom up, is free, and includes an excellent photo tutorial for the sewing instructions, and a fitting tutorial. I am very impressed.
The pattern is nicely drafted and true to size. I made size 6 trunks, but cut out the waist height for size 8, as the recipient has a girth between size 5 and 6 on Katherine's pattern, but is size 8 in height according to the Australian children's clothing standard measurements.
I made a little printing error first (see previous post) due solely to my own failure to interact intelligently with my printer, and made a half scale pair. This second pair, above, were originally photographed next to a rather worn out pair of size 4-6 trunks, to show the sizing of the size 6 trunks I had construted in comparison to RTW, but after I lightened the photo to show the details, the RTW pair seemed as if you wouldn't want to look at them without a warning. They are the favoured style of undies, so the similarity of Katherine's pattern was well received. The waist is a litte higher than the RTW pair, so next time I will cut out the standard size 6.
I timed myself with the second pair. Having already set up the machines for the half scale version, it took me 20 minutes to print out, cut out and stick together the pattern, and completely finish the garment. Quicker than a trip to Target, and much more gratifying.
Here is the originial photo if you can cope with worn out boys underdaks.

Burda Style 01-2010-125 Boy's jacket

Terrible thoughts of hypothermic children are haunting me whenever I think about our planned hiking in the Blue Mountains. Delving further into the polar-fleece-under-the-bed, I found a dusty piece of boyish blue Polartech200. Just the thing to relieve my nightmares.
I looked through my Burdas (no April 2011 yet) and found some lovely warm looking, well bundled, children playing in the snow. I suspect it was summer at 2000m elevation, but anyway, pattern 125 from January 2010 seemed just the trick - although a bit boring.





Machine embroidery stitches to the rescue. This started life as a robot, these being the current fad, but it seems to have morphed into an alien through adding eyebrows. Perhaps it is an alien robot.

I hope it passes the boy test. I have kept the colours very low tone, just in case it is a bit babyish....

Instead of zip exposed internal pockets (I may be slightly scarred by the last project, but am using the lack of 2 black zips of the same size as my excuse) I have added a nice easy Kangaroo pocket. These are good for boys who lose gloves (in a mild climate).
I have bound the pocket and hems in swimwear nylon lycra, matte side out, stretching slightly as I applied it for a bit of gather.



I lined the hood with hopefully the last bits of nasty thin Spotlight polar fleece, rather than using a facing, hoping for extra warmth and a more finished look.
I used 3mm elastic cord and stoppers, with the ends of the cord sewn inside the casing, rather than regular cord,to gather the hood, as these are less likely to catch on things than loose ends during adventurous use.

The jacket looks a little big to me, but this is not a bad thing, boys being prone to growth. The Burda jacket was for quilted fabric with fleece lining, so oversize was probably the plan.




I feel warmer already.