Category — Kid's clothes

I’m still working on the pattern. It’s a tad big – but still wearable.

I know it appears that I have given up sewing – and for a few weeks there, after a string of difficult projects and a dose of exhaustion I wondered myself if perhaps it was time to part ways with my sewing machine. But then one day in an attempt to clear my cutting table I sewed up a dress that had been sitting there all cut out for nearly two months. And for once everything worked and the dress came together quickly and easily and looked fantastic and WHAM – I’ve been sewing ever since

The dress was a second attempt at this one, but it turned out even smaller than the first, so I sent it to my good friend Tina to try on her beautiful two year old Indigo and take a few snaps for me. And blow me down – have a look at what she sent me back!

Believe it or not Tina is not a professional photographer but she does make beautiful clothes which if you’re lucky you can snatch up from her store. Thanks for the beautiful photos Tina – you’re a gem!

I am just putting the finishing touches on some other projects which I will share soon!

P.S. this dress is for sale here, and the fabric is for sale here

OK…mental note to self…don’t judge a dress at 1am, especially a dress that has taken many hours to make (and unpick).  I woke up this morning and thought that maybe the dress wasn’t so bad, then I tried it on Zoe, and I realised that it was actually pretty cute.  And…drum roll please…Zoe loved it!  What a shame it was a size 2/3 (she’s nearly 5!).  Maybe – just maybe – I might be able to bring myself to make another one in her size.  Surely it couldn’t be so hard the second time.  Could it?

Here are pics:

Wow, what an overwhelming response to my giveaway! Thank you so much to everyone who left a comment – it has been so much fun reading them as they have come in over the last few days.

I just plugged some numbers into the Random.org random number generator….and the winning number is…..number 309!! That means Melissa and her comment “beautiful bib” is the winner Melissa I have your email address so I will contact you shortly to find where to send the bib to.

This is what I’ve been working on over the weekend. Let me just say – that never before have I made so many mistakes making the one garment. And that is really saying something, because I am very good at making mistakes when sewing. It was as if I was cursed. I cut the fabric the wrong way, sewed the pieces in the wrong order, sewed the seems too narrow, too wide, back to front, upside down, put the snaps in the wrong spot, broke the snaps, messed up the hem. Are you bored yet? Anyway, the dress is finished and of course now I’m harbouring a bit of resentment towards it. Time to move on. I have something easy in mind for tomorrow. Something very hard to mess up….

I am finally making progress on this:

But couldn’t resist dumping it this week for something a bit more fun. This skirt is made from luscious soft European cord and was briefly for sale (now sold!). I have lots more cord (and velvet ) on the way and look forward to sewing with it.

Then I made this mock Flamenco skirt, also to sell, but Zoe fell in love with it and hasn’t taken it off. I was so excited that she liked something I made that wasn’t pink I had to let her keep it. We watched some You-tube Flamenco clips together and she is now quite the expert.

And of course with another birthday party today there was another cape to be made. I made this one out of a different fabric just to prove I’m not showing the same one over and over. No not really, I made it out of different fabric because I had already emptied the bolt of the other. We have another two parties tomorrow and then the fridge is clear of invites…for now.

My kids aren’t really that popular – it’s just that the kids in Zoe’s kinder class seem to all be having ‘all-class’ parties, and with 28 kids in the class, that’s a whole lot of parties…

You know when you sew something, and you’ve got a great image in your mind of what it will look like, then something goes wrong, the image cracks and the project seems ruined beyond repair? No? Oh, well it happens to me a bit.

Take this dress for example. Late one night I was only a handful of seams away from finishing it, when I put the spotty fabric for the hem through the overlocker upside down. I couldn’t save the spotty material I had cut, and I didn’t want to have to go cut any more, then I lost faith in the spots all together, then the dress became ‘doomed’ and sat nearly finished for a good 4 weeks.

Thankfully a few days (or weeks) break can help revive the image and save projects from eternal doom. In this case, late some other night inspiration struck and I realised that what this dress needed was a ruffle (hey I told you everything was going to have a ruffle now that I have my special ruffling gadget). No kidding, 15 minutes later this dress was finished. And how good does it look?

