I’ve been a busy little bee over the last couple of weeks, lots of sewing and some embroidery too, I’ve been sewing to a dead line too, never my favourite pastime as I made three outfits for my grandchildren for Easter…and I only found out last weekend that they were going away for Easter on Thursday, so my potential sewing time was somewhat curtailed!

I’ve several finishes to share so expect a few posts over the next week!

First up is a little romper for Hugo, he’s now nine months old and his mum loves the traditional little rompers. I found the pattern on Etsy by a company called Shaka-laka Patterns, I quite like pdf patterns for children as you can print and cut out the size you want without thinking about them growing and needing a bigger size later in the year.

It’s called the Rosa Romper, a little disconcerting as from the blurb it’s obviously aimed at girls, however I decided that with the right fabric and pleats rather than gathers it would be fine. I saw some gorgeous Peter Rabbit fabric on line and ordered a metre. It’s always a risk when buying fabric on line as so much is how it feels, not just the pattern but when this arrived it both looked gorgeous and felt beautiful! It’s organic cotton and whilst it’s a good weight of fabric, it is so soft to handle, perfect for a baby.

The Rosa romper has pleats or gathers for the bottoms and a Peter Pan collar. It buttons down the back and press-studs in the crotch. It has both fully lined and unlined options, I went for lined so I didn’t need to finish all the inner edges! I had a meter length of a white fine cotton lawn which was ideal for the lining.

I’ve not used Shakalaka patterns before but I was quite impressed. It went together beautifully, the instructions were well written and there were useful little tips too. Despite having made clothes for nearly 50 years, I didn’t know that if you sew the curved seam of the collar twice you get a much more even curve!

I fussycut the collar so I had Peter Rabbit running on one side and one of the flopsy bunnies on the other.

Baby clothes are a delight to make but a little fiddly as everything is small…especially the buttons!

My sewing machine now has a name, Dolly the Diva!!!

All I needed was three perfect buttonholes down the back, it’s not asking much of a high spec sewing machine but she made such a song and dance of it not only did she acquire the name, she was nearly thrown out of the window and I think miss Florence, my Luna Lapin, was probably blushing from the language she heard!!!

I did practise ones on a folded scrap of fabric which of course came out perfectly. I went to do the top one and half way down it decides to turn round, making it potentially half the length I needed…I unpicked, practised again, checked it wasn’t catching the stick…three times this happened!!! Eventually I tried the middle one instead and that worked OK. I decided in the end that it wanted a perfectly flat area and because of the collar above and the pleats below . It wasn’t easy achieving this on such a small button-band…The name has stuck!!

The buttons are less than 1/2″ in diameter, I found them in my stash. I was tempted with some little red ones too but these nicely picked out the colour of the darker leaves. I stitched on a Grandma label. and the rompers were complete.

I was a little concerned that maybe it did look a little girly but we popped in yesterday evening and he had just finished his bath, perfect timing as he could try them on straight away. Mum loved them and doesn’t he look cute!