I've been itching to try Anna Maria Horner's Quick Change Trousers and finally had the perfect excuse when my cousin commissioned a few items for her son Nicholas.
I combined some fabric in my stash with some new fabric and came up with these adorable (and reversible!) pants:
The best thing about handmade clothing is that it is custom, meaning skinny little babies like Nicholas can have a pair of pants that fit!
Nicholas received these just as he turned 4 months, but I actually made the 0-3 month size from the book and reduced the elastic length by a few inches.
{please excuse the crazy colors - that lime green was hard to photograph!}
I hear they fit him perfectly, right now his legs are 11" long, which is the rolled-up length, according to the book. The book recommends measuring baby's waist to ensure a proper fit, and this was definitely necessary for Nicholas.
The pattern was very easy to follow, which seems to be the theme with Anna Maria's patterns. The pants went together quickly, the directions made sense, and after the first pair, they are easy to whip up from memory.
We (Stacey, Nicholas, and I) were so happy with the final product that we thought a pair of Thanksgiving pants were in order!
Corduroy pants will be perfect for Thanksgiving in Michigan and the reverse lining on these is really soft.
The booty panel reminds me of turkey feathers and I love the earthy tones. The corduroy itself came from a pair of thrifted J.Crew pants. It felt a little crazy cutting them up, but I was able to make one pair out of one leg, making it frugal to sew these baby pants out of high quality fabric.
The reverse is a brick red color, not exactly what's portrayed in the photos, but it's a perfect Thanksgiving color.
The back has a small navy blue gingham panel. Cute, yes?
I'm still trying to figure out what elastic-wasted pants I should wear to Thanksgiving this year :)
Nicholas also needed some lightweight caps to wear. It's not cold enough for fleece in Michigan yet, so these jersey knit caps are just the ticket. Cool enough to wear in an indoor environment, cozy enough to wear out and about while running errands.
I used this tutorial from Sew Liberated. The tutorial was great but for whatever reason, my sewing machine refused to cooperate with the knit fabric. I tried a jersey ball point needle, a regular needle, different sizes, it seemed like no matter what I did, it was skipping zig zag stitches - very annoying! Any suggestions? It worked fine on the straight stitches, just decided to boycott the zig zags.
We are enjoying the nice weather in Nashville for the next few days before heading up to chilly Michigan for Thanksgiving. Do you have any special holiday plans?
[ETA: Stacey just posted a photo of Nicholas in his pants on their blog, so I stole it so you can all ooh and ahh over the cutie!]
