Summer Sleepsack (Mini-tutorial)

Here in Wisconsin, it can go from winter to summer in about a day.  When that happened this year, I suddenly realized that my six month old was in desperate need of a summer sleepsack.  This realization came, of course, when he woke up covered in sweat because his fleece sleepsack had suddenly become an oven.

I knew it couldn’t be that hard to make one, and lo and behold, I had a long-forgotten zipper in my sewing supplies, along with a massive amount of jersey knit fabric.  Oh how I love jersey knit fabrics (more of those to come… seriously, a lot more).

Since I didn’t have a pattern (and probably wouldn’t use it anyway), I used his fleece sleepsack as a model.

The finished product!
(fabric from JoAnn’s)

Here is my mini-tutorial (I say mini, because I made it so quickly, I didn’t take any pictures of the steps):

1. Lay sleepsack on top of fabric – I chose jersey knit, because it was lightweight.
2. Trace shape of sleepsack, but trace a little bigger to allow for the seams.  Cut out the same piece twice, but for the front piece, cut the neckline a little lower.  With jersey knit, you don’t have to worry about allowing for the zipper, since it is so forgiving and will stretch.  (Plus, my little guy is not too chubby, so he definitely has a little wiggle room.)  Just make sure that your arm holes match up.
3. Cut up the center of the front piece for the zipper.
4. Install the zipper, using a zipper foot, but do it upside down (so that it zips from top to bottom – ending at baby’s feet – this way, you don’t have to worry about the zipper bothering your baby). *I also sewed in an extra scrap of fabric that covered the zipper under baby’s neck, so that it wouldn’t rub against him (I copied this from the fleece sleepsack as well)
5. Put the right sides together and sew up the shoulders, with a zig-zag stitch.
6. Keeping the sleepsack with the right sides together (inside-out), pin the sides and bottom together.  I also pinned an extra scrap of fabric over the opening that was created by my zipper (you can see that in the final picture)
7. Turn right-side out.  If using jersey knit, you can choose to finish the sleeves/neckline or just leave the edges raw.  I finished the neckline and then didn’t have time to finish the sleeves… and have now moved on to other projects and just keep forgetting to get back to it.