Week 1 - Pattern G

Welcome to the Amy Butler “Little Stitches for Little Ones” Sew-Along. My goal is to sew my way through this amazing book one project at a time. Each Thursday I’ll be sharing my finish for the week with you and I encourage anyone who wants to join in and sew along with me to link up and share your progress and finishes. You don’t have to keep up with my pace and you can link up your project in any state; from picking out fabrics all the way through to your finishes. Having a problem on a project? Link up and maybe I or someone else in the sew-along can help you. Link up when you can. Go at your own pace. And most of all have fun!

Pattern G - “Cutie Booties” - Difficulty Level: 3

This week I decided to make something for my friend Kerry who is having a little boy in August. I call him the miracle baby because Kerry and her husband John journeyed down a very long and difficult road to get where they are and their little boy is one lucky kid to have Kerry and John as his parents. There are always so many cute things out there for girls, but the boy stuff seems less available so when I saw these booties I knew I had to make them for Kerry’s little boy. I went to my stash and pulled out some Oliver + S City Weekend and a print from Jay McCarroll’s line Woodland Wonderland. I just love the little ants on this print and I thought the idea to have the ants on the soles of the booties was super cute… almost as if he was stepping on the ants.

Since Kerry is due in August I decided to make the pattern for 6-9 months thinking that he would be ready to wear them come winter. Winters in Chicago can be dreadfully cold so hopefully these will help warm up his little toes. When I was cutting the pattern out I discovered that the toe of the sole pattern piece fits perfectly into the curve of the shoe top piece so I recommend sliding the sole up into that curve when you’re cutting out the fabric. It saves fabric and there’s a little less cutting. It’s not much but on curves every bit of cutting you can save counts!

So the first mistake I made, and I make this one a lot, was I didn’t read the directions as well as I should. I always say I will be more careful about reading instructions and then I always get cocky and skim over the parts I shouldn’t. This is one of the many common mistakes that I could prevent but instead always make when sewing. You would think I would learn by now. Well, I cut out all my pattern pieces nice and neat like and go on my merry way only to discover later that I was supposed to cut FOUR not TWO of the soles from the fusible fleece. Thankfully that was a mistake easily rectified.

Making the upper panel was super easy. But make sure you attach the Velcro to the right places. Again, I was skimming and cocky and didn’t absorb the directions properly and I ended up attaching both the male and female pieces of Velcro to the exterior fabric NOT the female to the exterior and the male to the LINING like I was directed. Seriously I am really blonde sometimes! Since the upper panels were already sewn together I had to hand stitch the male Velcro onto the right place on the lining side of the upper panel and thank god I wear a size 3½ ring because I swear if I didn’t have child sized fingers I would have had to rip the whole upper panel apart and start over. And of course I was making both booties at the same time so I made the same mistake twice before I even realized it.

All in all, this pattern was not as tricky as it looks. I whipped them up relatively quickly – like in a morning when I was waiting for the Sweet and Adorable Husband to get out of bed after he partied a little too hard the night before. (Oh, he’s going to kill me if he reads this!) I would say maybe 3 to 4 hours on the project – less if I wasn’t so dreadfully blonde. And the soles are hand stitched on which was fun. I love hand stitching and it helped me perfect my slipstitch. I have to say these booties turned out so darn cute! Really, I LOVE them and they were so much fun and easy to make I think everyone I know with babies is going to end up with a pair! I only the pattern came in adult sizes because I swear I would wear them all day long if I had a pair of my own!

So what are you working on? Link up your projects here and show us what you’re making. If you’re linking up try to stop by and see what everyone is doing so we can all help each other in the Sew-Along. And remember, you can also share your “Little Stitches” Sew-Along projects anytime on the Undercover Crafter Sew-Along Flickr group found here. See you next week!