Patterns for Children's Clothes - get more for your money!

My little baby girl has a sea of pink clothes - sweet blush tones, hot corals, lipstick strawberry shades - but I needed to spike it with a pair of black and white striped leggings. Searching the mall and the internet the closest I came was a pair of black and ivory striped pants, for $16.50. (Not bad for an adult, but considering how quickly she outgrows everything, so not worth it for baby clothes.) 

I found Kwik Sew pattern 3607 and recognized right away what a great deal it is. At $10.99 for the pattern, another $5.62 for 5/8yd of knit fabric, and $.99 for a pack of elastic, you might think I'm not so great at math. But the pattern has leggings, a shirt, and a jumper in five baby sizes! It's the only pattern I'll need for the next year to make Annika a whole wardrobe of cute pants, tops and dresses, perfect for layering. Plus, the leggings are super quick - I made my dream leggings in less than 20 minutes.

And Annika's so cute in them! She wore them all weekend, and stared with great delight at her graphically striped legs.

Children's clothing patterns are an amazing value if you use all the sizes.  Keep tracing paper (like my favorite, Bosal) on hand, trace pieces in the size needed onto the sturdy paper, transfer the markings, and keep the pattern till you need to go up a size, and trace the next one up! Mark your traced pieces with the pattern number and size so you can use them again and again.

Tracing patterns is a great way to make all of your patterns last - Bosal Paper can be sewn through, so you can try out fit before you slice into your beautiful fabrics.  And you'll save a ton of time if you learn to love rotary cutters - use a nice big cutting mat, pattern weights instead of pins and roll that blade around  for lickety-split cutting! We even have Roll-A-Pattern Markers to trace patterns with super-speed.

Next, I'm going to make Annika a striped shirt, but first I'm going to make her a little pair of jeans leggings - I found an awesome 'denim' at our Northgate store. that is a super-soft, stretchy knit. With a little gold thread detailing, she'll be rocking a little denim on her next hike with Daddy!

~ Anna-Beth