The wedding dress of the year... cut down to size (3T)

You are probably now shaking your head in wonder that any 3 year could be so over-indulged. I have to tell you, I can see where you're coming from but I can justify my insanity by telling you about her most-wanted list, every item on which has been refused by me/her daddy on the various grounds of:

cost (Lelli Kellys)
parental idleness (kitten(s), puppy, rabbits)
lack of space (4 horses)
lack of age (a rainbow car, ballet lessons, a DS)
health and safety (old yogurt, cilit bang (for the benefit of international readers: a hard-core cleaning agent), candles, turning the hot tap on and off)
all of the above (mobile phone)

Some of these things she will get when she has her own money. Others she will get when she has her own house, though I hope she's not holding her breath for the 4 horses. Now I'm not losing any sleep over the rainbow car decision but I do sometimes have pangs over refusing the Lelli Kellys - other little girls in her class have them and, heaven knows, I'd have stepped over my mother to get a pair when I was three. But £50 for a pair of shoes she can't even wear to school? No way!



So when she watched, with open mouth, the Royal Wedding last week and announced that Kate Middleton's dress is much nicer than any of the dresses that mummy had made for her, I decided to really indulge her. It's a dressing up dress, complete with stretch lace overlay, 3/4 sleees, small train and long veil. It isn't quite full-length - something that has not gone unnoticed by Laura! - so she can even scoot in it.

I say it's a dressing up dress because that's what it's meant to be. It's actually a 'going everywhere except nursery and mass' dress. We got a fair amount of attention in Ikea until I shoved her into the Smaland playzone so her brother could get the funny looks instead of me. I understand the nice childcare assistants had a lovely time playing with the veil...

And even I had to laugh when she accessorized it with raincoat and umbrella for going to the library. But we have to pick our battles in this life and you know what?, I bet the Duchess of Cambridge would love to do her shopping in her wedding dress, so I'm going to continue to let my 3-year old mini-Duchess do just that!

Notes for other over-indulgent mummies - I hacked the Farbenmix Olivia pattern for the dress body and sleeves. The train is just a pleated length of satin. The collar is a length of lace sewn onto the neckline. Or you could just buy one from my Etsy shop!

A tribute to knit dresses

I may have mentioned this before but boy, do I love a knit dress. Not for myself or the boys, of course, but for Laura. And who would blame me? They're an all-in-one outfit (great for husbands who occasionally have a problem understanding that cerise trousers may not go with a candy pink top), they can be folded up small to fit into a handbag (a boon during potty-training). They require hardly any ironing, which is always a plus but especially on holiday. They're cool in the summer, cosy in the winter, and they're very very cute. And you can make them - really quite quickly if you're unfussy about finishing seams - without an overlocker. This is quite important to me at the moment because mine is in the shop. Again. But enough of such misery - let's talk knits.

At some stage I'll post a picture of the second knit Harebell I did. In the meantime, this is a dress I put together using the Farbenmix Zoe pattern as a starting point. I added a hood (from Olivia) and attached a circle skirt to the dropped waist. I see a lot of these knit dropped waist dresses around, and I always think 'why skimp on the skirt?' So I didn't. And you should see this baby twirl!

Laura loves butterflies so I appliqued one to the front. It gives the dress something of an air of 'look at all the stuff I can do!' but I was making it for a not-quite 3 year old so I reckon the fashion police will let me off with a caution.






The skirt of this Ottobre dress is definitely on the skimpy side. I used an adult t-shirt to make it - it was £1.50 in Sainsbury's and I loved the fabric so I happily threw it in the trolley only to discover that it was so badly cut as to be unwearable. There was a fair amount of fabric which I thought would transform nicely into the Ottobre knit dress.

I was ambivalent about this pattern; it's another that I felt I ought to like but didn't quite. I was convinced to give it a go by the gorgeous versions created by Tiny from Tiny's Kitchen Table, but I'm not so in love with my own version to try making another. But it's a pattern crossed off the list and it was, until I introduced her to butterflies and circle skirts, Laura's favourite everyday dress.

