Fleece sleep suit for my DGD

My beautiful little granddaughter needed a new sleep suit to wear in bed over her PJ's.  My son and daughter-in-law inform me that all the ones they have seen in the shops are without the feet, and they wanted one with feet.  They had one which was a hand-me-down from my niece's little boy, but it was too long for little Alana, so I took it to use it as a pattern.

Original sleep suit

I unpicked the foot part so that I could trace around the pattern pieces, but the rest of the suit I just laid out on my tracing paper and made a paper pattern, and here is the end result.

There is a nice placket covering the zip.

Here is the crotch area

Here are the little feet.

This is how I made the little suit:

With right sides together and using a serger/overlocker if  you have one, sew the front pieces to the back piece at the shoulder seams.  Clip the centre point of the sleeve heads, and right sides together, place the clipped point at the shoulder seam and then serge the sleeves to the body.

TOP TIP: I kept the suit laid out on my cutting table as my guide to put all the pieces together.

Next I sewed the crotch piece to the back of the body and then sewed the front part of the foot to the front leg pieces.  Now you can sew the inside leg which extends into the crotch piece. followed by the outside leg seam and sleeves (all in one go).

I now had what resembled a sleep suit.  The soles of the feet went on next again using the serger.

I dug into my stash of zips and found one slightly longer than required (not a problem) and just finger-folded a small edge and pined the edge to the  right-edge of the zip and using a zipper foot stitched it in place.

Now for the front placket - which I love, I realised at the end I had made a bit of a mistake.  Because I traced out the pattern with the RTW suit inside out - my sniffly head must have been muddled because I sewed this to the front of the suit right-sides together with the intention of covering the zip, and didn't realise until I finished the suit that the original never had anything covering the zip on the outside, but I like my version better. 

To make the placket, right-sides together, I folded the fabric in half and stitched the bottom seam and turned it right-sides out.  Next, right sides together, I serged the placket to the right front piece.  Once the placket was sewn, I then made sure the seam allowance was laying flat, and laid the line of the seam against the left side of the zip and pinned and stitched it in place along the length of the zip and then secured the bottom of the placket in place by sewing across the bottom edge.  

The neck edge was just a straight piece of fabric (yes I guess I could have cut it on the bias), first folded right sides together to sew the ends, and then turned right-sides out and serged to the neck edge and top-stitched down.

The whole suit was finished off with a little popper to keep the neck closed.

As mentioned earlier, it was only when I finished that I realised the zip placket should have been on the inside not the outside, so I simply cut a strip of cotton fabric  using the selvage edge for the exposed part and serged it to the zipper, thus creating a zip guard on the inside of the suit too.

Now the only thing that I haven't got is the rubbery bottom to the foot parts to stop her slipping and sliding on the floor.  I tried putting some blobs of PVA glue on the under sole to see if this would do the trick on some scrap fabric, but when I went up to look this morning, it just seemed like hard blobs so not a great result, will try also to paint it so its flat and see what happens. 

Can't wait to try it on her, but I suspect we will have a few tantrums as she will think that she has to go to bed.....(see here for a photo of her modelling it)

Job done, just hope the kids can get here after our 6" snow fall last night.  I can now concentrate on finishing my Issey tunic and start thinking about some other items to make.  I have enough of the fleece left over to make Alana a little top and perhaps a hat too, we will see where my creative juices take me.

Catch you later...................