Cotton petticoat tutorial. You may need a ruffler foot for this!

I had a petticoat in my head that I needed to get out of my head and onto Laura. In my head, it foamed under her cotton dresses, the layers rippling beautifully. In my head, it was made of cotton and deliciously old-fashioned looking. In my head, it made her full skirts stick out charmingly. I really needed to get this petticoat out of my head before it expanded to fill it. I realised that this was a job for THE RUFFLER FOOT!!! (and its less glamorous but even more useful sister, the narrow hemming foot).

For this petticoat I used 3.5m of cotton lawn. Yes, 3.5m for an underskirt for a 4 year old. Beat me about the head if you like - I know I deserve it! I started by measuring her waist and deciding how long I wanted the petticoat to be. She has an irritating habit of pulling anything with a waistband down below her belly button, so I had to allow for that too. I took 9cm off the length measurement (to allow for the addition of a waistband) and cut strips of lawn to the correct depth right across the width of the lawn. I cut four strips - these would be the body of the skirt. I then cut another 9 strips that were half the depth of the first lot. These would be the ruffle. Finally, I cut two strips 20cm deep. I joined the body strips to each other and the ruffle strips to each other and started hemming. It is a lot easier, believe me, to hem both strips now, before you start ruffling. I used a narrow zig zag stitch with the narrow hemming foot that came with my machine - the lightweight cotton lawn just skimmed through it beautifully. If I'd had to press, pin and stitch, I'd still be at it now! Just do the bottom edge of the skirt body, but both top and bottom of the ruffle.

Then came the fun bit - ruffling the short-strip ruffle. I used the pleating (number 6) setting turned up to its highest, and set a short stitch length - I wanted the pleats to be almost doubled up, so as to maximum the ruffle. I then sewed the ruffle, can-can style, to the skirt body, lining up the two bottom hems. Don't worry too much if the top edge has to undulate a bit to get the bottom even - nobody will notice, not even you!

I wanted the skirt body to fold out into ripples, rather than bunch out from tight gathers. I therefore used a technique I had learned when making a dressing-up classical tutu for Laura (I know, I know - sometimes even I have to despair at myself). Anyway, this technique on stiff tulle will create a skirt that will just about lie horizontal a la the magician's floating lady. On drapey cotton lawn, it creates satisfyingly foamy ripples. And I will demonstrate it to you now..


Grip the fabric in your left hand and fold it from back to front across your thumb.

Fold it back on itself and grip the three layers firmly between finger and thumb. The folds should be about an inch long - just eyeball it, you have dozens of these to do and only a masochist would measure each one with a ruler. Continue the front fold, sending it round the back...
Catch that fold too,

and then send it back round to meet the front again. And there you have it - a beautiful double pleat. From the top it should look like this:

Gorgeous isn't it? Stick a pin in it to keep it nice and continue pleating in this way until you run out of skirt body. Machine baste along the top of the pleats. Then join the two waistband strips (remember them?), and attach the top of the skirt body to the waistband, right sides together. Press the seam so the seam allowance is pointing up to the waistband.

From the front, the waistband seam looks like this:

Now you can join the skirt so it's a circle. I just put the skirt right sides together, making sure the edges of the ruffle would be caught in the side seam, and serged from the top of the waistband down to the hem. Press the seam. Cut some waistband elastic to the right length and iron a narrow hem into the top of the waistband. Fold the waistband in half lengthwise so that the hem meets the waistband seam. Press the fold and pin a casing into place, about an inch from the top of the waistband. Do a line of stitching along the pin line, leaving a gap so you can feed the waistband elastic through using a safety pin. Join the two elastic ends, being sure not to twist them. Stitch the gap in the casing. Then stitch along the waistband seam to catch the hemmed edge, like so:

This bit is trickier than it sounds, on account of all the ruffling and pleating and acres of fabric that are desperate to get in on the act. I found I had sewed random bits of fabric to the seam in at least 3 places. But take it slow and stick with it - this is the last step.

Remove the petticoat from the machine, clip off any loose ends, stand back and admire and wish you too were 4 years old and able to wear a foamy cotton petticoat to Sainsbury's.

Actually, I have been thinking about this a lot lately. I don't see why society has set its face again 44 year old mummies wearing a Kate Middleton wedding dress to Ikea, or a kitten costume to do the school bus run. Wouldn't life be more fun if we could all wear whatever made us happy, no matter how unconventional it might be? I think so!