Now this dress I am not remotely ambivalent about. I love it. The pattern started out life as a woven peasant top, then became a woven dress, and then I did some slashing & spreading and general hacking about, and it became this Gored Peasant Dress. If I put it in the shop I'll try and think of a better name for it! It's a little more sophisticated than my usual fare and I'm not sure if that's entirely down to the fabric. I'll have a better idea once the Patty Young knits arrive and I can try out all these patterns in those gorgeous fabrics. Until then, I have shelves of knits to clear and birthday outfits to make for my boy so I'm hoping that the overlocker comes home soon.

Ottobre chases fireflies

Those of you with small girl children will probably have heard of a rather beautiful boutique called Chasing Fireflies. It bills itself as "A magical array of keepsake-quality kid's clothing" and if you replace 'kid's' with 'girl's', then they're not wrong. Mothers of boys may find their offerings somewhat less spectacular, as is so often the way.

Anyway, during my hunt for Laura's 3rd birthday dress, I came across the Fairytale Chiffon Dress on the Chasing Fireflies site.

Isn't it just divine? Of course, at $198 (plus shipping and duties) it would want to be. So if, like me, you'd rather spend your pennies on other things, Ottobre has the answer. (Is there a question to which it hasn't? you may ask, and I would say, probably not.)

I was somewhat underwhelmed by this pattern when I first saw it. I always felt that I ought to like it more than I did and couldn't see where it was missing the bus. When I compared the two dresses I realised that the Ottobre problem lay in the dress's proportions. I find that Ottobre dresses tend to run wide and this one doesn't have the length to make up for that, so it has just a hint of squatness about it. The line drawing illustrates this nicely.

But in its essentials, it is a great pattern for hacking out a Fairytale Chiffon Dress.

My modifications:

• grade it down to a size 92 (even though I swore I wasn't going to do this again because I have a large pile of 'biggest-size-is-92' patterns to make 'some day' and since Laura is now definitely a 92, it appears that 'some day' is now here);


• lengthen the overskirt and add more width to take account of the filmier fabric;


• shorten the sleeves to elbow-length and add flounces;


• replace the front flounces with ruffles;


• deepen, widen and square off the neckline; and


• replace the zip with loops and buttons

So pretty straightforward really. And best of all, given my current stash-busting mission, the only new purchase was the tulle - which I got on Ebay for £3.20, incl. postage. In fact, the entire dress cost me less than £14, which made me wonder how Chasing Fireflies were getting away with charging nearly $200. And then I made the dress.

Folks, if you are the proud possessor of a Fairytale Chiffon dress and are now grinding your teeth at the thought of all those squandered dollars, grind no longer. This dress is seriously labour-intensive. Have you ever tried ruffling silk chiffon? Forget about the ruffler foot - it just makes nasty holes in the fabric. It needs to be hand ruffled. The overskirt also needs to be French seamed and hand-gathered. In fact, there was quite a lot hand-sewing involved in making this dress, including a hand-rolled hem on the overskirt's ruffling. Fortunately I like hand-sewing and I can honestly say that I enjoyed every one of the 17 hours I spent on the dress, but I now realise that $198 is actually a very good price for it. Once you've deducted materials, the cost equates to about $10 an hour - not much more than the UK's minimum wage.

(Glass buttons from MIL's stash, loops made from mercerised cotton from mother's stash,ribbon also from mother's stash which was actually destashed to her by a woman whose daughter worked in a ribbon factory back in the days when Coventry was awash with manufacturing companies.)

And it was 17 hours very well spent, I would say. I love its dreamy charm, and Laura likes it too, though probably not as much as I do. For a start she would prefer a pink ribbon and I will cave on that, even though it will mean buying one because you have to pick your battles in this life.

I will also have to take up the left hand side of the hem quite a bit and even out the sleeve lengths. They're the kind of flaws that would really bug me and I would point them out to everybody who complimented the dress, so I might as well sort them out now. And then it can go into the spare room wardrobe until the day of James' party to which Laura will no doubt decide that she wants to wear pyjamas because they are the only garments she owns that feature Peppa Pig! Maybe I should invest in a Peppa Pig ribbon, just in case... Oooh! Could this be the basis of a new Chasing Fireflies range? Tasteful character-spattered clothing - now there's a thought!

