Ready for the Fourth!

I have been thinking, neigh obsessing, over coordinating fourth of July outfits for my kids for about a month now. I'm not normally the matchey-matchey type and I have yet to have this impulse strike in the last eight months that I have been a proud parent of two. Perhaps it was because at Christmas I had a two month old and "coordinating" outfits (never matching; the horror!) takes a great deal of time and energy in either shopping or designing/sewing. Separately, I have also been considering making a ruffle butt onesie.

I found this fun material at Joanne's and immediately thought "bunting for the boody."

Neither too girly nor too boyish, I decided this was the perfect fabric for two shirts. For my son, who will probably only put up with matching his sister for about five more minutes, I thought "firecracker:" loud and explosive. Perfect! For the little miss, I thought "sparkler."


I made this by the old school reverse applique method: trace and sew, then cut. (Trace the desired shape on t-shirt, back with fabric right side facing shirt back, sew around design, then cut away excessive backing, and ever so carefully cut away the t-shirt fabric in between the stitching.) I've been doing a lot of machine applique with my embroidery machine, Mathilde, and I needed a break. I considered embroidering "firecracker" and "sparkler" under the applique work, but I decided that might make these look a little too commercial and I was grooving on the homemade charm.

Something I learned about ruffles recently while making a camera strap cover: ruffles do odd things to prints. On my camera strap, I ruffled some large scale damask. Huge mistake. Adding the ruffles reduced this cool and edgy print to a batik looking tribal print. Here, I think the patriotic fabric works, but the ruffles add either an Evil Knievel vibe or perhaps bring to mind a rebel flag.

For the ruffles, I sewed two long strips of gathered tubing across the onesie. They kept wanting to stick straight out, so I tacked them down with little red hearts on the red part of the stripe. Subtle, but pretty cute when you notice them.

A fun project and I can't wait to get some family pictures done in them.

Thanks for checking it out!