... baby gift and a characteristic mistake

Lots of my friends have been having babies lately, so I find myself making my fair share of baby clothes as gifts. I mostly enjoy it, because baby clothes are so small that they work up quickly - it’s like instant gratification sewing. Plus I think it’s generally accepted that things that are smaller versions of regular-sized things are magically cuter, like kittens and Smart Cars.

My friend recently had an adorable baby girl, so I was excited to make something ruffly and pink. I decided to work off of a pattern (Simplicity 2572), which I find relaxing every once in a while. Making my own designs usually involves a lot of agonizing over the measurements and details, whereas working off a pattern is just following the directions. It’s like playing with Legos - clearly the best part of Legos was throwing all your sets together and making whatever you wanted, but sometimes you just want to follow the directions and end up with a giant pirate ship, you know?

For this project, I found this adorable printed pinwale corduroy at Joann’s that matched some solid pinwale corduroy I had leftover from another project. I wanted to make the jumper and matching hoodie, so I got right down to it. I had my fabric, my pattern - so far, so good.

Here’s the jumper:

Cute, right? Kind of a pain to have to put in a zipper - I usually try to avoid them on baby clothes - but otherwise straightforward. And here’s the hoodie:

Have you spotted the problem? That’s right, I cut out the entire hoodie UPSIDE DOWN. All the owls and the trees and the hearts are wrong side up. Such a silly, easily avoidable mistake!! I didn’t notice until I had already cut all the pieces, and then I didn’t have enough fabric left to start over. Plus it would have seemed an awful waste to toss the upside-down pieces and I really didn’t think my friend would mind all that much. But it was a good, albeit aggravating reminder to slow down and double-check all my fabric and pieces before I cut - basically to measure twice, cut once. Classic advice for sewers and carpenters everywhere!