Your favorite Teesies are now at Wild Child!

If you're in the Boston area, you can now find your favorite chuckle-worthy onesies at Wild Child on Mass Ave. and Medford St. in Arlington, MA. I'm thrilled to be featured there, because they carry several lines of AMAZING high-quality children's clothes (including my absolute favorite, Tea) and it's such a fantastic location. Go on in and check out the Teesies fare and you can sound all posh when you say, "Oh, I love this designer." (We'll just assume no one else in the store has heard of Teesies and you'll come off looking like one of the Beautiful People.)

You'll also find Teesies at the following locations:

Noa Gifts
86 Commonwealth Ave.
West Concord, MA
(978) 341-0990

Mosees
3261 Main St.
Barnstable, MA

(508) 362-2232

Bells & Whistles
68 Leonard St.
Belmont, MA
(617) 489-2500

David-Max
187 Main St.
East Greenwich, RI
(401) 885-1732

SALE!

It's time to clear out old designs to make room for all the new ones. Lucky you!
 
See my sale section on Etsy here. Quantities limited.

Artitude

Such exciting news! A local group called Think Big--Think Belmont is sponsoring an art walk in Cushing Square on September 21st. I'll be there, along with lots of new onesie designs, fun t-shirts for kids, beautiful doll quilts, and make-you-own-snowman kits that will have you wishing for January. Details here.

If you're a Bostonian, come on by! Cushing Square is a great little shopping area with some of my very favorite places, including the church where my daughters went to preschool, an actual Ben Franklin store (remember those?), and a little eatery/bakery where the quiche du jour is so good I've never bothered to try anything else on the menu.

Shops!

If you're in New England, check out Teesies at one of these local shops:

Sports Club/LA-Boston Spa Shop
4 Avery St. at Tremont (across from the Boston Common)
Boston, MA 02111
boston.sportsclubla.com

NOA Gifts
86 Commonwealth Ave.
West Concord, MA 01742
www.noagifts.com

David-Max: A Home Goods and Artist Boutique
187 Main St.
East Greenwich, RI 02818
www.david-max.com

I know it was Kate' wedding...but Pippa looked AWESOME

Oh, I'm in love with Kate's dress. Really. I'm such a sucker for lace! And it was suitably royal without being overdone (and suitably modern without being too, too sleek).

But Pippa...wow, Pippa stole the show. As well she should have. Kate had to be suitable and proper, but Pippa got to look spectacular. The cowl neck! The faux-jacket bodice detail! And, yeah, more lace.

USPS Love

Sure, I've had my fair share of waiting in line at the post office, and getting yelled at by postal clerks (and, to be fair, doing some yelling back...yes, I'm talking to YOU, Ms. Abuse-the-customer-in-front-of-me-because-she-doesn't-speak-fluent-English). But can I just say that I love being able to print shipping labels online?

And that I love it even MORE because I can print a shipping label for one of my customers, e-mail it to her, and have her return her quilt squares postage- and hassle-free?

(Plus, I really love the ladies at my local post office. They're delightful, and they know my kids by name, and they're always happy to see us.)

The "I Recycle" tee

Proof that environmental consciousness has its drawbacks:

I'll probably offer it for big kids and adults, too...let me know if you're interested.

The Police tribute tee

As promised...the tribute tee for one of the greatest songs to come out of the '80s. Sting fans, eat your hearts out. (And no, it doesn't come in a big-person size. You've just got to get your hands on a baby.)

New stuff coming soon!

So after the insanity of Halloween (Lucy costumes!), Christmas (five complete sets of Nativity costumes for the nieces and nephews!) and last week's preschool fundraiser (50 T-shirts!), I'm finally getting around to posting some new items on Etsy. Look for a Police tribute bodysuit, a very green recycling tee for kids (hey, I'll probably make some adult ones too), and some fun customizable shirts for babies and bigger kids alike.

And while I'm at it — I'm also working on putting up my own website, which will let me offer some things that haven't been easy to offer on Etsy: sliding-scale pricing for larger orders of tees and sweatshirts, for example, which are perfect for family reunions or school clubs; and a schedule of upcoming sewing classes if you're here in the Boston suburbs. It's going to be a while, since I'm still working on the basic design and I tend to be a bit of a perfectionist (which, face it, is a good thing in a seamstress!). But just so you know...it'll be there soon. :)

About to post a new grown-up tee...

...green "CTL" shield on grey tee shirt. First person to figure out what it means and swear to wear it to your next ward party wins one in your size. E-mail me at t e e s i e s [at] v e r i z o n [dot] n e t with your responses!

Happy Cyber Monday!

Woke up this morning to great reviews of my princess hat and recycling symbol bodysuit on Familylicious.

That's a great first-ever Cyber Monday for Teesies! Best of all: there's a giveaway involved, so click on over there and enter!

(What are you still doing here? Go visit Familylicious already!)

