Baby cargoes and remnant-stash-busting

I love the remnant bins at Joann's.  I dig through them on each visit, looking for the bolt ends that are already on sale. Then, on top of the sale price, you get another 50 percent off because it's a remnant.  If you are smart you can score fabric for a couple bucks a yard. Back when the girls were small, anything over half a yard was guaranteed to be enough to make something for them, so the remnant bin was awesome.  On our last trip to the U.S. (back when the boy was born), though, I tried to stick to boy-appropriate colors and prints, since my girls are getting so big.

I think I paid about a dollar for this 21" piece of army green bottomweight cotton twill.  It's 56" wide, so I thought I could definitely get a pair of baby pants out of it.  I chose the Oliver+S Field Trip Cargo pattern, which I hadn't made before.

Well, I managed to get pants out of it (18-24 month size for my long 13-month-old), but just barely.  I did not have enough fabric for the cargo pockets, and I cut the waistband facing out of some Kona cotton.  I also didn't make belt loops because, well, he doesn't need them!  And when I was done cutting, here is what was left:

That's a satisfying sight, isn't it?

Once the pants were done, I set to work on new tops.  I ended up making three Field Trip raglans.  The first (blue+stripes), I made in a 12-18 month width with 18-24 month length.  The sleeves were plenty long, but the shirt was just long enough before hemming.

So I lengthened my front and back pattern pieces by 1.5" (.75" for the hem and .75" to grow into) before sewing two more.  The striped knit, which I used on all three tops, is some Land of Oh interlock I bought while pregnant with the boy.  It's very soft and substantial, but the unhemmed shirt is actually raveling a little!  I thought knit wasn't supposed to ravel?  Or is that just jersey?

The body of the tan shirt is snuggly 80/20 cotton/poly velour.  The applique is the letter G as it appears in the Georgian alphabet.

Now that I look at it again, it kind of looks like an abstract Snork.  Do you remember the Snorks?  I loved the Snorks.

It really is part of the Georgian alphabet, though.



Cool, huh?

The yellow shirt is made of a yellow organic cotton jersey from fabric.com (meh), and some gray Free Spirit Essential Jersey cotton/spandex knit, (great stuff).  I cut the pocket out of the interlock, but it's way too heavy for the flimsy jersey and pulls out a little when the kid is crawling.



This is such a cute pattern for a little boy, and it is fast!  The raglans took me about 40 minutes to sew together, and most of that was due to fussing with the pockets or applique.

The cargoes only took about 2 hours of sewing (though I did leave off cargo pockets and belt loops). A good chunk of time was spent trying to coax my elastic through the waistband.  It doesn't gather that well where the front pockets are because there are a lot of layers of twill and it is stiff.  I could have graded the seams better, but short of that I'm not sure what is to be done there.

For the legs, I just serged the edges and then blind-stitched a 1.25" hem for ease of taking down later. They are way long; I need to take up at least another inch.  I'm hoping all the length means he'll still be wearing the pants this fall (and dare I hope, winter?  Probably too much.)  The diaper area is roomy enough to cover our bulky cloth diapers, though it JUST does so, and I sized up significantly from his waist measurement (17.5, smaller than the 6-12 month!).

In sum: Great pattern as I have come to expect from O+S, and sure to get much use as the boy grows up and out!