Adding sleeves to a sleeveless pattern. Not trivial!

In fact, if it hadn't been for the good old internet, I doubt if I'd have managed it. However, with the help of many useful links (all of which will feature in this post), I finished my dress in time to wear it to the PTA summer ball. By way of a reminder, this is the pattern I started with:



It's a DKNY design for Vogue and I fell in love with the clean silhouette, dropped waist and on-trend pockets. I wasn't quite so keen on the neckline - lovely for the day, not so great for an evening dress. And I do not do sleeveless dresses. So I made up a muslin, tried it on Mabel, and used this pattern from Ottbre to re-cut the muslined bodice, which I then used to make the final pattern.





It was a good plan and ought to have worked. But it didn't. This is primarily because I neglected to make up a complete muslin - sleeves and all. So when I had made up the bodice in the silk, all but the sleeves, I discovered that the shoulder seams were much too wide and gave the dress a dropped shoulder look, which did not go well with the high sleeve caps on Ottobre's sleeves. So... off to the internet for some help.


I spent an entire evening wading through Google where I came across some tremendously helpful links but the first real breakthrough came with this Threads article on how to fit sleeves by ensuring that the bodice fits. I went back to Mabel and wielded my tailor's chalk to some purpose.


This doesn't deal specifically with sleeve fitting but is really useful for other fitting issues. The photographs of badly fitting garments are particularly instructive. If only I'd read it before top-stitching the seams of my dress....


This was useful, if wordy, on matching the sleeve and armhole.

Once I'd re-cut the armhole (and then the sleeve), I was able to set in the sleeve. Ottobre recommended the method of sewing two lines of basting between the notches, pulling the threads to gather to size, and pressing to shrink the fullness. I did try this, but my pre-shrunk silk wasn't cooperative. I didn't want to trim any more from the sleeve cap (heck, I wanted to be able to move my arms in the dress!) so, back to surfing...


Gorgeous Fabrics' blog provided the answer. This is an amazingly clear tutorial on setting in sleeves by simply pinning & tacking them in place. It doesn't look as though it will work, but it really does. As these pictures of the finished dress prove. The overall fit isn't great, but by golly, the sleeves are smooth.






Which just leaves the neckline. I wanted it to have some pizazz so I trawled John Lewis to see what was in style at the moment. There were a couple of dresses with pleating so I had a try at a pleated neckline. I used some organza for backing, cut some bias strips from the scraps of silk I had left, and set to work with the iron. It isn't perfect, but it looks effective.



So I would say that I learned a lot from this dress. Not least that a dress that is snug before you add the lining is going to be uncomfortably tight once you've added that extra layer of habotai silk!

(By the way, if you're looking for a UK supplier of nice quality silk at a very good price, I heartily recommend Beckford Silks. Excellent customer service, reasonable price for delivery, nice products. NAYY)

Ottobre Harebell dress

My darling DH finds this hard to believe, but Laura needs some new knit dresses for summer. I've given the Farbenmix Olivia pattern a good run (now that he DOES believe!) so although I could just make up some short-sleeved versions, I wanted a bit of a change. But I'm having a bit of a job finding another pattern that's different enough to make it worth purchasing it. I really like Patty Young's new Abigail pattern, but that isn't available to buy yet, so I was thrilled when I saw the Harebell dress in the new Ottobre.
















Keen-eyed readers will note that this is a dress for woven fabric, minus sleeves but with an invisible zipper. It also starts in size 98, and heaven only knows when Laura will be big enough for that size!






It struck me that I could make the dress up in a knit, omit the zipper, add some sleeves, and I'd have just the dress I wanted. Being fairly realistic about my sewing skills I tried it out in some very cheap jersey that I wasn't all that keen on. I graded down a size, cut the back in one piece on the fold, and used the sleeve from the flounce sleeve t-shirt in Ottobre's 03/07 issue. I didn't bother with the edgings or back tie because this was only a muslin.









