Tag: sewing

Sewing a Stroller

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Bebe, the soft doll the boys have, came in a stroller. It matched his pajamas and was perfectly sized for a small child to push around the house/neighborhood. What it wasn’t perfectly sized for was a four-year-old plopping his rear in it and pulling himself around the house. So it has needed some surgery for a couple years.

I had some green cotton left over from fixing up the balance bike, and I had some random remnant bin finds. I salvaged the hardware from the original seat and used what was left of the seat pieces as a pattern for the new one.

I made the main portions of the seat from the green material, then made bias binding for the edges. Actually, I first tried to reuse the original edging, but somehow it wasn’t long enough despite the fact that I used the original seat as the pattern. Go figure.

I also changed how the top attached to the stroller. It originally had a couple elastic pieces that went around the handle. I chose to do button straps instead. That way the whole thing is easily removable in case it needs to be washed. And there’s no chance of the elastic breaking down as the old ones did.

Time to Swim

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The local swim school requires that kids be put in swim diapers until the age of four, regardless of their potty training status. Once they aren’t actively pooping their pants on a regular basis, it seems a bit wasteful to use a disposable diaper for every class. This is where the reusable swim diaper comes in handy.

Problem is, most over size two only come in a pull-up style. That works when it is dry, but wet swim trunks are tough enough. You don’t want to be dealing with a wet swim pull-up tangled in that mess. So i decided to make one that has side snaps. Best decision ever.

I found this pattern on Sew Mama Sew and we went on a trip to the fabric store after swim class one day. Couldn’t find any PUL material, so went for the ripstop nylon option. Got swim fabric (that the little one got to pick himself), and some black wicking jerset, plus fold-over elastic. It took a couple of tries, but I finally figured out how to get all the layers to stay together while sewing. Once I had that figured out, it was a really quick finish.

It also took a couple tries to get the snaps on the right way, too. But it is so easy for the kids to put on when it is snapped up and then even easier to unsnap and pull of at the end of class. It makes getting dressed after swim class so much easier.

The Frankenpants Saga

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Kids have a really incredible innate ability to destroy things in ridiculous ways without even trying. The most frequent victim of this destruction: their clothes.

Sometimes I will get lucky with a tiny hole that just needs a couple stitches, or a busted seam that requires a quick trip through the sewing machine. Other times, I’m faced with challenges like this:

That is pretty much a new seam where there wasn’t one before. But that also means there is no extra material to create a seam. There is actually a lack of material. So I first attempted a flat seam with just a zigzag stitch. This worked…while the pants were in the drawer. So I grabbed some twill, used my new serger to create a patch.

Then I used three rows of zigzag stitches to cover the color and old stitches. So far this has worked, and isn’t too noticeable. Here’s hoping it works for a long time.