This photo of Ollie has been sitting in my "blog this" folder for I'm not even sure how long. Months probably. I've been trying to remember what I was going to say about her. Still don't know but decided to post the picture anyway. It's a cute one even if it's a bit blurry. Sometimes good pictures are not the perfectly crisp ones, they are the ones that tell the story. Of course, for this photo the story is "what was the story supposed to be?" but that is fun too.

Sometime in December Maisie stopped wearing footie pajamas. It took me a rather long time to catch on but she just didn't sleep as well in the sleepers as she did in a t-shirt and pajama pants. Her sleepers were super cute and she looked so snuggly in them but it was clear she had outgrown them. I made her a couple of pairs of pajama leggings (from the Sleeping Johns pattern in Growing-Up Sew Liberated) and everything was fine for a while. Then she stopped wanting to wear pants. Bedtime is not somewhere I want to create battles so she ended up sleeping in just a t-shirt a lot. This is fine while she's sleeping but when she gets up in the morning she always looks so cold and still wont put on any pants. We decided it was time for a nighty.

I made this one from the envelope tee pattern in Growing-Up Sew Liberated by adding some flare and length to the pattern. I'd love to say how much length I added but she loves this garment so much she wore it to day-care this morning so I can't measure it. I cut it longer in the back just for cuteness. I was going to put a butterfly on the front to brighten it up but Rob suggested she might like Saturn better. We've been watching Star Trek: The Next Generation lately and Maisie loves to see the ringed planet in the opening credits. Right before she goes to bed every night she plays a game called "Moon Saturn" with Rob that involves lining up a set of balls as the planets. I'm told that the red ball is Saturn and the blue one is Earth. I think the yellow one is Mercury. Having Saturn on her nighty made perfect sense.
Rob and Maisie picked out the fabrics. I put some fusible web on the back, cut out the shapes and fitted them together. They are fused onto the front of the nighty and then topstitched. I thought I would need a stabilizer on the back but it seems to be okay without it.

Maisie helped me out with some of the sewing by sitting on my lap and being in charge of the pins. She was so excited when it was finished that she had to put it on right away and was more than happy to let me take some pictures. She wanted some standing still, and some spinning 'round, and some with the blue bird (her nightlight), and some with her slippers. Maisie likes to put on my shoes and try to walk around the house so a little while ago I made her some simple slippers that she could slide on the same way. They've been very popular and keep her toes warm when she's also refusing to wear socks.

Oh, and I was told to take a picture of Ollie too.

I wanted to include this photo in my Project Life album but ran out of room so I thought I'd blog it instead. One of the great things about living with a cat is putting a box on the floor and watching what happens (I believe there are whole YouTube channels dedicated to this). Ollie and Fred naturally love boxes and will sit in them or, in Fred's case, rub themselves all over them at every opportunity. If the box happens to also be in the sun there are bonus points.