How to lose 40lbs in a year

My New Year's Resolutions last year were to stop biting my nails, to be less shouty with the children and to lose 3 stone (aka 42lbs). Well, my nails are still bitten to the quick but I did manage to shout less (not congratulating myself too much there - having both children in full-time education helped enormously) and, as you may have guessed from the spoiler in the title, I lost 40lbs. Not quite the 42lbs I'd aimed for but it still translates as 4 dress sizes, which is really quite significant. ("Really quite significant" is of course hugely underplaying the pride I feel in this achievement. A more realistic description would be "yyyaaaayyyyyyyyy!!!!! I'm slim! slim, I tell you!)

This weight-loss has not gone unnoticed by friends, family, or anybody who knows me. And do you know what is the thing I am asked most often? It is "Have you been trying to lose weight or...erm...?" The alternative to 'trying' is never vocalised and at first I thought people might be wondering if I had lost loads of weight through some kind of illness, but since they invariably then say "you look so well!" this was clearly not the case. And I finally realised that they are hoping I am going to tell them that weight loss is actually terribly easy once you know the magic secret. So I do tell them the magic secret: hunger + sweat = weight loss. And their faces always drop.

Because the truth is that losing weight is, in fact, really quite hard. The theory is simple enough - you eat less, you move more, you lose weight. Back in March 2011, I tried moving more when I started running (using the Couch Potato to 5k programme - highly recommended by the way). I could see my body changing but I wasn't losing weight. So I moved a lot more - I did hooping, cardio tennis, ballroom dancing. All great fun but the scales still didn't budge.

The penny was starting to drop so I added in some eating less - you know the kind of thing: cutting out sugary snacks; eating less fat; yada, yada. My portions remained the same and .... you've guessed it!... the scales didn't budge. So I eventually joined Weightwatchers and the scales finally started to oblige.

Don't believe the Weightwatchers advertising puff. Believe me, if you do Weightwatchers, you will know that you are on a diet. For the first 4 months I was hungry for 19 hours every day. Truly. But eventually, I got used to eating so much less, and now only feel hungry at the normal times. And I have only 7lbs left to go to reach my ultimate dreams-come-true target.

I guess what I'm trying to say here is that losing a lot of weight is a serious commitment to make. It's especially hard to do when you have small children because it involves making time for yourself. This is not trivial. You have to be selfish - even a 30 minute run never takes only half an hour. If you don't want injuries, you have to warm up and cool down. The time all adds up and we all know that mothers of young children do not have time to spare. And this is where I do have a magic solution to offer.... and that is Jillian Michael's 30 Day Shred! (NAYY)

This is a flipping brilliant DVD for the reluctant or time-starved exerciser. It takes just under 30 minutes to do, including stretching, and as long as you take the DVD out of the sleeve, put it in the DVD player, and follow Jillian's instuctions, it really will work. Or at least, it did for me. Not on its own - I like to vary my exercise regime so as to reduce boredom and injuries - but when you need a short burst of indoor exercise, Jillian's 30 minute workouts are the business.

Not least because they helped me to realise that exercise can be fun.

I know lots of mums who run. I suppose I can see why - it's free and it's effective, but by golly, it's dull. I never really took to it. The good news is that there are lots of other forms of exercise that are nearly free and much more exciting. For example, I do taekwon-do with James, so we get some family time while working out. It also helps his coordination and confidence so we all win. Zumba is great fun and very social and not hugely expensive either. Ballroom dancing won't get me thin, but it's fun to do so, why not? My husband has lost 3 1/2 stone using a stationary bike. Now THAT is dull, but it's working for him and I think that's the key. Find something(s) that work for you and suddenly, exercise becomes to fun part of losing weight and keeping it off.

So there you go... how to lose 40lbs in a year! But what would any gloating weight-loss post be without the before and after photos? Truth to tell, I don't have many before photos. When I was fat, I hated having my photo taken. By December 2010, I tipped the scale at 'obese' and I wasn't queuing up to have pictures taken of that. But Nigel snuck one in....This is from our summer holiday 2010. As you can see, I'm not slim. But I still managed to add another 8 or 9lbs before Christmas 2010.

Christmas Eve 2010. That's actually a fairly flattering picture by the way - thanks Nigel!

And now for the after. Again, I'm not so photogenic that I like having my picture taken, but in the interests of inspiring other mummies, here goes....
As you can see, still a bit of a way to go - 7lbs to be precise - but I now feel as though I can eat cake in public without people tutting at me (yes my slim friends, people - even some fairly rotund people - do audibly tut when they see fat people eating cake in public. It is not helpful.)
And I finish with a different kind of 'before' and 'after'. The above photograph is of a coat I made in winter 2009/10. It was a fab coat - swingy and flattering, from the Ottobre Salma pattern, and it fit me beautifully and got loads of compliments. It was also size 18 to 22. I hated it. I could now fit two of me in it. So out of the 3 or so metres of fabric, I made this beautiful formal coat for Laura. It's also an Ottobre pattern. Now this coat, I unreservedly love!

