Sewing in Grandmaville

It’s Friday – HOORAYYY !!! 

There will be some sewing tonight…(yes, i am actually writing this quickly while having a coffee break at work!)

…and that reminded me to post a bit of an update about my favorite – sewing for our precious little Miss Sunshine – Juliana. It would take me a long, long time to talk about how cute, smart, silly, playful and just plain amazing this little girl is! She is truly a sunshine of our lives.

So needles to say, this grandma uses every chance to show her love through making things for her.
Sometimes it is things that her parents actually ask for – like this car “catch-all” tote for all her little things. My daughter-in-law found this idea and a simple tutorial on Pinterest and I kinda took it from there…
It is just a simple bag with gusseted corners, but I wanted to give it a bit more body, so I quilted outside layer first and then made the bag. You can find the basic instructions for it HERE

Made it personal of course, for my little miss J 🙂
My all time favorite, when it comes to baby-girl sewing, pink 50wt Aurifil was used for quilting here and I love it, again.

 Pink one was for mom’s car and then for dad’s car, made it a not so…girly? Ha ha!
But since this was a second one, I thought I would add some pockets to the inside layer – for that binky or sippy-cup…

And then cam the big adventure in sewing – making stuff from KNIT cotton fabric – eeek!! You know how we quilters are leery of things that stretch!! But hey, once upon a time, before I was a quilter, I actually did a lot of garment sewing, so it was kinda a coming back of sorts…

I picked a cute pattern by Chelsea of GYCT Designs called Tinley Tee and here is my first trial:

I really love that pattern comes with FOUR different options for sleeves and I actually used TWO of them together – Long sleeve combined with a Flutter sleeve! I also added the pocket on my own, albeit I should have moved it a bit more to the side…but hey, it was just the first one!
Second one, I used some really soft, amazing quality knit from my favorite fabric house, Art Galley Fabric – I just can’t get enough of this sunshine-y yellow print from Caroline Hulse’s collection Gleeful! It just makes me so happy! And my little J looks so cute in yellow too. 🙂
Stitching the neck band – that made me really nervous…but you know what? – it was just fine with little bit of patience and great instructions in the pattern (thank you Chelsea! 🙂  )

And – TA-DAH!! The sunshine version got done!

Isn’t it just so cute?! I am so hooked on making these and keep thinking of different variations!

Speaking of different variations – here is another one! I am of course now also hooked on searching for cute and great quality knit fabrics and found another great source – Monaluna Organic Fabric ! This is from Anya Knits – they are just sooooo soooftttt…..

This time I ventured into making a pair of leggings to match – that was actually very easy!

Not the best photos above, I apologize…It was really late at night when I finished, I just snapped a few and then I delivered them to my cutie-pie asap, so maybe I will have to get some better ones of her modeling it! 🙂

Oh how I love, love, love spending time with her. Playing, singing, dancing, going out for a walk… One evening we ventured in grandma’s sewing room and as I slid the “door” of my fabric stash (my design wall), and revealed my stash (strategically, the part where all kids prints and fabrics are!), she went “OOOOHHHH” – can you believe it?? And then we grabbed a pile and this happened!!!

I swear – she knew what to do!!
I was so excited, I barely managed to snap few photos!!

Oooh I can see some fun times here in our future!! This grandma is counting her blessings…

Wishing you all the same and happy, happy weekend!

Love,
Marija