How to Sew Your Own Maternity Shirt by Altering a Non-Maternity Pattern

Background

I am newly entering the realm of sewing clothes for myself and just as I started attempting this new hobby I got pregnant. At first I wasn't going to sew anything maternity, but I had one shirt I really liked and when I tried to find similar style shirts at the stores I couldn't. So then I decided that maybe it wouldn't be so hard to alter a pattern that I had already made and that had turned out well to make the style I liked. Also I figured that since I could only wear the shirt for a few months, if it didn't turn out that great I wouldn't be stuck with it for that long. Well I ended up doing the same alteration to three different patterns and have been pretty happy with the result. The one challenge in sewing maternity clothes is that you are constantly changing sizes and you don't know where it is going to happen. You know your belly is going to grow, but is your chest, your hips, your butt? In my case I have pretty much only changed size in my belly and chest, but my bust size increased 2 inches 2 weeks after I made the first top. Unfortunately I kind of had a sizing problem around my bust anyways and then when I grew it just became more pronounced. But since I can only wear the shirt for a couple months, oh well.

The Style

Most maternity tops feature an empire waist with a lot of fabric in front and a tie in the back. Personally I am not a fan of this style. You feel like your wearing a tent and all the material hangs straight down over your belly and if the top starts getting too short you start feeling a breeze on your underbelly and the tie in back makes me feel kind of school girlish. The other option is usually just a knit shirt that is a little bit wider on bottom and longer. For me that style of top is okay, but if you are just starting to show then that style just kind of just makes you look misshapen or fat. The style I like has a wider and longer front panel that is gathered at the sides, so that from the back you still look like you have a waist. From the front your belly is accentuated so that it is obvious you are pregnant, and the shirt comes in a bit underneath the belly so you don't get the tent look as much. The good thing about sewing your own shirt is that you can make it long enough. I am 7 months pregnant at the moment and over half my shirts are already too short.

Choosing a pattern

The best patterns are ones that are pretty fitted around the waist and are designed for four way stretch knits. Four way stretch knits give you the most leeway in the sizing so that if your bust increases you have a greater chance of the top still fitting. So far I have done this alteration on Jalie 2682, Burda World of Fashion 11-2008 Style 103,2682 and Burda World of Fashion 2-2009 Style 103.

Altering the Pattern

- First you will have to choose a size. Which is kind of hard to decide. Basically your choices are to go with your pre-pregnancy size and possibly/probably do a full bust alteration, or do you go with your pregnancy bust measurement. The first shirt I made I went with my pre-pregnancy size and as I mentioned before my bust grew and then it didn't fit very well. The second top I made I still went with my pre-pregnancy size but added extra length to the piece that went over the bust to make sure the below-the-bust seam didn't ride up. That worked well, but because I didn't do a muslin it has some other fit problems. The third shirt I did I cut the pattern based on my bust size, but then did a muslin and radically altered the pattern around the armscye and neckline so much I'm not exactly sure what size it ended up being.

- If the shirt isn't that long you will want to lengthen the back pattern piece so that the hem will be around your hip. This will help ensure that the shirt won't become too short the last month or so.

- Here is the real alteration. Basically all you need to do is grade the pattern wider starting just under the bust and getting to the widest point at the waist. You will add approximately 1 1/2" - 2" of width at the side seam. The curve will be pretty sharp because there are only about 3-5" from below the bust to the waist.

- Then you will want to add enough length so that the front piece is 4" longer than the back piece. So if you added 2" to the back piece, you will need to add 6" to the front piece. If you didn't add any length to the back piece then you will just need to add 4" to the front piece. This is so you can have 4 half inch gathers on the side.

Sewing

- Sew the shirt following the normal instructions or however you wish to sew it. When you go to sew the side seams you will need to place the gathers. I mark the fabric 3" from the below the bust mark and fold the fabric up at that point 1/2" then fold the fabric back down and pin it. Then I mark 2" below the top of the first gather and fold the fabric up 1/2" and then back down. I do this for four1 gathers. I do both sides and then baste the gather's with my sewing machine, before I serge the side seams. This should leave you with 1 1/2" between the tops of the gathers.

Examples

• More Pictures
• Pattern review for Jalie 2682
• Pattern review for BWOF 11-2008 108
• Pattern review for BWOF 2-2009 103

If you use this technique please leave a comment and hopefully a link to a picture. :)  Thanks!

Precocious Puzzling Birthday Girl

Selena's second birthday was a couple days ago. It doesn't seem like it has already been two years. I had a midwife appointment at the birth center where she was born on her birth day. It was kind of fun being there exactly two years later and remembering the excitement of that day.