Credits Thank you to Maria who dragged me to cardio-tennis in January 2011, thereby making me realise that I was quite frighteningly unfit, to the guy who developed the C25K programme, to Jillian Michaels and Weightwatchers and all those people who complimented me over my hungry journey for the last year. Especially thanks to my darling supportive husband. I couldn't have done this without you. Mwah! Mwah!

Birthday overload (dodgy photo overload, too)

If you are thinking to yourself "well blow me! Kathryn Driffield's done a new blog post. I thought she was dead!" then I don't blame you. As you can see, I'm not dead, but I have been manically busy. Up to my eyes in birthdays, sewing orders, face painting, summer fetes, and other fun but somewhat draining activities. No time for blogging (though I have rediscovered Twitter and am now a proper fan).

Anyway, dealing with the procrastination sewing first.... a skirt for me. I have since Christmas been exercising hard and dieting reluctantly. With the result that I urgently need some summer skirts that actully fit and have pockets for my phone. When I'm a size 10 I am going to treat myself to a Desigual skirt but since I am still two sizes away I ran up a Desigual knock-off. It's kind of hard to achieve that edgy Desigual look when you mostly have kids' prints in the stash, but I gave it my best shot....
It's comfy, it fits, and it has pockets. Result!

Then onto Laura's pressing need for summer skirt & leggings combos. These are intended for wear at Hatton Country World and other places where protection from fast slides and grazed knees is required. I ran up 4 sets over the course of a day - it's an Ottobre pattern and has pretty much gone viral in the sewing for girls community. I love it!

And now for the birthday sewing... James turned 6 last week and here's his new jacket. Ottobre strikes again! It's in an outdoor wear fabric that was very cheap at Fabricland in Bristol. It was an absolute swine to sew, so I bitterly regretted choosing a pattern that featured welt pockets. It's not my best work, but it's the best I could do and James really likes it.

Though not as much as he likes his new shorts. Also an Ottobre pattern and huge fun to make.

Then came a crochet aquarium for my father-in-law on father's day. Trouble-free fish! He saw the funny side.

Laura's birthday is the last on the list. Believe me, the four weeks from June 9 to July 8 is tough going in this house - five birthdays, one after the other, with Father's Day thrown in just to make life interesting. I hardly have time to catch my breath! But Laura's is the last birthday where I feel the compulsion to sew. This is her birthday jacket. It's an Ottobre pattern (no? really?), which should have been made up in wool but which I did in fleece. Laura does actually need a fleece jacket and I was getting tired of hearing about her best friend's coat which is pink with flowers, so I embellished the fleece with heart pockets and some flowers. And pom-pom trim just for fun.

It even comes with a zip-up hood. She will simply love it!

I'm not so sure about her dress, and I think she'll be a bit 'meh' too. She really wanted something twirly, and this combination just isn't. Also, I screwed up the collar somewhat which doesn't add to my dress-love, but I think the real problem lies in the fabric choice. Both are pretty enough but lack drape, so they somehow don't flow. I suspect the pinafore will get a lot more wear than the dress, especially once I've added the strawberry buttons.

I felt a wee bit guilty about imposing my own dress choice on the birthday girl (I can't tell you how much she wanted a twirly dress) so I painted some faux Lelli Kellys for her. Don't get me wrong - I don't think they rival the real thing, but they cost me a mere £12.50 (and a fair amount of time). I used sequins, fabric glitter and fabric paint from stash, and hoped to keep them secret from her until Sunday. Unfortunately, she opened the box when they were half-finished, and the cat was out of the bag. She liked them then and now they're blinged up, I just know she'll love them.

Speaking of cats, she decided last week she wanted me to make her a kitten costume for her birthday. With claws on the hands. Now that's a challenge I decided not to try to rise to but watch this space for a Halloween post!

Spring sewing

Has it really been over a month since the last post? Oh dear, I'm slipping! My excuse is, as it is for all bloggers, that there's not enough time in the day. The nice weather has brought shoppers to the Bentley Heath Country Market and I'm having a job keeping up with demand. This is, of course, A Good Thing.

