This week is Boys’ Week over at Project Run & Play. The last time I participated in the sew-along there wasn’t a boy-specific week. Since I didn’t have a boy to sew for, I counted myself lucky. This time when the challenges were announced, I was actually excited about this week. Since my little nephew (the “Bug”) was born I wanted to make him a real outfit and this was the perfect opportunity!

Now, I’ve sewn clothing pieces for boys here and there, but never a whole outfit. For this challenge I knew I wanted to do something more than just a little shirt and maybe some pants. I wanted the whole shebang! Hat, shoes, appliqued onesie…the works. I did some reconnaissance work on Pinterest for some cute boy patterns and/or tutorials. I stumbled across this shop and her adorable patterns for little boys. That hat! I knew this was the way to go.

So…I made a little baby suit! Here are the details:

The vest is made of fine-wale chocolate brown corduroy and I used pale blue to accent it. I even had these shiny pale blue buttons in my stash. How fortuitous!

The back is the blue accent with a cute chocolate stripe. I used this to also accent the hat and make his tie. (See below.)

Under the vest I just put a simple white onesie that I appliqued with a tie made from my accent fabric. I didn’t realize how high the vest front came up, so you can’t really see his tie…maybe he will get a bow tie for Easter.

For the pants I used this pattern for baby skinny pants. I kept the width the same, but shortened both the top and the bottom…he is a short Bug. It was the perfect look I wanted. Many times pants patterns for babies are too wide at the ankle to accommodate for their diapered tushies and chunky thighs. These have a nice tapered leg that looks great on. But they aren’t too tight either. Perfect.

And my crowning achievement…the hat!

I love it so much…so cute! It was actually pretty easy to put together. Just a bit fiddly since there are a lot of pieces and steps. But nothing was really hard to do. The idea behind this hat is that it should be reversible. But the way the elastic is sewn in the back make it look kind of rough on the inside, even though the outside looks really nice.

Here is a picture of the inside of the hat so you can see the accent colors. (I angled it so you can’t see the ugly part.)

So, by now you are all saying, “Where are the pictures of the cute baby????”

Don’t worry, they are coming. He is precious. So precious, in fact, that I got distracted from taking pictures of the clothes the precious baby was wearing! So, I’ve got many pictures of the Bug looking cute in his suit, but it is hard to see the shape, etc. of the clothes in the pics. Hence the boring shots above.

Okay, without further ado…here is our Buster Brown Bug…

He was not in a very smiley mood this afternoon. He was perfectly amiable, just not smiling.

Mostly he looked at his mother like she was nutso.

Or at me like the camera was going to steal his soul.

Luckily he is still cute, smile or no smile.

Eventually his mama was able to wrangle a little smile out of him.

And then shortly thereafter he decided his hands were super tasty.

Tasty!

Nothing we could do would convince him to put his hands down…so, that was kind of the end of our photo shoot.

Are we done yet, Aunt Harmony?

His little suit was so cute on him and actually seemed to be comfortable. At least he didn’t scream at us the whole time he had it on. He even tolerated/liked his hat!

This is his casual, just-got-off-his-paper-route look. He’s chillin’.

I also had forgotten how quick (and small) baby clothes are! From un-ironed fabric to finished garment I probably spent only 5 hours cutting/sewing/working on his outfit. Not too shabby!

This was a fun project to work on and I foresee some more sewing for the Bug in the future. And who knows, maybe this baby I’m cooking is a boy and I’ll need to expand my repertoire even more!

Headed to Disney for the weekend! See you next week with a couple Disney related projects and an early Valentine’s Day Project Run & Play challenge.