Yesterday we had a very nice afternoon after we all got home. The girls spent a while jumping and playing on the trampoline, and it was a joy to watch how Ronja took good care of little sister – doesn’t always go that way, but they were just great together.

Mads went to pick up another bargain for the kitchen – a brand new induction cooktop that someone didn’t find use for anyway. At a great price of course!

I finished an overall for a tiny baby that has just arrived in the family – we’re going to visit on Sunday, so I wanted to make something. The little girl was born 3 weeks early, so she is rather small, and I chose to make the #3 from Ottobre 03/2007 in a size 50. It is SO small – I really hope it will be the right size, because I wanted to make something that they can dress her in right away. I’m pretty confident that they’re not following my blog, so I dare post the pictures even if we’re not giving the gift until Sunday. Actually I think that half the pleasure of making a present like this for someone, is that you spend the entire time thinking of that someone.

I used twill instead of a knit, and I didn’t add cuffs to the legs, because I like the look of adding elastics better for these. If you think you’ve seen something similar from my sewing machine before, you aren’t entirely wrong – see here. It was one of our favourite garments at the time, and I just love the look and quality of the twill. Now my little niece Marlinde is the very pretty keeper.

Earlier in the week, I made a pair of velour pants for Frida – they came about in a bit of a dispair because I hadn’t sewn for so long! (Yes, I actually had my sewing machine out twice this week, can you believe it?)

The pattern is Onion 10009, and I made them a size 86, which turned out to be a bit too big for Frida yet. I even narrowed them a lot around the bottom, because they were sooo wide! This velour is from Stof og Stil, and it is wonderfully soft. I may just make myself a pair of pants like this.

Right now we’re on our way to Legoland, and then we’re headed up to visit my mother. Have a wonderful weekend everybody!

Well, I made them in a size 74, which fit perfectly at the time – but Frida is growing a lot at the moment, and within a month they were starting to look a bit short on her. As they are still nice and wide, I decided to lengthen the legs, using the contrast fabric. And this is the slightly blurry result.

I simply cut off the legs just above the elastic, making sure the edges were alike and even, and made a pattern for the added length based on the shape of the legs above the cut. Sewed the pieces together, topstitched the side seam as above the cut, attached the new leg bottoms to the overalls, topstitched the seam, and finished with elastic at the bottom – just as they were before. Easy-peasy.

In my opinion, they’re even cuter now than they were before – this is definitely one of my favourite patterns during my time as an Ottobre subscriber. I may just be making another pair soon.

I have been wanting to write a bit about Frida. She’s 16 months now, and still our little one, but then again, she’s not all that little anymore. Her personality develops with every day that passes, and it is a joy to see! She really does light up a room and most of the time she’s just a bundle of joy! She has a will that surpasses several of those in the otherwise strong-willed people in this family, and she can definitely be a handful! Above you see her wearing the Puuheppa overalls – did I mention I love them?!

She walks now as her preferred choice of transport, but she didn’t give up crawling easily – still turns to that, when she finds it useful. Teaching her how to eat on her own is coming along slowly. It took our little handball player a while to stop throwing forks, plates, and cups (and anything else for that matter) through the air, whenever one was within reach. It’s almost under control now, and she does drink and eat on her own – when the food permits and it suits her…

And talking of playing handball – she is pretty good at throwing a ball, and sometimes she nearly even catches it when it’s thrown to her. We have been joking with her throwing everything, but it seems to be working, ’cause she’s rather good, and Ronja loves to play ball with her! Earlier it was sometimes hard to entertain her, but at the moment, she has become quite good at playing by herself for a while, concentrating on a toy or a book.

  More modeled pants

Getting older for Frida also means closing in on the palate surgery. As I have mentioned before, she has a cleft palate which is going to be closed in surgery when she’s approximately 18 months old. We don’t know the excact date, because they’re unable to give us a specific date earlier than about 3-5 weeks prior to the surgery. So during the coming two months, we need to get her off the night-bottle – she still has a small bottle of warm milk before she goes to sleep. And what’s worse, we have to wean her off the dummy! Good thing she’s so fond of her security blankets – that’s going to help us in the process.

Meanwhile, she still sleeps like a baby during the night – and I know a lot of people to whom that would mean sleepless nights, crying, days of an unimaginable tiredness that only parents understand, etc. Not here though, in this house the term ‘sleeping like a baby’ covers sleep from 6.30 p.m. to 6.30 a.m.

Altogether, she’s just one lovely little girl!

I love the shape, the pleats, the pockets, the front bib - and the things that didn’t turn out quite the way I expected, don’t matter that much. However, I’ll tell you about them anyway, because there is at least one thing I would do differently another time.

I used a rather sturdy corduroy for these overalls, because it is still pretty cold in Denmark. I combined it with a fine cord from Hilco for the pockets and bib. When I was hemming the bottom edges of the legs, I didn’t consider the fact that the heavier fabric would take away some of the elasticity in the elastics, but that is what happened. So for someone else making these in corduroy, I would suggest that you take out a few cm of each elastic, in order to gather the legs a bit more.

I used some quite big wooden apple buttons, and they were just about to give me trouble because of the size of the button holes needed. Inside the bottom of the front bib, there is some seam allowance from the joining of the two pieces, and it kind of puts a limit to the possible button hole size. Still, I managed, and I can’t wait to see Frida wearing them! I topstitched the sides of the pants, to make the seam lie nice and flat on the inside of the overalls.

Wonderful pattern – warm recommendations from me! 

By the way, I wanted to bring your attention to this searchable Ottobre-database that Teri made (who does beautiful sewing herself – go take a look at her blog, it’s worth it). The database is brilliant, because it means you can search for the things you want to sew. For instance if you search for “pants” and “74″, it will show you all the patterns for pants in size 74, that Ottobre has brought throughout the years – and now know in which issue to find your pattern. Great job, Teri!

 That’s it for now – I’ll see if I can get a modeled pic of Frida wearing the overalls later on.