The Final Stretch.... and I mean Streach

So we are getting really excited to welcome Baby London into the world... But no one is more anxious than I am. I feel like I have been pregnant for ever... And when I say that we are in the final stretch... As you can tell I'm not exaggerating when I say "stretch"  The Doctors say any day now but they have been saying that for some time now...

 So I don't go absolutely crazy from waiting I decided to keep myself busy with some projects...I saw some extra material that I had from a few old projects that I did.... and I decided to make London a cute little shirt.... Now this is probably one of the easiest shirts that anyone can really make.... but they are so cute. I am planning on using a cream stretch fabric that I have to make baby leggings and a little cardigan to also go along with this to make a whole outfit.

 I took the extra material and I cut two squares... one for the front of the shirt and one for the back.... Make sure you cut the squares a little larger than you are planning on the shirt being ... leaving room for the seam allowance but also so you can create a gather so the shirt is not tight.

once you sew the squares together on the side seams.... sew a seam at the bottom of the shirt... ( i like to make the seam a little thick)

Then at the opposite opening sew a basting stitch around the whole opening.  Pull the strings tight to create the gather. 

After I pulled the gather....I cut a slit in the center back of the shirt so you can slip the shirt over the head easily....  Later I  will add a button.

To make the slit look clean cut... I took a small strip of fabric and pinned it along the slit...as you can tell if you pull the slit open you can almost sew in a straight line. Once it is sewn on you just need to fold it into the inside of the shirt.

If you notice from the first picture I had a lot of small scraps of the mustard color material... but nothing big enough... So I sewed all the scraps together to create one piece of fabric...I also wanted it to have the rough frayed look so I made it so the ends of the fabric was showing...
Thats what I did.... but you can use one piece of fabric like a normal person.... or you can make it patchwork as well if you like to spice things up like I do...
In this first picture The patch work fabric is folded in half horizontally .... I then pinned that fabric to the polka dot fabric making sure I lined up the ends of the mustard fabric to the slits in the back of the polka dot fabric...

I cut out four strips of the polka dot fabric and made simple straps. (two for the front of the shirt and two for the back) Sewed those on in the appropriate place and tied them in a knot at the top.

I then sewed on a loop button.  TADA! the shirt is complete.