Let's Hear it for The BOY!

Let's face it, girl clothes are really cute. (And you just looked up at the title of this post again, didn't you? Stay with me.)  And there seems to be a bigger variety in style, color, and fabric than for boys. So, quite often the boys in the house don't end up with as many cute handmade items as the girls. My boy, for instance, has been watching me make clothes for his sister for months and watching me with a little bit of longing and occasionally asking, "mom, where's mine?"  Which plucks my guilt strings. And it's not as if I don't make him other things (see finger puppets or bean bags) but boy clothes? Booooringggg!
Right?
Well, two things changed my mind about that recently. The first was the end of the year program at his school (blogged here) and the second was the discovery of this blog, MADE. She has an entire series about boys and boy clothes and boy stuff, can you imagine?? After reading a few of her posts and tutorials, suddenly that tractor fabric Elliot had picked out at the fabric store 3 months earlier seemed more appealing. And since he has been wanting to wear nothing but pants (in 99 degree weather) the idea of summer weight pants was really appealing as well. So I jumped in with both feet.

Using the same pattern as the bowling shirt, I finally made the Tractor Shirt.

Does this guy look happy or what?

The shirt was an old Simplicity pattern, and turned out to be an excellent way for me to get reacquainted with buttonholes.

Next, I tried out the Kid pants pattern from Made and came up with either the ugliest pants ever, or some really cool, retro pants. I will leave that decision to you.

He really likes these and the fabric is a super soft cotton, not denim as I had originally thought. I like these more on him than when I was making them. Really, only a little boy could make these pants work.

At this point, I had to give in to the weather. It's HOT! And even Elliot will not be able to wear pants all summer. And in case I needed any other inspiration, MADE was starting their summer boy series (see side tab)  Plus, I was on a roll, so I decided to try my hand at patterning (marrying several patterns together)  and started on some shorts.

From the back.

And the front.

And some in plaid. These turned out to be my favorite. And as a total coincidence, his as well.

The side view, with the side pockets, using a very helpful tutorial from Very Purple Person. 

 And from the front. 

And what are new shorts without some cool new t-shirts to go with them?

The angler fish shirt is a Mini Boden knock off, made with a plain Hanes t-shirt we already had. I bought a few other t-shirts at a thrift store for 99 cents, so total cost for this shirt was about $2, can't beat that!

The robot shirt is also a thrifted t-shirt appliqued on an existing t-shirt, total cost for that one, $1. 

These were super easy to make, and really the only limitation for this kind of refashion is your imagination. Or maybe your child's imagination. I do like to give them some input now and then.

And it would appear that I do pretty well making his special requests. I do love that smile!

Boy clothes boring?? Definitely not!