baby kimono and bloomers for madeleine's baby

i am having blogger upload this post at 3 pm while i attend the baby shower of a colleague because i am so excited about what i made but didn't want madeleine (an occasional follower of this blog) to see it before the shower!

madeleine, a crafty lady indeed, is pregnant with a baby girl and seeing as i had half a yard of pink and red striped fabric (for the purpose of making christmas birdies, although i never ended up using it), i figured this would be the perfect use of this cute print! i just ran out of enough pink to do the sleeves, so i used one of my red pillowcases from ikea's clearance section (2 for $.99) that i never used. (while these pillowcases do not match anything in the house, i figured they'd make good fabric!) to make the trim of the neckline and the ties, i had to make about a yard of 1/2 inch bias tape, which is a nightmare to make without the fancy bias tape tool. however, with my new trusty iron, nothing is impossible!! (with my old iron from the 80's, nothing was possible because there were only 2 settings that still worked: luke warm and extremely hot)

the bloomers were the most thrilling part to make because the legs were shirred with elastic thread (my first attempt at shirring)!! so easy, as all you have to do is use the elastic in the bobbin instead of regular thread. i contemplated making a drawstring, but time ran out (chinese new year is in 4 weeks and i have 7 gifts to make! ahhhh), so i just made a bow with some leftover bias tape and sewed it on to the middle.i'd definitely make these again as they were so small and cute (i love small things)!! both patterns were from heather ross' "weekend sewing" book: lucy's kimono and ruby's bloomers.congrats madeleine!