Old-fashioned Christmas Sewing: Reversible bonnet and more...

I don't if it was the Christmas season, or simply the cold weather, but my Christmas sewing had a decidedly Victorian or at least an early twentieth century theme to them. Probably a combination of cold weather fabrics and all the gorgeous tuilles and floral patterns that emerge around Christmas.

These super easy and adorable reversible baby bonnets are from Martha Pullen Co. via Sew, Mama, Sew!

I didn't have any picot edge bias binding, but luckily my machine has a nice scallop stitch among its few fancy stitches. I just attached some bias tape to my bonnet's front edge, scallop stitched, and then snipped away the excess material above the stitch to reveal a nicely bound scalloped edge. This was a great instant gratification project that used up small scraps of material in the cutest way.

The next two outfits were made for a friend's daughter and son. Both are from patterns that I got for $1 at Fabricland during their clearance sales. I love buying cheap patterns, that contain basic styles, with lots of sizes... so much easier to sew for kids who are not your own and for whom you do not have measurements when you have a pattern. Don't get me wrong, things do fit much better when you have good measurements and you can modify your sewing accordingly, but it's always so much fun when you surprise someone with new clothing... and measuring their kid when you think they're not looking is always a dead give away.

I love trying patterns with different fabrics and notions. It's amazing how much an outfit can change by simply using a different type of fabric. And if you were so inclined to add in embellishments, ruffles, ribbon, buttons, appliques, etc. you could really stretch a dollar pattern into a limitless number of pieces.

Here are the patterns that I used:


Overalls - Simplicity 2523
Dress and Purse - New Look 6926

I had this super soft wide brown corduroy that I'd originally intended on using to make overalls for my 2 year old. Little did I know that he would decide at 2 years and 2 months (coincidentally right after his baby brother came) that he wanted to be toilet trained (don't clap your hands yet, it took a painful 6 more months after that before the training was done). Anyway, point being that I didn't want to make the toilet training process any more difficult by having to deal with pulling overalls up and down. So scratch the overalls and the fabric remained washed and folded in my ever growing fabric stash. Fast forward to Christmas and suddenly I had the perfect fabric for these:

I changed the purse up a bit by adding a magnetic snap instead of a tie and added a lining using the same fabric as seen on the pocket. I also added a lining to the boy's hat to make it warmer and heavier weight to match the overalls.

So that was my Victorian Christmas sewing. Next up, a slightly Japanese spin on a Christmas craft.