.For baby boy.

Truth be told, that if I could have had a choice in the gender of this baby, I would have gone for a girl. It would have evened the family up and I love having sisters and wanted Lil to be able to have a sister of her own. Plus, I've got soooo much girly fabric and patterns to use that it would have made for some very fun sewing! 

I'm excited to be having another boy though, and have started hunting out boy-friendly fabrics and sewing patterns with the intent to sew as much of this little man's infant wardrobe as I can. I do have lots of boy clothes in my baby boxes, but after two sons (plus some sharing with family and friends) most of them are looking tired. And it's always nice to have some fresh clothes for a fresh baby so I've got lots of sewing ahead of me!

I started going through my stash of Ottobre magazines to choose some practical newborn outfits. This one comes from the Spring 1/2012 edition. The pants are called "Little Houses Knit Pants" and I've sewn the smallest size - 50cm. I'm hoping that they will be small enough for a brand new baby, but it's hard to know when you don't know what size they are going to come out!

I used a combination of Hilco Campan knit in light blue and white stripe and Stella grey. For all of the topstitching, I used the honeycomb stitch on my sewing machine because I don't have a coverstitch machine.

My favourite part is the contrast bottom panel - I'm going to have fun with this in the future! Cute for me to look at and comfy for baby's big nappy bottom.

The pattern had regular cuffs on the bottom of the legs. If there is one thing I can't stand, it's bare-footed babies in the cold weather and it seems that the cutest baby clothes are footless. I'm yet to find a pair of socks that stay on a baby, so try and steer away from footless clothes. I do have a few baby suits that have fold over cuffs though - they are genuis! It means that you have the option of a regular cuff if you want to see the feet:

And a closed foot when you want them all snuggly:

 

To make them, I took the length measurements from one of my old baby suits and used the width measurements from the cuffs in the pattern. I started to use my brain to work how they were constructed, then did a quick online search and found a great tutorial by Things for Boys. I like the idea of using these for big kids jammies too - so nice to know their feet are snuggly on a cold night!

The bodysuite pattern is called "Bert Bodysuit with a henley placket". Unfortunately I messed up the placket and it sitting off centre. I'll only be making that mistake once! So annoying, but I figure that once it is on a cuddly baby it won't be as noticeable as it is sitting flat here! 

This was another easy pattern - lots of binding to sew on though!

I was excited to break out my brand new snap machine from Snaps Australia for this project. I've only had it for a few weeks and have tried it out on some bibs, but nothing as thick as this and it worked brilliantly. Went through all the thicknesses without any hassles and the snaps feel really secure and sturdy.

And that, my friends, is the first of lots of baby boy sewing! I'm very excited to use some of my favourite boy print knits I've been collecting so stay tuned!