Warm Woodsy pants

I have a huge list of projects that I (Major Moma)want to get done right now, and none of them really fit this month's Inspiration Point.  But, since M and McH are doing projects, I did not want to be left out.

So, I dove into my fabric stash knowing there was a blue fleece somewhere in there that had deer and bear on it.  I thought I could make a quick pullover and that would be sufficient.  So I told Eli my plans.

He looked less than enthused.  He started sorting through my woodsy fabrics and gave his ideas.  He has got to be the most fashion opinionated nearly 5 year old boy there is!  He then started searching through my other fabrics and found some burgundy wool that I bought for a dress for me.  And announced he wanted the wool. 

No way.

I am not using my expensive wool on a 5 year old boy.

So we worked out a compromise...

Warm woodsy pants.  These pants are the Blank Slates pants from Melly sews.  The outer fabric is a medium weight twill (that is surprisingly soft) that my friend picked up in Korea. 

Tangent:  She offered to go to the fabric markets for me and she knows nothing about sewing.  But, as she told me, she knows a lot about quality.  That has certainly proven to be the truth.  I tell her what I want to sew and give her some color options.  Then she goes out and finds fabrics that she thinks would be nice.  This one from the my "I need pant fabric for Eli" request.  It has a definite high end feel to it and was a dream to sew with.

To accomodate my son's high end tastes, I took some scraps of the wool and made piping for the front pockets and a small pocket for inside one of the main front pockets.

I top stitched in orange thread in order to provide some color contrast.

The back has elastic at the waist and welt pockets.  You can't really tell in this picture, but I finally have made the perfect welt pockets.  This was my first time that I was able to get the corners just right. 

But the elastic in the back wrinkles them up.

 What makes these pants warm is that they are fully lined in flannel.  I chose a flannel with lots of woodland animals to go with the deer in our inspiration picture.  This same fabric lines the front and back pockets.  These pants are purposely made long, so he can cuff them up and then as he grows, unroll them. 

Eli also requested a hat.  So I made a hat out of the leftovers of the flannel and some fleece I had left from a project from a couple years back.  I thought I could make a baseball style cap and just tack up the brim and add ear flaps for a winter hat.

The ear flaps have large wooden buttons that can pin them up to if desired. 

I thought the hat turned out pretty cute.

I finished everything after Eli's bed time so I was unable to get any pictures of it on him.  Plus, rarely can I get pictures taken during the week.  Our evening routine is just too packed so I wait until the weekend to get them to wear what I have sewn and try to get pictures as we do whatever we had planned for the family.  There are very few planned photo shoots in my life.  So, this morning, I asked Eli to look at what I made and he liked it.  I put the hat on him.

It was too small.

So, I will see if there is anything I can do to rescue the hat.  I don't know if I have enough scrap to make another one.  Hats take very little fabric, but I think the fleece was all used up.  I do have a tiny bit of the flannel, so maybe I can combine it with other scraps with the same colors and works something up.   I will let you know if I am able to fix it.