Guess what?

...I'm being featured on a review blog!

Check out Familylicious Reviews on Monday, November 30th for a review of my baby bodysuits and princess hats. There's also a GIVEAWAY, so make sure you enter to win a cute gift for someone pint-sized on your Christmas list!

Pink + sparkly = birthday present

One of my daughter's friends turned 5 this week, and the what-do-you-think-she'd-like-as-a-present discussion was short and sweet. "Angela likes princesses. I think she wants a princess hat."

Done and done! All I needed to buy was some good medium-weight fusible interfacing, since we already had scads of sparkly fabric lying about around here. (Those remnant bins at the fabric store? They're like heroin.) And thanks to coaching my teenage babysitter on SAT math over the last few weeks, figuring out the pattern for the conical hat was pretty simple:

1. Measure child's head, c
2. Determine height of hat, h
3. Calculate the diameter, d, of a circle with radius h.
4. Set up an equation: c/d = a/360. Cross-multiply, solve for a.
5. Draw a wide wedge of pie with interior angle a and radius h. This is your basic pattern piece to make into the hat. Cut one of these in interfacing, then add seam allowances around all sides and cut this piece in fabric. Cut a rectangular piece of sheer fabric with length h and width about 2h.
6. Hem, iron, sew two seams. I think the whole process took about half an hour, and we ended up with this:


(Oh, wow, I'm such a nerd. Does Omnigrid make a slide rule?)

That's one big happy family...

...wearing their family reunion sweatshirts (46 of 'em, to be exact). The project took over my dining room for about a week — boxes of sweatshirts, stacks of printed heat-transfer vinyl, an iron and a roll of parchment paper.

It was my first time working on sweatshirts instead of tees, and I still consider myself a novice when it comes to tees! Heat transfers work best when they're done on a hard surface, so my biggest dilemma was how to keep the bulk of the sweatshirt fabric from ruining the transfer. The solution: buy a cheap wooden cutting board and slip it inside the sweatshirts while ironing on the transfer. It worked great.

And the best part: this family was delightful to work with. I got to hand-deliver one box of shirts, which was promptly torn open (upside-down, even) by a pair of little kids who couldn't wait to get to their own pint-sized sweatshirts.

So we're now plotting a shirt design for our own family reunion next July....

It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!

Or something like that. There were 16 separate requests on Etsy in the last month for adult-sized Lucy van Pelt costumes. 'Tis the season for crabby amateur psychiatrists, perhaps?

I just finished the second of THREE Lucy dresses I'm making this year. Pictures to follow, since I'm awfully proud of these! Dropped waist, ruffle around the neck, puffed sleeves, crinoline, covered buttons. Dress #3 is cut out and ready for assembly tomorrow.

And...tomorrow I get to help a friend's daughter with her "bright person" costume: mortarboard, brightly colored clothes, battery-powered lights strung around her neck, and a T-shirt that says "Bright Person" in garish rainbow letters. Now if we can just figure out how to rig a light bulb above her head....

Just wondering...

...whether McCall's always prints their pattern numbers exactly across the bust line. I just had to adjust a pattern for an A-cup (obviously not something I'm making for myself!) and the little half-inch strip I cut out exactly removes the pattern number.

Anyone know?

Oh, this has made my life sooooooo much easier...

EtsyHacks. Wow. I mean, wow.

Itty bitty khakis

I took down the listing for My Friend Mandy PJs last month and immediately got several convos asking if I'm still making the PJs. Yikes! There really are other Mandy fiends out there. Yes, I'm still making them — I'd just run out of the fabric that's pictured on the doll, and will have to take some new photos. In the meantime, the listing is back up, and there are now five different patterns available.

And then Dawn S. wrote, "Do you remember the outfit...plaid top, khaki pants, yellow backpack? It's a lot like an LL Bean ensemble."

So...I started sewing. I've finished a pair of khakis and just need to put snaps on the shirt. Would you believe, in all of the random odds and ends of notions that are floating around in my sewing machine cabinet, that I don't have the right size snaps? This morning I made a quick dummy backpack out of muslin. Allowing for naps, a preschool pickup, and a board meeting tonight. I should have a finished pack by sometime tomorrow. Watch for the entire hiking outfit to be posted in my shop later this week!

CPSIA compliance

I know, I know — it sounds boring, doesn't it? Last year's Consumer Product Safety Information Act, parts of which just went into effect last month, requires all manufacturers of articles for children to label their products in such a way that they can determine the source of the materials used to make the products.

Yawn all you want, roll your eyes all you want. I had a glorious time coming up with product labels. Well, glorious except for the incident with the hot iron and the polyester ribbon, which was hilarious in its own way, but you really had to be there. And now, when you order something I made after August 14th, you'll get a great little permanent tag with it that says you bought it from Teesies...which means that your friends, instead of having to ask you where you got that adorable baby blanket, can surreptitiously check a seam.