Bucket hats!

When I started making the Paddington Bear shirt for my nephew, I very quickly decided that he needed a red bucket hat to go with it - just like Paddington wears.  I had already downloaded the free Oliver + S bucket hat pattern, and it was perfect!

Of course I had to make one for my niece, too.  Hers is a yellow floral with brown floral lining.

Both hats are size Medium (3-5 years), even though my niece is almost 3 and my nephew is 15 months - the internet says the hats run small.  From pictures, it looks like the hats fit well and are adorable.

They are fully reversible, and I used this tutorial to finish them without any hand sewing. I hear that the kids like the hats.  Which is good, because the dog didn't like it at all.

Paddington Bear

Early this summer, my sister-in-law and I went and shopped the Hancock's Fabrics closing sale.  She found an adorable Paddington Bear print and asked me to sew another button-up shirt for my nephew, like the one I made for his birthday.  I asked about sizing, and she suggested that a little more room in the shoulders would be nice, so I got to try my first attempt at altering a pattern!  I added a quarter inch to each shoulder seam, as you can see in the picture above, for a total of half an inch of extra width across the shoulders.

Then I sewed up the shirt, just like the last one - except this time I remembered to use Nicole's trick of cutting the collar interfacing into two pieces to make the collar fold extra nicely.

I put the shirt in the mail last weekend, and this morning my sister-in-law sent me a picture of my nephew looking very handsome in his new shirt!

Knitting this Summer

I didn't post much this summer, but I did knit!  I've been working intermittently on my navy shawl, and I knit almost a whole sweater:

I'm excited to have another (hopefully) presentable sweater to wear to work and church.  And I'm worried about running out of yarn.  I started with eight balls of yarn, and I have just under two left.  All I have left to do is the second sleeve and the i-cord edging around the front edges and neckline.  I'm steeling myself for the possibility that I may need to unravel my (machine washed and dried) swatch to finish.  We'll see how it goes.