In between orders and sales, I've been working on a posh frock line. More specifically, a line of communion dresses. It's been great fun sourcing and using beautiful silks and cottons and trying to come up with dresses that will set them off. And then of course I had to find a right-sized model to set off the dresses. My friend volunteered her daughter and we had a lovely modelling session. My two are at the "fixed smile & funny face" for camera stage, so it was so nice photographing a child who looked completely natural. And it doesn't hurt that she is also an extremely pretty girl, so even I can take good photos!

First up was the crochet dress because this was the one I was most anxious about. I kid you not, I made this dress twice - I don't think there's a stitch in it that hasn't been done and re-done at least once. But I finally got it done and made a little viscose slip for under it. To finish it, I made 5 little crochet flowers and put them on hairslides. They looked like little daisies growing in her hair and gave such a pretty organic look to the outfit. I had many a crisis of confidence about this dress while I was making it, but like all good fairytales, it had a happy ending.

Next up: the traditional dress. Well, traditional with a modern vibe, I hope!

This one has a pleated sash over a paperbag waist. I love paperbag waists but no matter how much weight I lose, I'm never going to be able to wear one (there is no diet that can turn a middle-aged apple into a young beanpole) so I'm living vicariously here. The skirt is a self-embroidered lawn, which I hand-beaded to embellish the flowers. You can't see it in the photograph and I did wonder if it was worth doing, but in real life, the little beads make all the difference. There is also a semi-detachable bow at the back. Very traditional, very charming. And since it's getting harder and harder to find all-cotton communion dresses, I'm hopeful it will find a market.

And finally, everyone's favourite: the silk and tulle dress. I found the pattern for this in a Japanese pattern book. I made up a smaller two-colour version for my daughter to test the pattern (photos to follow in another post) but found that the sizing wasn't quite right and so the dress has gone into the shop. She's gutted! I also found that I didn't like the bodice so I played around with another couple of patterns and this is the changeling that emerged.

I knocked up a tiara to match and my model loved both dress and tiara so much she didn't really want to take them off. The dress is lined with habotai silk and it feels so cool and smooth - there is nothing like a silk lining for making a dress feel just sumptuous!

All that remained was for me to actually stock the shop. I've now added an Etsy shop to my stable so I had two lots of stocking up to do, but four episodes of ER got me through the tedium of uploading photos. I'm about to start on some Farbenmix baby clothes using some gorgeous fabrics from Dots & Stripes - it will make a change to use colours again!

Useful sizing chart for children - downloadable

I know that buying garments for women is a bit of a minefield, what with vanity sizing and all, but sewing garments for children from commercial patterns is no less tricky. Especially if your child is not a 'standard' size - my daughter for example is all round dinky with very short legs (alas! her mummy's genes won through there!) while my son is of average height but super-skinny.

And if you're sewing garments to sell, it's even worse! I never know how to label mine and generally end up erring on the side of caution. I recently bought a Japanese pattern book and want to make a Communion dress from it for the shop but I wasn't sure what size to go for. So... I put together a sizing comparison chart. It might look like a procrastination task but it's actually been very useful. I shall be passing it onto my sewing pupils and thought that you might find it handy too. So here's the link - Sizing Comparison Chart. Now you may wonder why I haven't just included it in the blog post - the answer is I created it as a Word document and can't just paste it into the blog. So I resaved it as a PDF and posted it on Google Docs instead - that way everyone can download and print it, no matter what version of Word they may be running. And it also means that I can never lose it... yes, there really is no such thing as altruism!

The Klimt party dress and reinventing the wheel

For some time I've been thinking about doing a garment inspired by Klimt's The Kiss. The trouble was, how to recreate those beautiful patterns he used. I dithered over using fabric paints but decided (I think correctly) that I'd just run out of talent. And then I realised that the beautiful little symbolic flowers he used so often could be rendered in crochet motifs. So I started hooking..

Twenty motifs in, and during a brief vacation from the virus that's been dogging me since early December, I started thinking about joining them. I had an idea that I could do it in a laissez-faire free-form way to build them up into a bodice. I used Ottobre's sundress pattern from 02/2002 as the block for the bodice. Once I'd twigged that the easiest way to shape the fabric as I was building it was to pin it to the bodice lining, it worked out great.

I kept to the Ottobre pattern for the back - I love that lace up detail. This is a dress that will fit Laura for quite some time!

Now this post was going to be along the lines of 'ta-dah! look at my wonderful new invention: FREE-FORM CROCHET!!!! And then I googled free-form crochet (kind of patent checking, you know?) and discovered that it's actually been around since the 1970s when it was invented by James Walters and Sylvia Cosh. Go figure! Those gits even stole my name for it!!!

