Kids Clothes Week Part 2 & A Photo Discovery

April 27, 2013 by Sarah

Well, today and yesterday’s efforts towards the Kids Clothes Week Challenge had a lot more to do with challenge and a lot less to do with sewing kids clothes.

See?

Maybe that looks fine and dandy on the photo, but I can assure you it is a disaster that I am not sure I can recuperate from. This is the front panel of the O + S Sailboat Pants. I am using a french linen with a beautiful stripe that I lined up perfectly on the seam. Not that that matters!!! Why? Because if my next attempt at getting that button hole right fails I will have no option left but to re-cut and re-sew the front panel. shdkfjdshfksdfogfdksjgndfoigdvnfdkdgdioj!!!!!!!!!

Oh, and I just looked at the Oliver and S website and saw this is a “one scissor” difficulty rating. Seriously?!!!!

There are several, um, challenging aspects to my dilemma. 

1. I have already sewn a pair of these for Helen. They turned out perfectly cute. And the button holes were not a problem. 

2. The first time I went to make the button hole, my machine made its first pass, then just kept stitching in one spot, refusing to continue its job of making the button seam. So, I (carefully, painfully, meticulously) ripped out that mess-up. And somehow, I managed to not rip the fabric. All of my fellow sewists out there know what I’m talking about.

3. I made up another sample to test the button-hole maker– complete with interfacing and fabric facing the same way, and. . . guess what? It worked perfectly perfect.

Do you see why I am sew frustrated? 

Two more passes and two more non-button-holing episodes.

maybe I should just make it a faux button hole and sew the buttons on directly…

And so, the pants sit on my sewing table, waiting for me to get enough moxie to give it another go.

That’s all pretty depressing, right?

Well, you know me. I always try to find the silver lining. And today I found several.

First of all, when I went to upload the pics of the pesky pants to my computer I discovered that I still had pics from our recent trip to London on my camera.

If London doesn’t cheer us up, what will? I mean, they speak English there! And the signs are in English! And it’s such a nice kind of English. And lest you think these pics have nothing in common with the sailboat pants above, let me start us off with a few boat images.

On a fun boat trip down the Thames. The guide was great, the breeze was lovely… 
And while we’re on the nautical theme, here’s Thomas on the pirate ship at the
Princess Diana Memorial Playground. That place is simply fabulous. 
Helen and I in the toddler area of the same playground.
Straddling the Prime Meridian.
We weren’t planning on going there, but when the nifty tour guide said “Greenwich” we thought, hey, why not?
Thomas in the hat I knit for him. 

I love that he loves his hat. It reminds me that sometimes I make cool, great things.

Early morning loooooooove.
Whitehall Horse Guard Parade. A fun and highly recommended way to avoid Buckingham crowds.
But we didn’t avoid Buckingham altogether. Goofballs!

Oh, look! Travis is wearing his hat too!

Westminster, where we were able to worship on Sunday morning. 

The church is so rich in history. Just the week before, Sadie and I had been learning about Edward the Confessor, who founded the Abbey and is buried there. And the day before we had been to the Tower and seen the royal crowns, sceptres and diadems and watched the video footage of Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation ceremony. Which happened right exactly where we were sitting for church service. That’s pretty amazing.

In addition to finding the London photos, I also found the pictures of the clothes I made for my new niece Kyleigh.

O + S Class Picnic Blouses and After-School Pants with coordinating reversible bucket hat.

On the hat, I was able to add a cool feature that my friend Masha showed me last year. Chin strap with button holes that make the chin strap reversible along with the hat. How nifty is that?

By adding a button hole just above the chin strap, it is able to be threaded to the other side.
How the hat looks with the strap threaded through to the opposite side. 

And just to clear, yes, I do think it’s somewhat freaky to have a picture of a baby doll modeling a hat you made.  But I thought it might also be freaky for me to go up to some stranger’s baby and try to take a picture of it wearing Kyleigh’s hat.

And, hey, this is good proof that I am capable of doing button holes!

The final group of unrelated (to sewing) photos I found on the camera are of the last big snow we had on March 15th. But I want to share them anyway.

Thomas pushing the base of his snowman up onto a mound.
Snow looks light and fluffy, but is actually quite heavy.
 (You can file that under “things Texans learn when they move to Moscow”).

Just for reference, here is a picture of a birch-bark piece of artwork I recently bought. 

And here’s what I saw when I looked out our window:

And here are their finished snow people:

Sadie made her snow maiden look like her. 
Thomas took a more sculptural approach. 

Look at how much the world around us can change in a mere six weeks. And just think how much more it will change again in the upcoming 6 weeks.

In the meantime, I will once again give those sailboat pants a try.  Stay tuned!

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