the boo and her bum. plus a tutorial

so, you now know the name. maybe you're a naughty scroller and skipped jesse's talmudian dissertation on the origin and meaning of our little girl's name, or maybe i am an idiot and put it up in the sidebar so that you didn't have to read anything!

either way, there you have it. layla embry. i am 90% sure we will call her layla, but i also adore embry and would totally be cool with making a gametime decision to have her go by that if she came out looking more like an embry than like a layla. i am also down with calling her walter if she comes out looking like one of those.

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just like when we settled on judah and immediately started cutesy-fying his name by calling him judah-bug, we've done the same with layla. she is now referred to lovingly as layla-boo.

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once upon a time jesse and i were in a bookstore and heard a teenager on her cellphone say, "oh my god, she's like totally his gangsta-boo." well that was the greatest thing i had ever heard and i begged him to call me his gangsta-boo as a pet name. it sort of stuck, but is most often just "boo" (which is funny enough on its own). maybe that's where it came for as a suffix for layla, but here we are with layla boo. it just seemed to fit with judah's too: the boo and the bug. it would be even more fitting if she had been a surprise baby, but alas. now we can sing innumerable R&B and rap songs to her without changing the words.

so with her name all set, i was ready to brainstorm her coming home outfit. is it cliche to have a personalized/monogrammed outfit to bring the baby home from the hospital in? probs. but i don't care. i love it. label that baby!

when i had judah, it was way back years and eons ago when i didn't know how to make my own clothing for my kids (OMG how did i ever look at myself in the mirror?!!?) so i just had a design printed on a onesie for him by some online company. he wore it ALL the time and i just loved it; first outfit out of the dryer and onto him until the day he outgrew it. it was made up of all the colors of his room (because babies MUST match room decor at all times, y'all. don't front now) and his name and that's about it. Snores McGores, right? but he's a boy so it was apropos and i somehow didn't get beat up by maternity ward bullies for not dressing my baby cute enough.

yikes. one month olds ain't got nothing on the cuteness of a toddler.

but with layla, i knew i HAD to actually make her coming home outfit myself. and the fact that she's a chick has just given me so much more latitude for straight up going out of control. triple layered applique? check. ruffs? check. 3 different fabrics? ch-to the momo fofo-eck, y'all.

on a white gerber long sleeved newborn onesie with fold over cuffs for little mittens. my fave ($3)

the best part of this was when i butchered the little white onesie into near oblivion. i was trying to applique just the gold oval with the L initial directly onto the onesie, but it was a new stitch i had never done before and it kept getting totally stuck in one place as the needle (which was the totally wrong kind of needle for a delicate little knit baby romper) pummelled the fabric repeatedly into swiss, nay, harvarti cheese. i ended up having to pick out about a million stitches while crying and sweating and pouting like it was my party and judy and johnny had just walked in the door, like a queen with her king. and when the dust and thread fibers settled, i had this lovely bit of artistry and about a kiloton of self-loathing on my hands:

like a moth's nascar track

i would have straight given up 100% at this point and just grabbed another onesie and salvaged this one later with a big applique, but i couldn't because a little something i had already committed hours to on the back of this onesie meant i had to stay the course.

so i measured out a brown rectangle and re-positioned everything on top of it and then appliqued it all on the onesie over the oval scars of destruction.

i actually really love how it turned out with the 3 different fabrics and the rectangle.

so about that little surprise on the backside that i had already invested in? well, it truly is on the backside and it's proof positive that i am fully sold out to the idea of a little girl:

those are ruffles! on the bum! of a baby onesie. (this is the part where you squeal)

little profile view of the rufflebumbum. can you even stand it?

wanna make your own ruffle bum onesie? if not, stop reading because here's where we get sewie.

here's the tutorial i used for the ruffles. though i went rogue, per my usual m.o., and did it way faster and with less fabric by just cutting rectangle strips and then ironing and sewing the edges under. i also didn't measure for the placement of the ruffles after they were gathered, i just eyeballed and pinned down and i think they still came out great.

and for the stencilled fabric applique details? i just used two techniques i have found before and combined them to do what i need for this project:

1. print off your design: letters, shapes, graphics etc. i would suggest something simple without too many details or shapes within shapes to keep track of.

2. trace them BACKWARDS onto the back (non-rough) side of a square of wonder under that is a little bigger than your whole design. (this is a type of fusible interfacing, ask an employee at joann). if you're artsy-talented, you could draw the design directly only the back of the interfacing rather than printing it off. just remember to put it on there in the mirror image of what your finished design should be since this will be the back of the applique.

3. iron the square of wonder under onto the back of a matching square of the fabric you want to use.

4. use an x-acto knife to cut around the backwards design that is drawn on the interfacing. make sure you cut through both the interfacing and the fabric so you don't have any danglers.

5. peel the paper off the interfacing of the part you cut out and then iron your design onto the fabric it's destined for (for instance, i would have applied my L directly onto the onsie if i hadn't wanted/needed the other layers of fabric shapes)

6. topstitch around the whole thing (apparently you don't have to do this and wonder under will keep the design on there even if you wash it, but i am untrusting and the sewn edge makes me feel safer and looks sharper and more homemade)

these two little tutorials are all i used to make layla her first real outfit! so easy, and such a huge payoff. please give it a whirl and let me know if anything is unclear or stupidly explained. this is my first time with a sewing tutorial and perhaps the last.