Selena is doing great. She is a great kid and is so fun to be around. I am really starting to like this age. The stuff she comes up with is just so dang cute.

Puzzles are definitely the in thing right now. A few months ago it was drawing, but now it is "more puzzles" and "I do puzzles all day long." We can easily spend 1-2 hours doing puzzles (and sometimes do) and because she has spent so much time doing them she is getting super good at them. The hard puzzles that a month ago she liked watching me do she can now do by herself, or with just the bare minimum of help. I'm wondering if it is genetic because apparently Floyd was also a precocious puzzler. His mom wrote in his baby book. "He can do puzzles for 4 year olds at 2 years old". I teased her about that, but what do you know, so can Selena. :)

Of course books are still cool as well and I ended up getting Selena her own library

card so now we can check out a 100 books at a time though we still tend to stay around 50. Right now she really likes the early reader books. Which is kind of funny because the stories are pretty boring, but she seems enjoys them. Her favorites right now are Word Bird and Spot books. The Spot books have the peekaboo flaps which apparently are still enjoyable. Peekaboo books were the first books she really would pay attention to.

She has also started talking in the first person. For instance "I need a yellow bus story now!" Kind of demanding, but I guess that's a two year old thing. It is also very sweet because she will say "I love mama so much." She loves other people and things too, but my favorite is when she says she loves me.

The birthday girl making brownies.

The puzzler.

3rd trimester - 29 weeks

So as soon as I started the third trimester along came third trimester symptoms, heartburn, back pain, foot pain, tiredness, crazy leg cramps, waking up in the middle of the night hungry. Yay! Why can't the whole pregnancy be like the second trimester? Then pregnancy is actually enjoyable, you forget about the yuckiness of the first trimester and your optimistic that the third one will be fine. But even though its starting to get tough and I'm having symptoms I did not have when I was pregnant with Selena (the heartburn) I still think this time it is easier simply because I know what to expect and not stressed worrying about labor, being a mom, or taking care of a newborn. I do enjoy being pregnant, but it is tough.

I passed the gestational diabetes test, which is a relief. I did end up eating a bit of scrambled egg in the morning because I was freaking myself out over fasting that long. And though I didn't feel well by the time I got to my appointment I didn't pass out. :)

The baby is still spinning around and was breech at my last appointment. I've been doing some exercises to encourage the baby to land the right way before he or she runs out of room.

I am going to start my Hypnobabies course next week, which I'm kind of excited about because it is so relaxing and makes me excited for the birth which is getting so close.

My last day of work is tomorrow, for real, so I am excited about having some extra rest/free time. We still need to think of names. We are really procrastinating on that. Selena is still excited. She calls herself big sister and talks about the big baby in mama's big belly all the time.

More Belly Pics

Attempted Potty Training

Selena is doing really well and we are all happy. A couple weeks ago we attempted a solid 3 days to consistent potty training but it didn't work. I thought she was ready as she showed many of the signs to look for: she tells me when she needs a diaper change (both kinds), she sometimes will tell me if she has to poop and actually go on the potty, some nights she wakes up dry, and has been using far fewer diapers during the day. The only thing holding her back was that she still didn't seem to actually recognize when she peed. So I have some online friends who had success with a 3 day potty training method, which basically involves quitting diapers cold turkey day and night, sticking close to your kid for three whole days and rushing them to the potty whenever they start to go, being very positive in praise, and constantly (like every 5-10 minutes all day long) reminding them to tell you when they needed to go. The lady who's method this is also says that 22 months is a great age to do potty training because lots of kids get stubborn the older they get. I thought this would work well for Selena since she had all the signs and rushing her to the potty every time she would pee might clue her in on the feeling. Well after three exhausting days of being housebound and cleaning up lots of messes Selena did not figure it out. She gets all excited if she poops or toots on the toilet, but if I did manage to get her to pee on the toilet she just stares at me and doesn't really seem to understand what I'm excited about. I was kind of bummed as I was hoping to get her out of diapers a few months before the baby arrived, but she isn't ready--oh well. Ironically we never once had an accident at night or during naps. So if I wanted to I could say she is night trained, but not day trained. But we got all the diapers back out that I had washed, neatly folded, and organized. I am still putting her on the potty every morning right when we get up hoping that if we do that enough maybe she'll figure out that she is actually peeing. And if she happens to tell me or if I happen to notice she is going I'll put her on the potty, but for now we will wait till later before we try again.

