Little Boy's Wallet

A few weeks ago my little boy asked me to make him a wallet. I (bad mommy) promptly forgot! Today he reminded me when he found his Lego Official Builder Licence (which the kids received as birthday party favors last weekend) and wanted a special place to put it.  I had a little time on my hands and decided to get right down to business.  I chose to use the Basic Boy’s Wallet tutorial from Noodlehead.  I liked the accordion fold pockets and I thought that the style of this one was most like Daddy’s.  I thought he’d appreciate that the most.  I also liked the way she chose to decorate the wallet, although I didn’t use her decorations ideas. I did find several other tutorials that I liked with different features, they are listed at the end of this post.

I had some Lego Fabric from Spoonflower leftover from the gift bags for Caleb’s party that I decided to use for the lining.  I used some dark denim for the outer layer and fussy-cut a minifig head for the decoration on the front of the wallet.  The denim was a little stiffer than the suiting fabric recommended by Noodlehead, so it was a little bit difficult to sew, but not so difficult that I had to give up.  The whole project took me about an hour and my little man is thrilled!

As promised, here a few of the other tutorials that I found.  I might consider making these in the future:

RePlayGround | Shirt Cuff Wallet – Clever wallet that uses the cuff of a men’s button-down shirt. Uses the button on the cuff as a wallet closure and has an unfinished edge on the sleeve side of the cuff.
Lola Nova | Summer Wallet Tutorial – This wallet is quite basic like the one from Noodlehead.  Has a button closure and uses separate pieces of fabric for the card pockets for a scrappy look.
::verypurpleperson:: | Boy’s Wallet – I love this wallet, but it had a few more features than I wanted to tackle today.  Has a zipper pouch on the outside, an elastic for closure, and has a hook-and-loop closure pocket for coins.

Easy 2-hour Sundress

Jenny sent me an e-mail on Thursday asking if I might, perchance, be able to whip-up a sundress for the completely ADORABLE little Anika. It seems that they are having family portraits done and her family chose black, grey & light blue as the colors.  Since the clothes were supposed to be predominantly black or grey, they were having some trouble finding a sundress. Now, how could I say no to that?  Having my own little boy is great and all, but nothing compares to getting to play dress up with this sweet little doll.

I used the standard pillowcase dress pattern that you can find pretty much everywhere (There’s a good tutorial/example at Prudent Baby), except instead of a pillowcase, I used an dark grey, XL men’s t-shirt that cost $3.99 at ACMoore.  There are so many pluses to using a t-shirt!  My two favorites? You can use the hem of the t-shirt as the hem of the dress AND you don’t have to finish the armscyes (jersey doesn’t fray)!  Also, it’s just a comfortable, breathable fabric, perfect for summer.  Why else would they make t-shirt out of it?

I used the dress she was wearing (a little jersey sundress from H&M) to figure the length and the armsyces.  Initially, we were going to use a fabulous polka dot trim on the bottom of the dress but I’m glad we didn’t – I think it would have made the dress too heavy.  I used the serger for the side seams and the sewing machine to make the channels in the front and back for the strap.  We used a stretched out piece of the tshirt to make the wrap around strap and tied it just on one side (like the smaller of the two dresses in the Prudent Baby example).

The flower is a simple yo-yo of light blue linen with a small circle of black felt, a circle of the grey t-shirt and a shell button layered on top.

All told, the dress took about 2 hours, but that includes time for socializing, making decisions about the design, taking pictures and threading my serger. If I’d just been sewing straight through, it probably would have been more like 1 hour!

I case you’re wondering, several years ago I made this type of dress for myself; it’s not only appropriate for wee ones…