Sleep Sack

The weather has definitely turned.  Kazuo is also getting much bigger and the lovely cool cotton sleeping bags my mother made him for the summer were just not keeping him warm, nor were they giving him the room he needed.  We turned on the heating in the interim, especially since my sewing machine chose this time to break down and so it needs to go back for major repairs.  Sigh…

But this week Tarah lent me her machine, which is lovely and sturdy and purrs along like an industrial machine, thanks to all the wonderful metal parts (not like the flimsy plastic on my dear little machine… they don’t make them like they used to!).  So I foisted Kazuo onto Akira yesterday morning, and then propped him up in the living room with loads of toys this afternoon so I could make some cosy fleecy sleeping bags for the winter.  I drafted a pattern based on his measurements now (and leaving room for growth) and using some jumpers as a guideline (the top is much like the up-cycled cardy pattern I made).

Thus, cut 1 back, 2 fronts and 2 sleeves from whatever cosy fabric you can find, like so:

For our boy, who is about 26in long now, I made the back and front about 30in long, and 44in at the widest point all around, so it would take about a yard of fabric.  In this case though, I just cut up a fleece blanket I got cheaply, and so I managed to get another sleeveless sack by piecing together the remainder of the fabric.

First: zig-zag across the hems of both sleeves…

then with right sides together, sew the centre front sections together up to the bottom end of the zip opening, I used a 22in zip, so sewed up to 21in from the top…

then with right sides together, sew the fronts to the back at the shoulder seams…

then sew the sleeves into the armholes…

then sew a seam all around the bag, starting from the left arm and finishing at the hem of the right sleeve…

then insert the zipper into the right front opening

and finally zig zag the neck opening for a tidy finish.

Here is our wee guy after his first sleep in his sleeveless sack, which will be best for now, though with the cool weather creeping up on us, the sleeves will come in handy really soon.  Hope this gives you some ideas for keeping your little ones warm… it is such a simple process, I churned each bag out in about an hour, start to finish!