For the love of pockets

Emily loves pockets.  Sometimes, during church, she will start hunting for pockets on her dress, asking "pocket?" repeatedly.  Telling her that there are no pockets does little good, since she is 2.

So, given the opportunity, I put pockets on her clothes.

Today I was replacing elastic on a pair of 18 month pants.  (I have been trying to get through my mending pile).  The pants were cotton on the outside, with a rayon lining.  And they were dry clean only.  Not really what I would choose, but I got them for free.  The elastic was so stretched out that Emily had only wore the pants a couple times, since I had to roll over the waistband to get them to stay up.

After I took out the old elastic, Emily wanted to try them on.  I quickly cut out the lining, and slipped them on her.  They fit really well, despite being a couple sizes to small.  Maybe they are from back when loose clothes were in.  The only problem was that they hit her ankles at flood level.  So, I thought, why not make them into shorts for this summer.

I cut off the ends of the pants.  And since Emily loves pockets, I used the cut off legs to make pockets.

Standard patch pockets for the back pockets:

And modified patch pockets for the front:

You can see a little of the pink bias tape I used to finish the edge of the pocket.  I used bias tape for the front and back pockets.  Usually I just fold over the top edge of patch pockets a couple times, but I didn't have quite enough fabric to do that, since I was using left overs from cutting the legs shorter.

She looks pretty cute in her new capris:

(We bribed her with smarties and her Hello Kitty movie to get her to sit for the picture.  She did NOT want to change out of her nightgown).

Clothes for Emily

Lately I have been making clothes for Emily. Here are the fabulous results:

You may (or may not) remember my entry from last year about some fabric I had bought for Emily. I made it into the sweet jumper above. The shoulder straps were long enough to attach two sets of snaps, so that it will fit her for a while, even if she does grow soon. It also has patch pockets on the front.

Its been cold a lot recently, and Emily has play dresses that don't keep her legs warm. But her only leggings are dark pink. So I made the above red leggings to go with her red play dress. I made them from fabric from an old sweater Jeanie and I had cut up for material a while ago, so they are nice a toasty. Dan asked that I also put in a tag, so he could tell which side was the back.

The first leggings were such a success that I dug out some more fabric to make into leggings. The fabric wasn't in the right size pieces for leggings, so I worked out this cute skirt. There are little red dots on it, so it goes well with her leggings. As a bonus, I also made myself a dress from this fabric a couple years ago, so now Emily and I can have matching outfits.

I also made another pair of leggings from a T-shirt I don't think I'll ever wear. (Which I definitely won't wear it now.) It had a little pocket on the breast, which is now in the back of the leggings. So no tag is necessary. I had meant for it to be a functional pocket, but today I discovered that I had accidentally sewn most of it shut. Oh well.

Also, Emily looks upset because I won't give her the camera. Not because she just woke up. Which she did. Funny story: she was sleeping on our bed, and I had put a ring shaped rattle next to her while looking for the camera cord. She sort of woke up, grabbed the rattle, and rolled back onto her back. Which she usually does when she wants to play with things. Only, she wasn't very awake, and she fell back asleep, relaxing her grip and dropping the rattle on her head. Then she woke up and laughed.