Kids Clothes Week day 6&7

Ta-Da! Not much for two days of KCW, but most of the time was spent fidgeting with my sewing machine. It's still on a zig zag/stretch stitch boycott, and nothing I did was making it any better. Thankfully I still have a loaner machine here from a friend who was kind enough to bring hers over when my previous machine decided not to sew buttonholes anymore. Last time I offered to give it back, she insisted I keep it here, which ended up being very helpful! That old Kenmore sounds like a freight train, and I can't hear anything going on around me when it's running, but it WORKS. 

 

These shorts were based off of the Shwin and Shwin Lovely Rita skinny jeans pattern, which I was a tester for a while back. I've got a nice hemp/cotton knit from Bolt here that I would like to use for shorts, but didn't want to use it until I knew exactly what I wanted to make and whether it would turn out fabulously. All I knew was that I wanted some slim looking shorts to show off Violet's tiny cute little bum, and they needed to have pockets. I'm not sure that I've really arrived at what I truly want, but these are cute nonetheless. 

The teal fabric is just part of an old Target dress that will never fit right again. Stripes are from my precious remnants of the bamboo knit. Rib knit from Joanns. 

Notes on a fail: When I decided to add the option of a drawstring, I started sewing buttonholes into the ribbing before attaching to the shorts. The ribbing is pretty thick so I didn't think it would be a problem, but the feed dogs sucked the fabric into the freshly resurrected Kenmore machine, and then a wad of thread accumulated in one spot because it wasn't moving. The thread wad was so big that it would. not. come. out......no matter how hard I tried, that piece of fabric was stuck to the machine. Poking it out with needles and pins wasn't working so I grabbed my old seam ripper, which makes an appearance just about every project, and started trying to pop the thread wad out from the bottom. Then SNAP, a piece of metal popped off of it and flew into the bobbin housing. 

Are you SERIOUS? 

Clover came up behind me and said that she thought I would have to cut the fabric out. So I listened to my 4 year old and finally just grabbed the scissors. Then I had to locate the thread wad that fell further into the machine someplace with the broken end of my poor seam ripper. All ended ok except for old Ripper. 

That closes KCW. I killed one sewing machine and broke my seam ripper, but we've got some cute new clothes!