Wildeman Holiday Challenge: ***Valentine's Day Polo***

Hello Everyone!

Welcome to the first edition of the Wildeman Holiday Refashion Challenge 2013

First holiday refashion challenge and I'm 2 days late...Please forgive me. I will do my best not to have it happen again. Without further ado I give you...

The Jack of Hearts

 

 

 

Total cost for this project: 0$ (everything was already in my stash)

And on to the tutorial we go! A word of warning: the tutorial is a little holey as my camera charger is dead and I wanted to make sure I had enough of a charge to get pictures of the full outfit but I will do my best to explain everything!

 

When I was pregnant we were gifted with so much baby clothing that we won't be shopping (or rather sewing) for Wildeman until he's in 9 months clothes but I'm a bit picky - especially when it comes to baby clothes - so a fair amount of it ended up in my refashion pile. This rather heavily branded sleeper among them. When I was poking through that pile for Valentine's ideas it jumped right out at me.

 

 

 

But I am rather non-traditional as it goes and so I knew I wouldn't be making red (or pink) the base of Wildeman's outfit. I was pulling some heart buttons off a pair of red baby pants so that my little boy could wear them later that day and it all came together. Black polo, heart buttons, red striped trim. Perfect. I got the inspiration for the pants from these pins on Pinterest:



                                         

Heart patches on boy's jeans? Why not?

 

Let's begin at the beginning. Then, when we come to the end, I'll stop (Anybody?)

 

Valentine Polo

 

 



Not long ago I mentioned a 1920's themed birthday party, you can check out Wildeman's 20s outfit over here. I made myself a black fringe mini-dress (tutorial to come as soon as someone posts pictures from the party, or I get all dressed up 20s style again). I bought so much black fabric (t-shirts and dresses) for the fringe and didn't end up using it all. I made Wildeman's shirt from a leftover piece of scrap fabric from that project. I eyeballed another polo of his as a guide for the collar and shaped it based on a t-shirt that fits him well.

 

I folded the leftover shirt fabric in half so that it was double layered to make both the front and back pattern pieces. Then I folded the shirt I was basing the shape on in half and laid the folds alongside on another. Make sure the fabric you're cutting is wrong side out. I traced my shape with tailor's chalk (a dry bar of soap works great on dark fabrics too).

 

 

 

Then I used the sleeves of the existing shirt to model shorter sleeves for the polo. I made them out of one sleeve of the shirt folded in half so that I got two identical sleeves in one cut. Then sew those suckers together. Read about how to do that over here.

 

Then I cut a collar piece that was equal to the diameter of the collar from the other sleeve. I cut it with one side along the seam and serged the sides so that it was closed on three sides and doubled to make is less flimsy.

 

 

And two smaller pieces for the part of the collar that will have buttons and button holes...no idea what to call that.

 

 

Finally, I cut two rectangles from the Mickey Mouse sleeper to finish the collar. I serged the small pieces together like so.

 

 

Here you can see the left side sewn into place and the right side pinned and prepped (fabric surgeon at work).

 

The area below the buttons felt really flimsy, it just seemed to invite a big tear so I added a stabiliser, just sandwiching two rectangles of the same knit on each side.

I decided I needed a little more colour so I added another strip of the striped fabric to the inside of the collar. Then I sewed the collar on to the shirt. I sewed the buttons on with my machine and a made a few little button holes.

 

 

 

 

And voila!

 

 

 

Pants tutorial coming up!