When I make the next version, I'll omit the seam allowances to reduce the wearing ease, increase the width of the sleeve head, reduce the width of the neckline, and use contrasting fabrics so that the effect of two different fabrics isn't completely lost from a distance. I'll also be including the tie-back because that's what gives the back its apron-effect. But flaws aside, I'd say that this is a very successful muslin and I've already picked out the fabrics for the next two, which will also help to reduce the stash in time for the June/July delivery of my Patty Young knits pre-order. Don't you just love it when a plan comes together?

Yay! Snow and cake and tow-trucks!

We were at a sledging party today at the Snowdome in Tamworth. It's an indoor skiing place, complete with real snow (heaven knows what their fuel bills are like at the moment!) The children really enjoyed it - even Laura , who prefaced every sledging attempt with "I not going to be scared this time".

I made the 3-year old birthday boy a hoody, appliqued with a tow-truck. After last week's pinafore escapades, I was going to chicken out and use an Ottobre pattern but decided to have another attempt at drafting - after all, it's only been the pinafores that have been failures so far. And there must be something about doing boys' clothes, because this pattern came together beautifully, hood and all. It's still on the large side - I am drilling myself to remember that a centimeter on the side makes 4cm of ease, which is a fair amount on a 3 year old. And I have got to work out how to stop the cotton interlock puckering when I sew along the horizontal. I suspect having a fiddle with the differential feed may do the trick. As you can see, I used the round pockets (skanked from Ottobre!) as the wheels of the tow-truck, and experimented with a t-shirt transfer for the little motif, which reads Les Pet's Autos. I'm going to be putting it in the shop once I've cracked the puckering problem, as part of my Les Pets for Boys collection. It's nice to end the week on a high.

I've cut out (yet) another pinafore, and hope that next week I'll be able to post the final, final successful photos in the Pinafore Drafting tute.

It's a new day and a New Year!

After a handmade Christmas, I had an only slightly less handmade New Year. I have been thinking for a while about doing boys' clothes for the shop and I started the new year by making a shirt for James to wear to a New Year's Eve party. I am so tired of seeing him trot along to parties in t-shirt and jeans, no matter how nice they may be, when the little girls are arrayed in their sparkly twirly finery. His friend Benny attended the last party in a super-smart shirt and tie, and while James wouldn't be persuaded on the tie, he did think he'd like to have a nice shirt. So I got out Winifred and set to work. It's a very simple short-sleeved shirt (both James and I being new to this shirt business). I put my foot down on the yellow theme and made the shirt in a good quality quilting fabric featuring helicoptors! He really likes the print and while it'd look a bit naff on a 10 year old, it's cute for a 4 year old. He doesn't like buttons, in common with quite a few of his classmates (what IS this button thing about? I really don't get it...) so I used poppers. I have a smarter version planned with cuffs, collar stand and back yoke. Time to do a bulk buy of cheap muslin I think!

Anyway, here's a little gallery of the Christmas and New Year makes. Everyone got at least one handmade present, even if it was only a hat, and everyone seemed to really like what they got. So I had lovely holidays too!

Socks for Nigel. The self-striping yarn was such fun to use I didn't even mind making the socks extra long for my husband's extra-long feet. No pattern required because these were pretty simple, but I unfortunately did one sock in 3+1 rib and the other in 2x2 I and didn't notice until I was wrapping them up. Nigel doesn't mind though.

Milo Armadillo for Laura. My first attempt at a soft toy. He looks a bit lumpy in the tummy but that's just the photograph.

Two pairs of socks for my mother in law. She asked me for socks and I thought "Aha!" She is thrilled with them. The patterns came via Ravelry - there are so many gorgeous free patterns out there for socks - the internet knitting community is uber-generous.

Walking socks for my father in law. No pattern required - it was very simple!

Hat for sister's boyfriend - the free Lillehammer pattern found somewhere on the internet.

Beret for my sister (no pattern - it's just a beret with stripes!).