Other than potty training Selena has been a ton of fun lately. For a couple weeks I was starting to get a little overwhelmed because she was becoming a handful, but I've picked up on how her little toddler brain is working, and now have ways to get her to do what I want and her like it. Mostly I have to keep her super busy with lots of new things, and thus she has become an extreme book worm. We have been going to the library at least once a week, sometimes two or three times to get lots and lots of books. I have been hitting my 50 book checkout limit.

She has also started becoming a puzzle master. She only had a two puzzles, but she started playing with them more, and then started showing more interest with the ones at the library. So I bought around 10-12 used puzzles (from ebay and goodwill) and now she has tons of puzzles and can do the easier ones by herself, but still enjoys doing the harder ones with me or Floyd helping her.

She is talking a ton. She talks in the third person so her grammar isn't perfect, but she definitely is sharing complicated scenarios. A couple months ago she spent the night with my parents and ever since then she decided her nickname was pooh bear. So she is constantly talking about how pooh bear likes to run, or pooh bear's baby needs a bath, and pooh bear's mom and dad are nice. But she will also refer to herself as "Selena", "me", or recently "big sister". If she is helping me do something then she usually is big sister, because big sister's are very helpful (sense any mama brainwashing there). The cutest is when she will randomly say pooh bear is happy. She also has started singing songs and gets lots of the words right. She has also started making up her own songs. The cutest was when she made up a song about her eating cookies "every day" (a favorite phrase of hers).

She also likes to run amok. You think I would have learned with Dyna (the dog), but when they are little and just learning how to run it is so fun to watch them run with complete abandon. But when they get older and faster and they are running somewhere where they aren't supposed to be running and won't come back, it isn't as much fun. When we are at the library she will be sitting with me reading a book and then all of a sudden bolt, giggling in glee. But we've been working on it, and if I remind before we go somewhere that she can only run while holding my hand, if she does start to bolt and I remind her to hold my hand she will sometimes stop and wait. So hopefully we'll get this fixed before baby comes. But it is funny when we are out shopping and she is in the cart and she will say "me run amok, now."

Other than puzzles and books she still loves going to toddler gym, she likes jumping, running in circles, helping mom cook (especially stirring), taking care of her baby (her baby goes everywhere), taking baths (even ones without any water), numbers, letters, watching Elmo and Abby on Sesame Street, ice cream, cookies, band-aids (she read Doctor Dan the Bandage man one too many times and now goes through about 5 band-aids a day), and snuggling with her mama. :)

Sew your own soft structured carrier

So in my last post about sewing baby carriers I mentioned that I was sewing a new one from this free SSC pattern. It was a gift for a friend, but it seemed to work pretty good. I think it will be great for back carries, but I'm not sure if I made
the strap buckle be able to slide up high enough to allow someone to buckle it in the back (for a front carry) without help. The darts in the seat are great, and are a big improvement over the dartless seat I made with my own pattern. I didn't make a sleeping hood, but probably should have. I didn't really know what they were for, but then realized they are to prop the head and avoid head flop. (See picture.)

I only tried a front carry with my friend's super cute 5 month old and I didn't use the strap buckle (I hadn't attached it yet). I did put Selena in a back carry for a

short period of time, but I'm pregnant so my belly was kind of in the way. The shoulder straps and waist band were also too big for me (but I am pretty small). I am making another one for another friend, but will soon make one for me for the new baby, but I will narrow the straps towards the end and may angle them a little bit more up (instead of out). I will also make a smaller waist band, more the size of the one I made with my my own pattern.

I also am unsure about the use of the camping mat for the waist band. In the first one I made I just used high density foam that you can get at Joanns. This seems more comfy for front carries, especially if you need to sit down, but for back carries the thicker foam seems a lot more substantial and supportive. I will make one with the camping mat for me since I already have one with the thinner foam.

Just to note it costs me around $15-$25 to make one of these (depends on the fabric) compared to the $100-$150 it costs to buy a similar one.

Sorry the pictures are kind of lame, but I was in a hurry and then I gave it away.

26 weeks pregnant

Just a little bit more than 3 months to go and I am still feeling good. It has officially become difficult to tie my shoes. I'm still about a month bigger than I was with Selena and am worried that I'll be tipping over at the end. :) Selena has started calling me "big mama" and she told me that I was "so big".

For me, my Sleep Number Bed and my knee chair have been the best products ever. We got the sleep number bed when I was 6 months pregnant with Selena and I didn't really have any trouble sleeping while pregnant with her. If my hips started hurting a bit I just went to a softer number and the pain disappeared. When

I'm not pregnant I'm not quite as big a fan because it does seem to deflate some in the middle of the night, but now that I'm pregnant again I am super satisfied. I slept with Selena on her bed/mattress on the floor (attempting potty training) a few nights ago and pretty much did not get any sleep.

