SHB Sew-Along: Baby Boy Inspiration

When I first found out I was pregnant, I was not-so-secretly hoping for a girl. After all, I'm a female oldest child, so I thought it would be cool to share that with my kid, and I had all sorts of ideas for making adorable geeky (non-pink) clothing. Well, now that I have my little boy, I can't even imagine what it would be like to not have a son! He's such a little personality, and I'll be honest, I'm a sucker for all the dinosaurs and sea-life that's ubiquitous on baby boy clothing (not such a fan of all the dogs and monkeys, but you can't win 'em all). Still, it would be nice to have some diversity in his clothing (more geeky things! more cats!), which is part of the reason why I'm hosting this sew-along with Mikhaela and Clio. They've already shared baby girl and neutral/unknown gender clothing inspiration, so I'm here to wrap up the clothing inspiration series with some fun ideas for boys. Although to be honest, most of these would work for girls too!

There are lots of free patterns out there for onesies, shirts, pants, and rompers out there (check out our Pinterest board for more), and most are pretty quick makes, so that leaves you with more time to think about customization. I'm a fan of these fun fabric combinations:

You can do solids+stripes, different size stripes, different colors, and pockets and plackets in different fabrics.

The nice thing about doing different fabrics for sleeves vs. body is that you can use up even the teeny tiny scraps in your stash. You can also use the small pieces for appliques (elbow patches and knee patches have a soft spot in my heart):

Make formal wear by adding a faux vest front and bow tie, or add an applique in unexpected ways (on the side! not animal-related! a monster face!).

And if you're more into doodling than sewing around lots of tiny curves and corners, you could always make a plain tee or onesie and have at it with fabric markers:

Even if you're not good at drawing, you can always print out some line-art and transfer it to your shirt for tracing. I've had the most success with these Tee Juice markers in terms of holding up to repeated washing (used on multiple projects, like the cat face sweatshirt, my Star Wars tee and (he)art dress). Or you could always go with iron-on transfers, like Mikhaela did.

If you've got a particular fandom, this would be a great way to add some geeky quotes, regardless of your baby's gender:

I'm partial to the LOTR ones, of course...looks like it's time to sew up some plain onesies! And according to our Flickr group discussions, I'm not the only LOTR-obsessed mama/sewist. Join us over there to share what you're planning on making!