I had so much fun two years ago with M4M’s Back to School Tour, that when they asked if I wanted to play along again I jumped at the chance.  More excuses to sew for and photograph my sweet boy?  Yes please!

I’m so happy that Made for Mermaids is starting to give me a few more boy patterns to work with.  I like having as many options as possible in Louis’ arsenal of to-makes.  This time around, I dressed Louis in head-to-toe M4M — in a Dylan tee I upcycled from a men’s shirt I found in the discount rack, and some Lexi+Lou Loungers in this incredible Athletic Brushed Poly Spandex fabric from Bow Button Fabrics.

We are saying this is a “back to school” tour.  But let’s be honest, Louis is really on his own version of a “back to COOL” tour.  Am I right?

Get out of here with your bad self, Lou.

The thing with “back to school” clothes is that it’s really pretty boring for us.  There really isn’t a big shopping trip where we pick out new clothes for the year/season.  But that’s because Louis attends a private school and they have a uniform that they wear daily.  However, they do get a Freedom Friday once a month, and various days of being able to wear dress-down clothes.  Louis loves those days especially because it’s more of a day for him to express himself and his style.

So when we decided to sew for this tour, we went for something he’d wear during one of his Freedom Friday days.

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One of my favorite ways to fabric shop is in the clearance racks at Target and the likes.  You can find some really great graphic tees for super cheap…much cheaper than getting a panel from somewhere.  I usually buy the largest size I can find…aiming mostly for men’s XL shirts or larger.  However, this one was a men’s small.  And you can see that because of it, the graphic ended up getting cut off in places.  No sweat whatsoever, I still love the shirt.  But it’s something to take into account when you’re fabric shopping in the clearance racks!  I even like to use the sleeve portion, hem included.  I just move my pattern piece to remove the hem allowance for that part.  Saves one extra step in sewing!

**I need to mention that I hacked the Dylan tee to not have that side panel that we all know and love.  I didn’t have a coordinate that I wanted with this top, so I kept it simple and overlapped the side pieces while cutting out my front and back panels, to omit that fun and funky side panel.  Otherwise I kept everything the same!

With little people, function beats form out any day.  While we are very much jeans and a tshirt people, Louis has been growing fond of what he calls comfy pants.  Joggers are completely different than sweatpants in my mind.  They have a much more stylish, everyday look to them, and I find them totally appropriate to wear in public settings.  Louis loves them because they’re comfortable, stretchy, and he can move and climb on the playground in them.

I love them because they take like half a minute to sew.

It’s quite possible that I took too many photos during our little off-site shoot.  We tend to only use our house as a background setting, but Bennett drove us up to this lookout in town and it was so fun with the colors surrounding my little guy.  Sorry, not sorry about the overload!

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Made for Mermaids is celebrating the Back to School season all week long on their blog, along with a #m4mback2school2018 sharing contest!  Play along with us!