Self-drafted dressing gown pattern for Label Bear, James' special bear.

A fleece jacket from James. It's a much modified Ottobre pattern and is going to be modified more. I lined it with microfleece and so it's a little snug. It could also be reversible if it weren't for the zip. So I am going to take out the zip, add some width with a yellow placket and put on poppers. The blue microfleece is the perfect colour for my boy, so we'll both be happier once I've done the alterations.

Cabled cardigan for Laura. Hold your breath because I actually bought this pattern! Mind you, I did serious searching for a free version first before biting the bullet and parting with the cash. It's Sirdar pattern and was lovely to make and lovely to wear. I am about to start a version for myself using the Cable Luxe free pattern from Lion Brand.

I even made an Ottobre top for myself, which I absolutely adore. In fact, I've ordered 2 more Ottobre Woman magazines on the strength of it.

Hat, scarf and mittens to go with Laura's upcycled coat.

Laura in her Mary costume for the Los Posadas party. Very cute though not exactly a masterpiece of stitchery. I used one of Nigel's old t-shirts for the tunic, which is worn over James' old t-shirt.

James wore his innkeeper costume to Los Posadas.

An experiment in making bloomers. Very cute and practical. Super for soft play! I just embellished an RTW t-shirt to go with them because tempus was seriously fugiting.

Laura's Christmas outfit including the pettiskirt (I had yet another hack at it to improve the proportions... I reckon there's 14 hours of sewing gone into this one skirt.) A fleece hoody from the Olivia pattern, with some fun fur around the sleeve edges. A pair of viscose leggings completes the outfit. It is even cuter in real life - we were mobbed coming out of Mass by people wanting to tell her she was a gorgeous little angel!

Fleece digger romping trousers for James. Self-drafted pattern.

A skirt for my sister (no pattern required - just two skirt shaped pieces attached to an FOE waistband). I made her another one from an old jumper of Nigel's. This is more of a spring weight skirt, in some aqua and orange hearts I got from Nature's Fabrics Black Friday sale.

A Fair Isle beret for my mum. It was a rush job (I only started it on 21st December!) and I made a screamingly obvious mistake in the pattern. But it's still a nice beret and she really likes it.

So that's the Christmas stash. I'm looking forward to a handmade 2010, with lots of ideas for the Spring collection for both boys and girls. I hope you're looking forward to a 2010 filled with whatever it is that you do that makes you happy.

Well, she needed one!

This afternoon, DH took the children to the park so that I could dye my hair without one or other of them trying to climb up onto my knee. Now when you're alone in the house, with a headful of brown Nice & Easy, what are you going to do to pass the time? Why, make Laura a new dressing gown of course!

Okay, so I could have tackled the pile of UFOs that somehow built up while I was busy working. Or I could have cleaned the kitchen. But I wanted to sew something quick & easy & fun - the kind of bonus, unplanned frivolous sewing you do when you are unexpectedly given some time. And Laura really did need a new dressing gown. The problem was I didn't have a pattern. Or rather, I had one that was single-sized for a much smaller child than Laura.

With a fair amount of hacking (which would have been more accurate if I'd got the measuring tape involved!) and some very quick & dirty sewing, I produced this fleecy whale robe.

It isn't perfect - I would have been surprised beyond measure if it had been - but it's better than the too-small hand-me-down Thomas the Tank Engine robe she's been wearing for the last couple of months. And it's pink with whales on it, so she really likes it. Job done!

That was the week that was...

My week was a very mixed bag! On Monday James "saved the day" by pushing Laura and her trike out of the way of the electric garage door as it was closing down on her. We had to do several re-enactments at the bus-stop with Laura playing the Hapless Victim, James the Noble Hero and Mummy taking the dual role of Forgetful Mummy and Garage Door.

