Hello again!
If you live in the southern hemisphere, I hope you're keeping warm. Down south in Cape Town, it's starting to get very cold and rainy, especially these past few days. While I bundle up and avoid the icy breeze, my seven month old baby is insistent on outdoor time. As I mentioned in some of my previous posts, I feel blessed to have a child who already enjoys nature. This is something I want to encourage as much as possible. But as the weather starts to cool down, I'd also like to avoid fevers and snotty noses.
That's why, for my latest sewing project, I decided to make him a little fleecy, winter onesie that I can button up over his indoor clothes and keep him toasty for our trips into the garden and walks around the local wetlands.
I started by popping in at one of my favourite local fabric stores, Studio47 in Cape Town. I'm a sucker in that place. I really have to rein myself in because I would buy thousands-upon-thousands of rands worth of fabric there if I could. I ended up buying a lovely biscuit-coloured, sherpa-esque fabric, along with a sea glass green fleece and carrot-coloured tracksuiting. I already had a style in mind, which helped to give me some direction while searching for fabric.
After my trip to Studio47 fabric store in Woodstock, I drew the design up in my sketchbook so I had a reference when developing the paper pattern. You can see the progression of this sketch on one of my recent Instagram reels, (I called it 'part one') and I've posted some pictures below...
I later picked some really nice tortoise-shell buttons up at the little fabric store just down the road from me: Global Fabrics in Fish Hoek. I used one of Billy's existing onesies as a basic block when creating the pattern, and then made my tweaks to the shape and style from there. You can see more of the process in my 'part two' and 'part three' reels linked below:
And here is a picture of little Billy wearing the end result as he enjoys playing with autumn leaves in my parents' garden. I think my love of autumn and all the beautiful shades that it brings was also why I selected the colours I did for this DIY.
Overall, I think this project was a hit! I really enjoyed developing the entire outfit from start to finish. I usually use patterns I've bought online when sewing, and very rarely use the pattern-making skills that I was taught in fashion school. To be honest, pattern-making was my least favourite subject in college, so that's probably why I generally avoid it. But I like to take an item that I already know fits well, and using it as a tracing block. This makes it more enjoyable for me.
Thanks for following along on my creative journey and updates about my business! You'll be hearing from me here again soon. I post about my more DIY projects on my Feat. Designer Goods Instagram account quite infrequently. If you'd like to see more like this, head over to my Chel Will Make account.
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