Green Bean Baby Set

Photos

The pajamas, which are the A envelope style top with long sleeves and the snap footie Y bottom.

I’ve done my best to get photos of the pants, which are view V…it is not easy with someone who is trying to grab my camera and always moving…hence resorting to a post-lunch photo in the highchair.

Some action shots:

Pattern Background

The Green Bean Baby Set by Empty Hanger Patterns is sold on Etsy. It is a PDF sewing pattern that includes a basic onesie with cutting lines and instructions for all sorts of variations. Rather than nesting the sizes like most pattern companies, they have you print by size and nest the basic variations. Extra pattern pieces for things like cuffs, a hood, etc are printed off as necessary. Make sure you read the instructions as all the information you need on which pages to print is found there.

The pattern is marketed as the only baby clothes pattern you will ever need, and I feel that’s pretty accurate! It includes European sizes 50-98 (20”-38.5”) which roughly covers newborn through toddlerhood. I would say that at less than $10 this is by far the most cost effective pattern out there. It does cover your needs for basic knit fabric baby items, but if you want to do anything with wovens you will have to look elsewhere.

Size

This was tricky!

My son is 14 months now and on the smaller side. He has a sturdy but wiry build and wears mostly wears Carters RTW baby clothing (which I believe tends to be slimmer cut). Right now he wears 12 months, but while it fits in the width it is getting too short in the length. I mostly use knit pants on him because he wears cloth diapers and woven baby pants ten to be cut for much slimmer disposable diapers.

Per the pattern he was right between size 74 and 80. Since it’s always better to go bigger rather than smaller I chose size 80 for the first round. I made him footie pajamas with snaps at the legs. It was HUGE on him. Have to set it aside for later!

For the next round I decided to print off size 74. I compared the pattern to some current clothing he has and it seemed to be a much better fit for now.

Materials

For the pajamas I used a cotton interlock, with a cotton baby rib knit for the contrast (cuffs, neck, and one of the snap closure facings since I was short on the main fabric). Both were from Nature’s Fabrics.

I interfaced the leg band with Pro-Sheer Elegance from Fashion Sewing Supply. (Unfortunately she’s hit a difficult time in her personal life and my order placed over a month ago never shipped. It seems up in the air as to whether she’s going to continue the business or not.) I used these snaps from Amazon. They seemed to work ok, though I would have preferred to use the ones from Snap Source (another great sewing notion provider that’s no longer in business).

For the pants I used a recently purchased rayon/polyester sweatshirt fleece from Fabric Mart for the main fabric, and a cotton rib knit for the waistband and cuffs. I believe the rib knit is from Fabric Mart as well, but I purchased it so long ago I don’t really know! The rayon/poly sweatshirt fleece is SO soft and cozy and washed really well, so I ended up buying a bunch more for various future projects. It is hard to find inexpensive winter pants for babies, especially if they aren’t 100% polyester fleece.

The stretch was similar to stretch bengaline in that the stretch was greater lengthwise vs width, so I cut it with the grain perpendicular rather than parallel to the selvage.

Alterations

I didn’t make any alterations to the size 80 pajamas as I wanted to get a better sense of the fit before doing anything. As I mentioned before they ended up way too big.

For my size 74 pants, the sizing was much better. I will say that they were comparable to the 18 month Carters pants in length even though technically size 74 is closer to 12 months rather than 18 months. I did find the rise was too low, and lengthened it 1”. I also found the waistband was IMO way too wide for baby clothing – they assume the elastic width will be about 2”. I don’t have a lot of experience with baby clothing, but this seems so wide on such a tiny body. 1” wide elastic seems way more common. So I ended up removing 1” from the waistband and adding another 1” back to the rise. By the time I was done the rise for the pants pattern pieces was 2” higher than what the pattern was originally drafted for. I also added another 3/8” of height at the center back as I found that with the cloth diapers the back waistband of pants tends to dip downward on my son.

I had a really hard time measuring my son with any sort of accuracy (he wiggles SO MUCH now and tends to wake up if I try to measure him while he sleeps) but this pattern seems a bit longer in the legs than the RTW I’ve used. I will say that in my son’s case the cloth diaper throws off fit as the bulk tends to take up a lot of the rise in pants/pajamas. However when I was comparing pattern pieces it seemed like the leg length for size 74 was comparable to the length of the 18 months Carter pants, not the 12 months.

One issue I’ve consistently had with RTW baby clothes is in addition to the rise being too short, the waist is too big. While the pants mostly fit everywhere else. So the pants tend to sag and get pulled down while crawling. By making my own I could snug in the elastic, and patch in another piece if it is too small in the future.

Construction

This sewing pattern includes 3/8” seam allowances. IMO it doesn’t make sense for knits as a lot of us are going to be sewing this on a serger. With the pajamas I had already cut them out before I noticed the 3/8” seam allowances, so spent a lot of time trimming (and probably losing some accuracy along the way). For the pants I trimmed the allowances down to 1/4” before cutting, and it was overall a much quicker and pleasant sewing experience.

The instructions are great! There’s illustrations for every step, and even my severely sleep deprived brain could follow along effortlessly. (He has yet to sleep through the night. The entire first year was spent waking up every 2-3 hours. Best we ever got was a single six hour stretch.) I did find it a bit confusing at first when it came to pattern assembly as I’m used to sizes rather than the style variations being nested, but after thinking about it it finally clicked for me. One thing I really enjoyed was there was no trimming or overlapping, you just butt the paper edges together and tape.

Since the pants are cut from the sleeper/pj pattern block they don’t have a front or back crotch curve seam. Instead there’s a gusset at the back crotch seam to give more room and shape.

Conclusion

I would 100% recommend this pattern for basic baby clothes. I prefer Ottobre for wovens and more unique styles, but for your basic baby and toddler wardrobe this pattern works great. Once you figure out the alterations your baby needs you have a solid pattern block to work with as they grow. The instructions are easy to follow and the fact that it offers so many styles and sizes for less than $10 makes it an affordable choice as well.