sweetest boy in da hood!

So, I finally got a chance to take some pictures of Shea in his new little coat and am happy to share them with you today!

Considering that it was Celebrate the Boy month (you can check out all of the great boy themed tutorials over at Made), I thought I better do some boy sewing of my own!  And the fact that I have fallen in love with this coat pattern and had to make one for Shea before he outgrew the pattern sizes.  

I originally tried snapping a few pictures of him in the house, but you can see how well that went (this picture also made me realize how badly he needed yet another haircut):

So, I decided to let him run around outside.  I figured he would be happier and the lighting would be better anyway.  I didn't anticipate quite how hard it would be to get good shots of him outside though.  Besides the fact that opening the door to the backyard for this little guy is like letting a wild animal out of a cage, it was also a bit wet and muddy out (surprise, surprise) and so I was worried about him getting dirty before I got any good pictures.  So, here's the best I could do.  The coat looks a little tight in the picture on the right, but I think its because I rolled up the sleeves too much and it was riding up in the back a little.

I used a discounted quilters cotton for the main fabric (blue checkers), a snuggle flannel print I got a while ago from the red-tag fabric at JoAnns for the lining (seen on the cuffs).  The hood stripe and button placket are from a random grey suiting material I had laying around.  Pretty sure everything came from our local JoAnn's store.

I think the stripe on the hood is my favorite part.

The buttons took me a while to decide on.  You just can't find cute boy-friendly buttons at our local fabric store.  The stars are cute, but kind of hard to button. I would probably have preferred to do a dark wooden or some solid colored round button, but I just used what I had on hand.  Easy enough to change later on, but he'll probably outgrow it before I get around to it.

In the meantime though, Shea has a fun, light spring coat to wear and run around outside in!