Now I’m just sitting here waiting for inspiration to finish the other five or so projects currently classed as ‘doomed’.

(and by the way if you think this dress would look super hot on your 4 year old girl then you can buy it here).

Last week I got myself a gathering attachment for my overlocker, allowing me to gather, overlock and sew pieces of fabric together all at once. Of course the obvious time to buy such an attachment would have been before making a pettiskirt, but for some strange reason at that point in time I was feeling frugal. Luckily for me the urge to be frugal has left and have I ever had my $25 worth of enjoyment out of this little accessory. With some spotty fabric I (frugally) bought on sale at Spotlight I made my first tiered skirt, and if it weren’t for the 53 unfinished projects covering my sewing table I would be sitting down this minute gathering my way through my fabric stash.

Here’s the spotty skirt which I think Zoe received more excitedly than perhaps any other piece of clothing I have made for her:

Here’s Zoe modelling the skirt:

And here’s why Miss Zoe thinks this is a good one:

Oh – and what’s this? Another wizard’s cape?

You betcha! Another party today…and still one more invite on the fridge.

I’m going to try to finish some projects over the next week, which is not nearly as fun as starting a whole bunch of new projects, but I have sewer’s guilt which I’m going to try to alleviate. Then I’m going to alleviate my fabric buyer’s guilt by sewing up some of the piles of fabric under my cutting table which is earmarked for various purposes. Hopefully then I’ll start on something new.

Zoe goes to a wonderful kinder. I am confident of that. When I pick her up in the afternoon she is happy and animated and we often have interesting conversations. On the way to kinder however, the conversation goes something more like this “I AM NOOOOOTTTTTTTTT GOING TO KIIIIIINDEEEER”…..”AAAAAAGGGGGGGHHHHHHH”….. “NNNNOOOOOOO” …..”AAAAGGGGGGHHHHH”. (Repeat x10).

To make matters worse, on a Thursday Zoe has to wear pants to kinder, because she does PMP (a kind of P.E. for little ones). Zoe hates wearing pants, and boy does she let everybody know about it. “NNNNOOOOOO PANTS”….”NNNNOOOOOO PANTS”….”I HATE PMP”…..NNNNOOOOO PANTS” (repeat all the way to kinder).

To try to make our PMP mornings a bit more cheerful I have in the past made the prettiest PMP pants possible (see here and here). This year however I thought we’d try something different – the swing top. It’s not a dress, it’s not a top. It’s the perfect PMP outfit!

The pattern is based on the Ottobre Creative Workshop 301 pattern which I cut off under the arm to add some ’swing’ and is made from the stretch fabric I bought at Hilco in Germany. Just to add a bit of interest though I thought I’d cut the whole top sideways so that the stretch goes the wrong way. Wow – that does sound seriously familiar! I keep going over my thought processes as I was cutting the fabric and thinking about all the clues that I was doing it wrong. Thoughts like ‘wow, this print looks like it’s going sideways’, or ‘this fabric is not as wide as I thought it would be’, or my personal favourite, ‘hmmm it’s weird how the stretch seems to go up and down instead of side to side’. I was convinced however that I had it right, so cut away I did. Cut cut away until there was not going back.

I love this top. Zoe loves this top. Strangers love this top! But every time I get close to it all I see is those little arrows going the wrong way across the fabric and I feel so darned annoyed. I know. I need to get over it.

Here’s Zoe in her PMP swing top and very first pair of leggings:

Here are my gorgeous nieces Lucy et Hannah modelling Aunty Bel’s creations in their new home town of Noumea.

Cute huh!

I have had this denim skirt in my head for a long time. I actually tried to make it on that 46.4 degree day we had in January, but surprisingly enough it didn’t really work out (actually it was a complete failure and I have since cut it up and repurposed the fabric). I was therefore thrilled when this one turned out so well.

One more piece for the winter wardrobe – and a couple more on the way…