Most of the things I made for my second babe are already tucked back into the bin of outgrowns, ready to be handed along to a friend or squirreled away for future binges of nostalgia when I have great galumphing teenagers. My son is so large (28″ at four months!), so sunny in temperament, so calmly alert in his bearing, and so accomplished at fitting himself flexibly and cheerfully into the rhythms of our family life that we tend to forget what a new baby he actually is. A mere twenty weeks have passed since his birth. But you’d never guess it from his wardrobe. I’m already retiring pajamas made for nine-month-olds. So it’s a good thing I sewed the Baby in the Hood jacket from Anna Maria Horner’s Handmade Beginnings in the 6-9 month size, and it’s a good thing the weather is finally getting properly cool.

(Please forgive the dim, noisy photographs. It’s November. I hate the flash.)

The fabrics are from Lotta Jansdotter’s first collection; I’m sorry I can’t tell you the source for the teal lining, which is printed with circles of sweet birds. I snatched it up at Bolt on a whim because I liked the color as a contrast to the orange and the echoing of the round shapes inside and out.

The pattern was a bit of a reach for me and I did make some mistakes. Setting in sleeves was not easy, and if I had it to do over again I’d think to sew the lining pieces first for practice. Also, I somehow missed that I was supposed to have half an inch of each front left over after attaching the hood so there would be an allowance to sew the button bands to. I didn’t have it in me to rip off the hood and try again, so I had to improvise: I lapped a sandwich of button band over the front edge and top-stitched it on. It’s less than impeccable at the corners and it doesn’t line up neatly with the hood edge as Anna Maria intended. Oh well. I’m submitting it for drool and gumming by someone who doesn’t even understand that the jacket exists if he can’t see it, not for assessment by a panel of judges. And he seems well pleased.

I’m thinking of sewing a bigger one in blue checked wool for outdoor wear this winter. I even have this idea that I could use a felted strip of an old brown sweater of Mr. G’s for the hood stripe. It might be pretty cute.

Don’t look so skeptical, dude. Or are you just being more realistic than I am about my sewing time? Maybe I’d better acquire Anna Maria’s new All Set pattern collection, which includes a version of this jacket sized from 2T to 8 years, so you’ll have something to wear next year?