American Girl clothes

Both my older girls have American Girl dolls and they both still play with them frequently.  We have random doll clothes laying around the house but I have only made a few things.  Doll clothes seem fiddly and small and when I had lots of other projects on my list they just never seemed to make it to the top of the list. 

Well, fast forward (or maybe rewind at this point) I was hugely pregnant and bored.  Not knowing when I would go into labor I had my bag packed, the carseat installed, the house clean and the fridge stocked.  And I waited.  And waited.  And waited some more.  She was a week late!  So during that waiting I decided to make the most of my time and make doll clothes?  It was weird.  I can't explain why I thought making these would be a good use of my time.  But I digress...

The girls are thrilled and love the new clothes so I can't really complain.

First I started with a hoodie.  The pattern is from Liberty Jane, but I can't remember if it is a free one or one I had to buy.  I probably bought it but that was 2 years ago....

Modeled!

 

 

She's so stylish!

 

 

Separating zippers that small are hard to find!

 

Then I moved onto jeans!  I really wanted them to look like jeans so I got out the jean thread and top stitched these!  I also added pockets and a fake fly.  They ended up being a tad too tight so if I make them again I need to add a little bit extra room at the waist.

 

 

 

 







 

 

 



 



Even after this I still had almost 2 weeks to wait before baby came!   So I made baby clothes.  I was probably nesting, but at the time I was just trying to keep busy.

Diaper bags

I have a confession.  I am a seamstress who started out sewing diaper bags and I was thisclose to buying one for myself.  I know I know, lame!  I had the pattern, I had yards and yards of beautiful fabric but I lacked the motivation.  But I finally was forced to make it when my girls both got the stomach flu at the same time and we had to stay home for 3 days!  I go stir crazy so I needed a project.  I brought my sewing machine upstairs and got to work, in between cleaning up puke.... 

I started with 4.5 yards of beautiful Kate Spain fabric in the Fandango line.  One of my all time faves and the Fishsticks Mama and Baby bag. 

I love the bag it's very cute but the pattern was somewhat frustrating. The instructions were clear, but I don't think it should have been a PDF. There were so many pieces to tape together and I had all these little rectangles and odd shapes to take together and half weren't labeled. It was maddening! It took over an hour just to get the stupid pieces taped up!

The bottom left is what I am talking about! How am I supposed to know where that goes? And then the top right at least had words so that you could figure it out by the process of elimination.

This pattern had 27 pieces of fabric, 4.5 yards all together and has 12 pockets!!  It took me about 7 hours over 2 days to finish (between puke clean ups!).

The front is basically 2 big pockets on top of one another that are divided in half (into 4 separate pockets) with stitching down the front. 

The back has one big zippered pocket.

The inside, on mama's half!  The bag is divided down the middle.  One pocket divided into 3.

You can kind of see the divider here.

The baby's side has 3 large pockets with elastic at the top so they can expand to hold a bunch of baby stuff.  Right now, I put diapers in them!

the last pocket is on the side and is supposed to be a phone pocket.  I put my iphone in there and it seems a little tall.  I mean, I know it will stay in since 3/4 of it is in the pocket, but I am sure I would lose it somehow.  :)

The strap is basically one giant, long piece of fabric that feeds through a d-ring and you tie it where you want.  It could be really long, but I like my bags up a little higher so truthfully the strap didn't need to be quite so long.

Whew!  After all is said and done, I am glad I made the bag.  However, I won't be making them for anyone else though!