Stolen glory aside, here is the finished dress in all its yellowness. It's actually much more yellow in real life (no, honestly, it really is.)

I'm already planning the next - maybe a nod to Monet? If I'm going to skank from fine art, I might as well skank from the best....

Pattern-drafting & scrap-busting

Farbenmix afficionados will immediately recognise this t-shirt as the Antonia pattern, which I've had in my collection for ages but only got round to using last month when I realised Laura was in urgent need of long-sleeve tees. It is now officially my favourite t-shirt pattern and great for scrap-busting. The neckline runs a little wide which means that you don't need to use ribbing to bind it - always an advantage for UK fabric buyers!

But for the ultimate in scrap-busting, you can't beat dolls clothes! I have a very large box overflowing with tiny pieces of fabric that I just can't bear to bin. On the other hand, my sewing room only has so much space. So I put LiEr's drafting series to work again - it's gratifying to know that it works just as well for 16" dolls as 3 year old girls! At some stage, when I have a bit of free time (so not before 2011!) I'll post my drafted block as a printable pattern.

A few tweaks of the basic body block produced this little blouse...

and a very sweet velour dress that has already found a buyer, despite being made up of different dye lots.

But this is my favourite outfit - a teeny tiny Antonia top and embellished bootlegs. Too cute and another quick sale!

And I'm starting to think if a scrap of fabric is too small even to make a doll's sleeve then the chances are it shouldn't be in the scrap box. What about you? How small does a scrap have to be for you to consign it to the bin?

LiEr made me do it

OK, so perhaps that's overstating the case somewhat. She didn't actually stand over me and whip me into submission, but what else would you call it when someone does a drafting series that enables you to take a dress out of your head and put it on your daughter?

I mean - what seamstress in her right mind doesn't want their three year old to fling up her hands and say 'let me eat cake!' ?

I have, for some time, itched to learn how to draft a sloper for a child. Winifred Aldrich's excellent book set me on the road but she just tells you what to do and not why. LiEr's series didn't so much fill in the gaps as become a replacement resource. I used it to draft a very snug block and this Patterns of Fashion book helped me to do the rest. I didn't get the fit of the block 100% perfect - the shoulders are just a smidge too wide and I'll have to re-do the block once Laura has got over the trauma of my taking a full set of her measurements.

I think the back came out particularly well. The fit is so snug I was actually quite surprised she could lift up her arms!

Oddly enough, it was the underskirt that gave me the most trouble. But faults aside, I'm thrilled with my first attempt at a posh frock from scratch and I think Laura is too. Now I just need to find her somewhere to wear it...

Two new ventures and the new collection

First new venture: I'm taking Les Petits Anglais out into the real world, aka Bentley Heath Country Market.

This is both exciting and scary. While it's great spending Friday mornings with people who don't expect me to discus the finer points of Dora the Explorer or follow me into the loo, the responsiblity of producing garments that people can feel and touch and criticise in front of me is weighing pretty heavy on me. Every time I see someone taking one of my garments off the rail I'm sure they're examining it for flaws and will denounce me to the market manager.
I have to keep reminding myself that I can sew, my stuff is nice and people have bought it before and seemed to like it.



And finally I remember that all this agonising is entirely moot since people rarely go to Country Markets to squander £28 on a dress for a child.

For what it's worth, the feedback I had today was entirely complimentary and I might actually convert compliments into sales soon.

Though I say it as shouldn't, I really do love this new collection and I'm only sorry I don't have the time to let Laura have one of everything. I'm letting her choose just one and she went straight for this 'mingoes dress'. Its a bamboo/cotton velour Olivia dress with Juule hood. The mingoes are of course flamingoes with sequin eyes.

All of the new collection is now in my Folksy shop and I only wish I could take better photographs! The denim garments are so cute in real life and look so terrible in these pictures.

The denim pinafore is especially sweet but can I get a good picture of that round yoke? Nope, not so much!

Even the peacock doesn't come out well. I think it's probably time I started looking out for a photography course.

Speaking of courses, this brings me onto my second venture: teaching two people how to sew. My first pupil is a complete novice but she has now made a skirt for her daughter and sewn a button on her husband's shirt. She's hugely enthusiastic (well, not so much about sewing on buttons, and who could blame her?) and is doing well. My other pupil has some sewing experience but her foot-wide perfectionist streak prevents her from setting a stitch in case she does it wrong. Our target is to get her to complete one of her 4 UFOs, and she is very nearly there. I'm proud of them both!