The knee chair is awesome because it allows you to sit in a way (knees below hips) that promotes optimal fetal positioning which can make labor faster and easier, it helps avoid back pain, and helps avoid feeling like you are squishing the baby. I used one at work when I was pregnant with Selena and loved it. I was having bad back pain that disappeared right when I started using it, and my labor with her was fast and relatively easy. So I had to buy one for this pregnancy. Now that I am getting bigger I am going to have to start bringing it downstairs to watch TV and then back upstairs to work. Sitting on the couch is starting to be really uncomfortable.

At my previous prenatal appointment my urine had traces of protein in it, so my midwife sent it to the lab to be tested and it came back saying I had a urinary tract infection due to Group D Strep (not Group B which is common). Which was really weird and not very common. My midwife said I could try a natural remedy called D-Mannose powder or I could go and get some antibiotics from the doctor. I decided to try the D-Mannose powder and watch for symptoms and if I got any to go and get the antibiotics, and then get tested again in two weeks to see if it went away. I wanted to avoid antibiotics because taking drugs is always a little worrisome when pregnant. So I took the powder 3 to 4 times a day for 3 days and then once a day since then and I got tested and everything came back clean. So yay for me. The D-Mannose powder is a concentration of sugar found in cranberries and is supposed to grab the bacteria and flush it out, and it seemed to work.

I'm also scheduled to take the dreaded gestational diabetes glucose test next time. But she gave me very specific instructions on how to take the test to provide the greatest accuracy. With Selena I failed and it stressed me out and taking the 3 hr test was not any fun because it required fasting from 10pm till 1pm the next day and getting my arm stuck 8 times, but I did pass. She told me to fast starting at 10pm the night before the test and to eat none or very little bread, rice, or potatoes that day. She said that she has experimented telling women to fast for just a few hours before, but they ended up with a lot more false positives when they did that. I still wonder if maybe eating some eggs and cheese would be ok in the morning since those don't affect your blood sugar at all, but I'm not going to try it. I still don't want to fast, and I don't want to drink a bunch of sugar, but I guess I'll go along with it.

Once again I can say I think my midwife is the greatest because she gave me a successful and safer alternative than antibiotics, and gave me detailed info on how to make the GD test more accurate. Licensed midwives are illegal in lots of states (I am so thankful Washington isn't one of them), but honestly I feel that if anything were to go wrong with my pregnancy she would be more likely to catch it and make sure it really is a problem than if I were seeing a doctor, OB, or nurse midwife. She gives me so much more info than any of the providers I saw when pregnant with Selena and even though I am well read regarding pregnancy she tells me things I haven't heard. My appointments are an hour long so we really get to talk and I might mention something that would alert her, that in a 10 minute appointment I wouldn't have said. Also she only does 3 births a month so her patient load is a lot less than most other providers, so she has the time to continue to educate herself, and spend more time with her clients. So there is my plug for licensed midwives. :)

Sew your own baby bibs

These are my two favorite kinds of bibs to sew and I have never seen them in stores so they make great baby shower gifts.

The first are made of fleece and simply serged around the edges (which isn't even needed because fleece doesn't ravel) and then sew some velcro for fastener. I just traced a bib I had bought for the shape. The fleece bibs work great for drooly babies because they last longer than a cotton bib and keep the baby's clothes drier.


The second is a sleeved bib, which is really nice for when your little one is feeding themselves and they are really messy. This will keep their sleeves clean as well as their front. Here is a link to the free long sleeved bib pattern.



These aren't homemade, but I think they are the greatest bibs. They catch all the food your child drops, and you just rinse them off in the sink. I was washing tons of cloth bibs, plus Selena's clothes because they didn't really keep her very clean. The Bibbity bib is excellent for going out because you can roll it up and it doesn't take up much space. The Baby Bjorn one is a little more structured so it catches food a bit better and is easier to wash, but doesn't fold up. I use the Baby Bjorn bib at home and the Bibbity one stays in the diaper bag or purse.

21 Weeks Pregnant - Halfway Done

I can't believe it is already half way over. I feel great, pretty much like normal except for the big belly. I am just now starting to have trouble bending over. I have also been getting quite a bit of Braxton Hicks contractions in the evening which makes it even harder to bend over.

We had the big ultrasound last week and everything looked great. We didn't find out the sex so it will be a big surprise when the baby is born. I think it makes it a bit more exciting. :) The only downside is we have to think of two names -- which is really hard.

