A few more memories

Here are two more of the little outfits that I made for my children when they were little, along with some other cute outfits made by loving grandmothers...

The shorts and shirt set Tim is wearing here I made from two different blue print cottons; one striped and one spotted and with red contrasting cotton sections as well.  The little dress and matching bloomers that Cassie is wearing was made by my mother, and I made my own shirt and shorts I am wearing here (first seen here)

In this second picture, Cassie is wearing a little dress I made for her, of two different floral fabrics.  The skirt had sections of both floral fabrics, and the bodice was of one, and the sleeves, collar and button band were of the second fabric.  The shorts, and the screen-printed and appliqued Christmas snowman Tshirt that Tim is wearing here were made by Craig's mother.  (yes, dressmaking for oneself and one's family runs very deep in both our families!)
There is a kind of funny story behind the second picture.... Craig had brought home from work a couple of big bags of shredded paper, for me to play paper mache with the children one day.  Before that day could come, they discovered it in the wardrobe and I walked in to this exact scene, shredded paper all over my children, all over the carpet, and in fact all over every available surface in the room!  Of course, I couldn't be cross because they were having so much fun, and were so happy and giggly I had to laugh too, and raced to get the camera.  Hilarious!  After they had extracted maximum fun from the shredded paper in that state, it took me about forty solid minutes to tidy up and vacuum the room afterward, all those tiny crinkly little miniature shreds stuck in the carpet!, but it was worth it as so much fun had been had.  Not the paper mache fun that I had originally planned, but a different but equally good kind of fun!

A navy corduroy jacket, and a Babar jumper

Today I bring two flashbacks; two, because I don't have very good photos of either one to warrant an individual post, and because I am trying to whizz through these old projects a little faster than I have been up until now... These items are both things I made for Tim when he was about two.
The first is a little navy blue corduroy biker-styled jacket that zipped up the front (biker-styled... for a two year old, lol!), which I toddler-ised by using contrasting red for the collar and trimmings, the pattern from a Topkids magazine.  Even though Tim wore it a lot, this is the best photo I have of it...

And the second is a little jumper that I knitted using a pattern from a Women's Weekly magazine.  Babar is embroidered on the front over the knitting stitches.  He wore this a lot... and I have heaps of photos of him wearing this, but these are the only ones even vaguely showing off that embroidery!  The lower picture, taken at Lake Mountain in Victoria, is the first time these sandgropers had ever ever seen snow in our lives!  We made a little snowman!
(translation: sandgropers = Western Australians)

Cassie's quilt

"Now here's one I made earlier"... I think this is might be the next thing in my chronological documentation of my creations.  And luckily another one that is still used and loved on a daily basis.  I'll have to admit to a bit of necessary repair work before it was anywhere suitable for its photo shoot today!  The second time in its life this quilt has had a major repair and maintenance session.  I'm just glad she obviously loves it so much...
This was made, according to my hand-embroidered signature and date in the corner, in 1993.  Like Tim's quilt before it, it is just based on a very simple design; just same-sized square patches, and is machine pieced and hand-quilted.  Unlike Tim's however, I had learnt at least a teensy bit about quilts by this time and the border treatment is a little better.  This time, I folded the outer border over the edge and under, and slipstitched it in place over the backing, then quilted in the ditch on the back, making a little quilted border of about 2cm width all around on the top side.  Still not the proper or recommended method of finishing quilts, mind you, but since when have I ever cared about properly following recommended methods, anyway?  Yah, I'm such a sewing rebel...
The backing is simply a single sized bed sheet, and yes that rather garish blue colour is far from a perfect choice for the very soft, antique shades of blue, pink and ivory of the topside fabrics, but meh.  The back wasn't very important in my back-then eyes, and sheeting fabric is tough and cheap, also priorities to my back-then self.  Since the back is, unlike the topside, in absolute perfect condition, I guess it turned out to be a good choice.
The part I was most pleased with was the border quilting design (which I designed myself); a little arrangement of quilted hearts and nesting hearts, joined with garland-like rows of quilting stitch.  And I did quite a good job, if I say so myself.  I'm glad I still have things like this around to remind myself of how patient I used to be with regard to my sewing projects.  Seriously, I don't know if I could ever do something like this ever again.

above; all these are the original fabrics...

above; fabrics added later over two major repair sessions ("major" = "now covering nearly a third of the quilt")

below; border quilting design and (retrospective "what-was-I-thinking" moment) backing fabric

Tim's 2nd birthday outfit

The main problem with my attempt to document my handmade stuff, including some of the things I made for the children way back when they were little is that I neglected to take good pictures of things.  Things, some of them perfectly lovely, of which I was very proud, and which I no longer have in my possession.  I do have an excuse; my younger self was blissfully unaware that my older self would be wanting to do this blog one day....  I know, lame excuse.  But it's the only one I have, so I'm going there.
So one can blame my lack of future foretelling ability for the poor illustrative quality of these photos with relation to how well you can see the actual clothes; ie. not very well.  Hopefully you can still get a vague idea how cute this particular ensemble was...
I made for Tim this outfit, for his second birthday; comprising checked pants with contrasting red pocket yokes and a red hoodie with flannelette teddy bear print sleeves and the same fabric lining the hood.  Both pants and hoodie patterns were from those marvellous Topkids magazines.  It was a sweet outfit, I was pretty thrilled with how it turned out (my first attempt at a hoodie if I remember correctly) and he wore it a lot.  Even Cassie wore it when she got big enough to fit into it! (see below)  It had two asymmetrically placed decorative patches on the front of the hoodie ( hey, this was the early 90's, when random asymmetry was in and actually done on purpose sometimes...) around which I carefully stitched frames of matching royal blue rick-rack. 
I wonder where it is now...
The hoodie...

a better view of the pants... (goodness knows what possessed me to put this horrible top on him, doesn't go at all with the pants.... I must have just grabbed something clean that day with absolutely no thought as to whether or not my son looked sharp, tut tut)

Cassie wearing the outfit...

And yes, I made that sad excuse for a birthday cake above too... well, I do not claim to be either a great cook or cake decorator!  It was a clock face, and the time was set to 2 o'clock, for a 2 year old of course!
If you're interested, my little boy looks like this now, and my little girl with the cheeky grin looks like this...

Tim's backpack

Today; another blast from the past...
When Tim was about eighteen months old and had become a brand new older brother, I made him a backpack, using a pattern from one of those wonderful TopKids magazines (very sadly discontinued).  It is of denim, lined with check cotton, and I appliqued the letters of his name on the pocket using interfaced scraps of the same check cotton, attached on with skinny zig-zag stitch.
He was so cute with it and wore it all the time when I first made it.  He would put it on first thing in the morning and toddle around with it on his back all day, with a few precious toys inside.  
Later it was his kindy bag. 
Then later when he got older it wasn't cool anymore and didn't get used for years.  Now it has become an awesomely cool bag once more, and is the one he takes along to uni everyday.
Funny...