KCWC: Sweater Cardigans

Over at Elsie Marley, each fall and spring there's a kids clothing sewing challenge, and this is my little entry I did Monday and Tuesday evenings.  

I made two black and white cardigans for each of my kids.

RJ loves his, mainly because he got to pick the buttons and they weren't what I wanted him to pick.
Funny how the rebellion makes him love it more.

They're both make with sweatshirt fleece, so warmer than regular knit for fall and winter in our freezing climate.

I used a new pattern from Adrianna at Crafterhours.
She's just starting a pattern shop with this Greenpoint Cardigan pattern.

It's nice to have a pattern with such a huge range of sizes, and that you can use for boys or girls.
It's a quick sew and I'd say a beginner pattern anyone could make.

Great way to upcycle adult tee shirts as well!

So first we'll talk about the boy look since I always tend to prefer the boy stuff I make for some reason.

Fabric: Printed sweatshirt fleece I bought 3 years ago from Walmart for only $2.00/yd.  Back when they'd get really awesome stuff for dirt cheap, like wool blends, knits, sweatshirt fleece and corduroy--but now their fabric dept stinks.

Black trim is just regular knit interlock from Joann.

I wanted to try some neon green buttons, but RJ picked blue.
Not a big deal, and it definitely makes him own the garment which is more important than my trying a bit of the current neon trend like I'd planned.

in case you care: shown with corduroy No David! pants

My biggest achievment on these were the pattern matching with the stripes.
Both the side seams and then the center front opposite sides aligning to look like seamless stripes was an exciting thing that happened to work out like I'd hoped.

RJ wore it all day yesterday, and actually prefers it as a shirt, with his bare chest blaring in the V of the neckline.
I explained it's more like a jacket, but he was little Hasslehoff all afternoon.

On to Ellie girls' owl cardi.

Fabric: owl print sweatshirt fleece I bought from fabric.com 2 years ago.
Black contrasting cuffs the same knit interlock.

Ellie was kind of between sizes, so I made the larger size 2 to have some growing room.

So for now it's a little big.

shown with: shirt {H&M}, skirt {pin-tucked toddler skirt} and {dotted leggings}

This one was easier to cut since there weren't patterns to match, I just had to make sure the owls were all right side up.

I couldn't decide on the buttons for Ellie.
I usually avoid pink.  But RJ told me that's what she wanted, and I thought they did stand out and make it more girly, so we went pink.  I'd been thinking aqua or lime.

Despite the clapping below, Ellie hasn't been the biggest fan of long sleeves lately.

It has just begun that she's old enough to have clothing preferences, sad for me.
But hopefully she'll warm up to the layers as it gets colder.