I quit work at the end of the month will probably be right in time for me wanting/needing to take a nap at the same time as Selena.

The very particular 22 month old

Selena is doing wonderful and is getting very close to being 2 years old. Which is really crazy for me, but every day she learns more new things and can do more things for herself, so it is becoming more and more obvious that she is not a baby anymore.

But with this new found autonomy I am starting to notice that she is a lot less flexible. She will get something in her head and she becomes very insistent that it be done her way, and no other. We also have to give her more warning when we are changing activities or are doing something new. She became very unhappy when we "all of a sudden" took the Christmas tree down, but I think if we had warned her she wouldn't have been so upset. But even when she throws her little tantrums, it is still really cute.

She loves to read and most of our day is spent reading books. She has pretty much mastered all her letters and colors and is increasing the adjectives in her vocabulary every day. She still loves to draw, and have other people draw for her, and her drawing abilities are becoming increasingly impressive each day. Honestly I am in awe of her. It is so crazy to think that a little less than 2 years ago she could was completely dependent for everything.

And now that she is becoming a jabber box she says lots of funny things. When we run out of something (usually food) and tell her it is all gone she states, "buy more." She is constantly bossing Dyna around--telling her to come sit next to her, or go there. Unfortunately for her Dyna isn't as good as mom or dad at listening to her.

Christmas was a lot of fun, but she wasn't too interested in opening presents. She pretty much wanted to play with or put on the first present she opened, and could care less about the rest. She is a huge fan of Elmo and Abby (Sesame Street) and got some dolls, books and posters that she was very excited about.

She also has stopped using a binky. We lost it one day, searched for it for about 15-20 minutes before bedtime but couldn't find it (and still haven't found it). But she didn't seem too upset about not being able to find "blue binky," and has been fine (well at least no more difficult than normal) with going to bed and going down for naps. So that was easy. It is such a relief when things you think might be hard don't end up being so hard. The only thing is, now she tends to stick her hands in her mouth a lot more than she did before.

She is also very excited about the baby and she is constantly talking to, reading to, snuggling with, and giving kisses to my tummy. It is really adorable, and I know she is going to be a great big sister. When she sees other babies, she gets really excited. We were at the YMCA and a mom was there with a newborn, and she had set the newborn on the floor while she pushed her toddler in the swing and Selena saw the baby on the floor by itself and said. "Mama, baby, baby, help, help." It was really cute. She is constantly making me carry her baby doll around the house.

Selena's drawing of Dad

She loves to play dress up and wanted to immediately wear all the new clothes she got

She snuggled herself up on the chair to read

Sledding with dad

Taking care of her baby. She is very concerned that a baby must always be held.

I read 42 books in 2008

I love to read and I love the site librarything.com. So this year I did a good job of keeping track of all the books I read for 2008. 42 books for the year--almost a book a week. Pretty good since I pretty much only get to read when I sneak it in while I am eating breakfast or lunch, when Selena is adequately distracted (usually not very long), and before I go to bed. Luckily I am a fast reader.

My favorite book of the year was The Mists of Avalon. My mother had recommended this book to me many times when I was younger, and I tried to read it, but could never get into it. Well I am glad I tried again, because I really liked it.

I also got curious about the Twilight series after hearing so much about it and that really sucked me in. While I really enjoyed it and it pretty much consumed me for a day or two for each book, it was really quite silly. Definitely targeted towards teenage girls. I was glad to get my life back when I was done.

I also got to quickly read through The Great Cholesterol Con which was very interesting. I don't know if I am sucker for conspiracy theories, or if it is an open mind and willingness to not accept everything I am told (I hope it is the latter). But the author very persuasively argues that even though there have been many studies done, there are very few that actually indicate that high cholesterol causes heart disease (and the few that do are very poorly designed), or that eating saturated fat increases your risk of heart disease, or that LDL cholesterol is "bad" (it only becomes "bad" when it has been destroyed by excessive free radicals which come from air pollution, smoking, radiation, etc, and ironically when you consume vegetable oil that has been heated). But the studies do show that higher levels of cholesterol (but not excessively high) do correspond with decreased overall mortality, while very low levels correspond with higher overall mortality. In general his point is that if you really wish to fight heart disease you should decrease your stress, watch your blood sugar levels, eat more whole foods, and ignore your cholesterol levels as they aren't indicative of anything and trying to control them is many times anti-productive. The book is very well researched and annotated. I didn't find any glaring holes in his logic, and overall I thought it was very interesting.