Ben & Mia Pants–Review and GIVEAWAY!

Last week Cecilia, over at Lily Bird Studios, released a great new pattern: Ben & Mia Pants.

These wide leg pants are perfect for boys or girls and feature adorable belt loops and lined pockets. The elastic waistband makes them super easy to wear and comfortable too!

I’ve recently been on the search for my go-to pants pattern for my kids, I had even drafted my own. But after receiving this pattern last week, my search is over. These are by far the best pants I’ve yet made for my kids. I liked them so much in fact, I’ve made two pairs just since Wednesday!

The pattern is designed for two different coordinating fabrics. It contains directions for creating your own custom piping too! These were made of a chambray and cotton print combo and I love how they turned out.

So much so, I went hunting through my fabric stash to find another pair of fabrics to put into combination. This is what I cam up with the second time.

These are made from a fine wale cord paired with velveteen and I love these even more! I even hand-stitched (I know, I can’t believe it either!) the inner waistband so that there would be no visible stitching in the velveteen.

This pattern sews up really quick and easy, with great instructions and clear photographs of each step. The pockets (both front and back) and belt loops are optional too, making it a very versatile pattern. And what is even more fantastic? This PDF pattern is in 7 sizes ranging from 12months to 6yrs. I highly recommend it! I’ll be making a lot more from this pattern, and soon!

So now that you know that you need this pattern too, would you like to win a copy?? I thought so.

One reader will receive a free copy of the Ben & Mia Pants PDF pattern from Lily Bird Studios. You have FOUR chances to enter!  This giveaway is closed.

First Entry (REQUIRED): Go check out Lily Bird Studio’s shop and leave a comment here telling me which is your favorite pattern.

Bonus Entries:

- Be a Follower on this blog, and leave a comment here telling me that you follow Un Petit Design.

- Be a Follower of Lily Bird Studio’s blog, and leave a comment here telling me that you follow LBS.

- Follow Lily Bird Studio on Facebook and leave a comment here.

Giveaway starts today and will close at 5pm on Friday, November 4th. Winner will be chosen at random on Saturday November 5th.

*Disclosure* I received the Ben & Mia Pants pattern free for review. All opinions in this post are my own.

Bring on the Cold!

I’m in coat making mode! I’ve been planning wool dress coats for all three of my kids over the past few weeks, but my girls needed play coats and fast. It’s getting cold out there! So I thought it would be good to work on a couple of play coats as a warm up to the big coat project I’m planning.

I started with McCalls 5743 which is an unlined fleece jacket/coat, I’ve had this pattern in my stash for more than a year. I actually started to make it last fall, but abandoned the project as it just wasn’t what I was hoping for at the time. This year I found success though!!

I definitely wanted a lined coat, so after tons and tons of fiddling with the pattern pieces, I was able to draft a jacket front lining that worked with the front facing. This is what the assembled lining looked like before it was bagged with the outer coat.

Excuse the messy sewing room floor – I completely tore my sewing room apart last weekend and rearranged everything and it’s not really all put together again yet!

Anyway, I was excited to bag a lining (which I’ve never done before!) and it turned out great!! It’s one of those things I could never understand when reading about it online, but once I did it in real life, it was a piece of cake! Even the sleeves are perfect. Though this may not be the most tailored application of it, I’m glad I got to accomplish this a couple times before starting on the wool coats.

I used a Cuddle Fleece (or Flurr as I’ve recently seen it called – a mix of Fleece and Fur) from Hancock, the lining is a crepe back satin and it is underlined with a 100% cotton quilt batting. It gets cold here in MN, so I wanted to make sure it would be warm enough to last the whole winter. The cuddle fleece was crazy to work with! It shed EVERYWHERE! At the raw edges, not when finished. My sewing machine handled it well, but the pile was so thick that I would actually loose pins in it! The only down side is that the gathering detail around the yoke in the front and back is pretty much lost with the thickness of the fleece. But it’s soooooo soft and cozy, so that makes up for it!

My other big design change was to elasticize the hood. I wanted it to be snug around their little faces to keep the cold wind out. I cut four of the pattern hood piece (instead of just two per the instructions) and stitched them RST at the indicated fold line. Then I stitched again 5/8” from the edge to form a casing and inserted 1/4” elastic. I added the elastic and then placed the hood on one the girls heads and pulled until it fit snugly to get the right length on the elastic. Worked like a charm!

The buttons, as cute and perfectly coordinating as they are, are just for show. I used large sew on snaps for the closers. I just didn’t feel like attempting button holes through this fleece!

The girls love them!! They fit really well, they are a little big, which was intentional, cuz these girls grow like weeds.

Excuse the iPod, it was the only way to keep a willing subject for photos!

Goofy girls!

Check out my pattern review here and be sure to check back here on Monday for a giveaway! Now excuse me while I go de-fuzz my sewing room….

Jumping in the Deep End!

Well, I’m diving in to Winter Sewing head first – I just ordered everything I’ll need to make all three of my kids Wool Coats – eek!

I’ve never sewn a fully lined, tailored coat before. But, I’m confident and I think it will go smoothly.

For the girls, I’m going to be using Burda 9501, view A.

For my boy, I’m going to be using Oliver + S, School Days Coat (it just went OOP btw – I cannot believe it!)

I’m very excited to get started with both projects. I’m going to be referring to The Great Coat Sewalong and Sewaholic’s Coat Sewalong for tips along the way.

I’ll post about the process on each pattern too as I go along. Now I just have to wait for the fabric to arrive!!

More Setbacks

This is not what I want to be posting right now. I planned to have a week long series on Boys clothes – the huge pile of boy stuff I have cut out and sitting in my sewing room. I found new fabric for my next Inspired By project and I have about a hundred dresses I want to make for the girls for this fall/winter. But we are sick. All five of us. Very sick, so I haven’t been in my sewing room in over a week. It’s terrible.

Then, just to add to the fun of a house full of sickness, my son broke a toe on his right foot on Monday – our first broken bone (he’s actually somewhat proud of that, in a strange sort of way). So now I’m tasked with making a four year old who lives to run, stand on his head and find a way to climb on anything everything, sit and keep his foot up for three weeks. Sigh!

So I’ve been just chilling on my computer between wiping noses and laying in agony myself. I’ve been filing up my Pinterest boards with all sorts of inspiration and ideas. So this aptly sums up all the creativeness I’ve experienced here in the last week and a half:

 

Source: marlenemccune.blogspot.com via Lorenza on Pinterest

Please stick around, I really do have lots and lots of sewing goodness coming up!

So much to sew, so little time…

 

I've been busy over the past week, but without much to show for it.
I've been doing quite a bit of thrifting and have some amazing stuff to upcycle from my finds. I've also been doing a lot of cutting - just not a whole lot of actual sewing. I usually do this though. I love to cut and prep a bunch of projects all at once, then I can just go to it at my machine for a good while.

I am putting my latest Inspired By project on hold for now. It was coming along, and will be great when finished, but I think I might be happier with the end result with a different choice of fabric. Sigh...

On a really positive note, I FINALLY took the time to go through the process of creating a skirt sloper for myself. It was really fun to do and I have a perfect skirt pattern now. This is the tutorial I used to create the sloper, and I'm looking forward to trying my hand at making a pant sloper and a bodice sloper... someday. Right now I'm really excited about my skirt sloper, and I have lots and lots of suiting fabric in my stash that will finally get put to good use now!

Hopefully I’ll find some time to finish a project or two this week and will have something more exciting to post next time!