After such heroic behaviour, it's probably no wonder the children went berserk in our local Co-Op the next day. My children rarely embarrass me - not that they're little angels, I just take the view that if people are tutting then they probably don't have any children of their own and therefore their disapproval is irrelevant. And most parents actually like to see other children misbehaving - it helps us realise that our own children are not demons - they're just normal! But Tuesday evening was on another scale altogether and I did feel a bit embarrassed. At one stage James announced that he was going to build his own house and go and live in it On His Own and YOU (pointing at me) can't come in and YOU (Laura) can't come in either. I was impressed by the lucidity of his argument; rather less so by the volume of expression. (That wasn't the worst incident by the way - it's just the only one I can bear to remember.)

On Wednesday I dropped my mobile down the loo. If this should ever happen to you - and do not mock, it's more likely to happen than you think if you leave your mobile in your back pocket - then the tip of the day is: remove the phone back, the sim card and the battery before putting everything into the airing cupboard and just leaving it all to dry out! I'm not convinced the camera is quite recovered from the ordeal but otherwise the phone is working fine so it could have been worse.

This morning I knocked a hot iron onto a cheap carpet. There is now an unattractive iron shaped hole right by my sewing desk but since the floor is often covered in bits of thread and scrap fabric, I think I can live with it!

But great things happened too - apart from James' heroism of course. A large box of gorgeous destash fabric arrived from Jennifer Miller of Bella*Tessa Designs on Wednesday, and I finished a nice little skirt for Laura this morning using some of the said fabric. It isn't my usual choice, being yellow and pink (I get wa-a-ay too much yellow from making things for James!) but the print is just divine.



I was going to make it into a ruffled patchwork skirt using the Vivi pattern from Mamu Designs, but when it came to it, I couldn't cover up large chunks of the yellow print. So I added a pink ruffled lining and turned a couple of the patches into pockets.

With hindsight (and how often have I posted that!) I'd have done the smaller size because even with using buttonhole elastic, this skirt is miles too big for Laura. But the smaller size is age 12-18 months and although she's dinky, age 2 clothes generally fit her OK. This is an age 2-3 and clearly it doesn't fit her anything like OK! I also wouldn't have done both a yoke and a waistband - in fact, I may just cut off the lower skirt and reattach it to a simple one piece waistband. That would make the skirt shorter too. But I still really like the skirt and Laura loves it.

And I knocked up a hoody for James using more of the digger fabric. This one is (for everything is relative) pretty tasteful, being a nice shade of teal green. It's too big but the colour suits him and he likes the pocket and the sleeves and the hood so perhaps he's not going to build his own house and move into it after all. My mother, however, is keeping an eye out for second-hand furniture for him. Just in case!

A peacocky kind of party dress

As part of the successful UFO & Mending clear-out, I finished a silk dress for Laura this morning. I can assure you that I do not make a habit of giving silk dresses or indeed silk anything else to children, but this fabric was £8.750/m in the John Lewis sale, I had vouchers burning a hole in my pocket and, well, it was sooooo gorgeous I couldn't resist!

Now, I've never (sucessfully) sewn with silk before, and this was tissue-fine, crinkled silk. With spangles. Gorgeous but terrifying - rather like Daniel Day Lewis. So I turned to my trusty friend the internet for help and advice. And it didn't let me down! I wanted something that would be super-simple to make, partly to let the fabric do the shouting and partly because I feared I would run out of skill on a more complex design. So I did a very modified Ottobre 3-way dress (#18 from issue 03/09). With the help of a #60 needle and some fine silk thread, it wasn't nearly as tricky as I'd expected but I still wouldn't fancy doing anything harder than vertical or horizontal seams.

I did a kind of lettuce edge hem because I couldn't think of what else to do with it. I was going to line it with some aqua cotton lawn, but decided that it might impede the flow of the silk. I found a suitable ribbon in the stash but I think a longer wider one might do the dress more justice.

There's two pieces of silk left, each about 50cm long. One is blue and the other is aqua, and I'm not quite sure what to do with them. No doubt the internet will provide the answer eventually!

It isn't my favourite dress - I've never been a huge fan of the pillowcase style - but it's definitely Laura's! I had to prise it off her, which was very gratifying. I think when you do lots of sewing for your children, they are apt to take it a little for granted - human nature, I guess. We have a party early September so she can peacock in it at that. She'll be thrilled!