After spending lots of time on jobs around the house recently, I finally got back to the sewing room. I made two swim robes for one of my favourite people in Houston, after she saw the ones I made for my kids
here and
here. Well actually they were for her two daughters who do swim training twice a week. They are the perfect thing for throwing on after training. They will get the girls dry quickly and keep them warm on the quick trip home. Saves them having to get dressed at the pool, as they are going to jump in the shower as soon as they get home. The robe will keep them warmer than a towel as they can wrap it around them, tie it up and pop the hood on. Perfect!
Here is the older girl's robe. I forgot to take a photo of the other robe - doh! Will have to get both girls decked out one day and take photos of them. I included a pocket on this one, so she has somewhere to put her goggles and cap on the way to and from the pool.
As for the robes I made for my kids, I made this from an Ikea towel, well 3 towels actually - she's much bigger than my kids! The good thing about using towels is aside from finding nicer towels than buying toweling fabric, they they can also save you some time. Here I've use the little tape hanging hook that Ikea have on their towels as the keeper for the belt.
And I cut out the sleeves so that they used the towel edge as the hem, rather than having to use bias tape.
If you've ever sewn toweling you know that it makes a huge mess!! Never clean up your sewing room floor until you have finished the project!! Well I had finished yesterday, so I was cleaning up - and found some pieces left over from my daughters pink robe. I had initially made the sleeves too long, so I cut 3 or so inches off them after I had sewn the seam. These off cuts were the inspiration for something I'd been meaning to make for the kids for ages. Whenever they are in the bath the soap always slips through their fingers and they are forever losing it at the bottom of the bath - they think it's hilarious, but it drives me nuts and they spend half the time looking for the soap. I've bought a couple of soap holders for kids, but they are never much good. So. I wanted to make something that would work properly.
So from the cut off sleeve, I made these.
Little toweling soap bags! Now the soap won't slip through their fingers, we will be able to find the soap because of the bright colours and the bags will get all soapy when they rub them on their skin as they use them like a face cloth. Brilliant - well I think so anyway!!
I simply joined the edges, folded over the top edge and put a buttonhole in it, and threaded through some bias tape to tie it all together. This way when the bar of soap is finished I can put a new one in. I can also take the soap out and put it through the washing machine when it needs it. The pink was actually too big, so once I had finally gone downstairs to get a bar of soap to see how big it was, I made the stripey one the right size. I then had to cut down the pink one a bit, as it was too wide.
The kids thought they were brilliant, but we haven't tried them out yet. Update to come!
My son, Ollie, was home when I was trying to take pictures of the soap holders, and this is the photo he wanted me to include. Don't you love his staging of alien-guy (no idea who, or what he is) and Mac? Just perfect for a 4 (almost 5! ) year old boy!!
