Tag Archives: kids’ clothes

August 11, 2010 · 7:20 am

Girl Wonders

Another pair of capris

Well, I did no sewing yesterday, but I did manage to get another pair of capri jeans cut out. (I only had 1.1m of fabric, about .25m shy of what I need for a full-length pair, I guess, and I didn’t want to patchwork in pieces of my other denim. This does, however, mean that I will still need another pair of full-length jeans for Self-Stitched September, because the wearability of capris in Alberta in September is dubious. Also I did laundry. Mounds and mounds of little-girl laundry.

Poser in pink.

My daughters, on the other hand (aside from passing through the house like a high-pitched whirlwind), did a lot of sewing. In particular, my oldest spent several hours sewing the younger one into a variety of costumes. Ok, perhaps sewing is a bit of a misnomer. There was a bit of lacing

Pink poser, showing back lacing.

involved, but mostly scissors. A lot of scissors. A lot of scraps that started out yesterday reasonably sized are… no longer. But, it kept them occupied and focused the destruction on reasonable targets, right? It says everything you need to know about our personalities that I started sewing for my barbies, while my oldest daughter has started sewing for a person.

This used to be a Lydia...

The pink outfit is, as you may have guessed, made from the last few remnants of the pink poplin I made the twirly dress out of. The white is the most satisfying use of a wadder I can imagine. I had been meaning to try to salvage the bodice part of my Lydia Disaster, but really—watching it shredded by a 10-year-old deconstructionist is much more satisfying.

Also, the 10-year-old was wearing one of my RTW shirts all yesterday. It’s a bit loose on her whereas it’s snug on me, but still.

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August 3, 2010 · 12:14 am

A find!

Mail-order envelope, post-marked 1955. "Poncho, pedal-pushers, shorts, blouse"

Pattern drawing. My grandma labeled this pattern as containing "poncho, pedal pushers, shorts, blouse"

My mom let me paw through her small stash of old patterns today. Most of them are not really of interest to me—a lot of little girl (and adult) pioneer dresses and things like that. A number of them are Folkwear patterns, too—I hadn’t realized Folkwear was around that long ago (since at least one of those patterns is for a dress I wore when I was two).

But there was one children’s pattern she had gotten from my grandmother. It’s a mail-order pattern from “The Star Weekly Pattern Department”, post-marked 1955. My mother would have been 2 going on 3, her sister 11 months younger, perfect for this size 2 pattern. Of course, my children are far beyond a size 2, but I do have a couple of two-year-olds I’ve been sewing for, and I could always take a stab at grading it. That poncho is pretty cute.

My first un-printed pattern!

And look! Un-printed pattern paper!

I haven’t gone through to see if all pieces are there, but my grandmother and mother are both borderline hoarders, so I’m betting they are.

Sadly, she’s still hanging on to the button collection. Maybe she’ll let me take some pictures, though.

I am curious about one thing, though—whether size 2 patterns in the 50s were cut for diapers or not. It seems like there was a much bigger press to get your kids potty-trained back than as compared to now (infant potty-trainers aside). Mind you, if I was hand-washing all my kids’ dirty cloth diapers, I’d have had a lot more motivation to get them potty-trained early, too!

Pattern drawing and pieces

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July 23, 2010 · 9:31 am

Photodump

The kids’ jean jackets are done! In all their pain-in-the-butt imperfect glory. Be amazed. Be awed. Rejoice (with me) that my fingers survived all that snap-setting.

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July 21, 2010 · 8:06 pm

Impatient

Second Kids' Jean Jacket

As usual, I can’t wait until the thing is fully finished. Sorry. Also I ran out of topstitching thread, so I’m not going to be able to finish it until tomorrow.

This project has been such a brat, and it’s all my fault. It’s like my brain was broken; I was incapable of

Second kids' jean jacket---back

thinking logically about the order in which it had to be constructed. Not looking at the instructions didn’t help, but I didn’t really look at them last time and it went much better. I have no excuses. It was simple incompetence, with perhaps a dose of hubris. Hopefully I’ll learn my lesson, o great Sewing Gods.

I figured out my problem with the collar being too big, by the way. I had been trying to fit it on only the jacket part. It is, of course, supposed to extend to the centre front on both sides—that is, about halfway across the front placket. The collar on the JJ blouse is exactly the same (except its button placket is cut on, not sewn on). Heck, pretty much any collar that doesn’t have a stand is done like this.

Inside---pocket linings and bias binding

And it took me two tries to figure this out (too late). In my defense, the illustration shows the inside (facing) so you can’t really tell where the collar should end relative to the band, but still. My bad. My stupid.

Ok, let’s look at the positives. The lace worked out surprisingly well. I might have used a bit more, but I ran out (seriously, I bought two metres. Who could imagine a jean-jacket could use up two metres of lace??). The pearl snaps are very cute, and much easier to put in now I have the proper tools. The topstitching is relatively flawless. The wider bias-binding inside

Snazzy under-collar

worked very nicely, and there’s only one seam I proceeded to fold and topstitch the wrong way (can you spot it?). I like the touch of colour and pattern inside, and on the under-collar (I should probably have interfaced the undercollar, too, rather than just adding a second layer of the seersucker. I am reasonably confident that my seven-year-old will not give a crap at all about my various booboos.

I may still give in and get some crystal iron-ons or something equally twee for both jackets. Even with the lace, this one’s very plain, and the other even more so.

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July 20, 2010 · 10:16 pm

Buttons!

My new Button Stash

Yes, I am weak. I think we’ve established that. Today, I gave in to the lure of the Bag of Mixed Buttons. These things call to me. You see, my mother has a button stash. My grandmother has a button stash (two or three, actually). In fact, a good chunk of my mother’s button stash used to be my great-grandmother’s. Me, I have no button stash. And my forebears are not yet ready to part with theirs (they get real squirrely when I ask, too.)

So today, when I was at Zellers to buy thread, they had big mixed bags for five bucks, and I caved.

Now, this is not the way to acquire a button stash, I know. Ideally one should be accumulated over the years from buttons snipped off of worn-out garments, or at least bought at a garage sale or thrift store from some old lady’s accumulation. Added to here and there with truly magnificent finds, like a fabric stash. Doing what I did is kinda like buying a garbage bag full of random fabrics to create your stash. But I couldn’t resist any longer. I’m sorry. There are lots of fake pearl ones, which I love. A few big funky ones that might be worthy of a Lady Grey coat some day. Some brightly coloured ones that would be good for kids clothes. And some that are just butt-ugly and cheap looking. A fair number of sets of six to twenty matching ones, which was one of my fears of buying a bag like this. I don’t know if this will actually curtail my project-related button buying, but you never know. At least this way any extra buttons I have left over will have company.

On the sewing front, as you may have guessed, I’m struggling along with the jean jacket for my younger daughter. This got off to a really good start last night.

Today, not so much.

I really should read pattern instructions. Even the second time round. It’s not that I don’t know how things are constructed—I just forget steps. Or do them out of order. Like forgetting to attach the front button placket/facing before I sewed the shoulder seam. Or forgetting to leave the gap for the sleeve placket when I stitched the two pieces of the sleeve together. And then topstitched them. And then sewed the lace down over that. Frankly just a lot of stupidity that could have been avoided by actually thinking. Or, failing that, reading the instructions. Also some of the same issues from the first version are occurring—the front yoke was a smidge too wide. I did manage to get the front band/facing fitting right this time, so my issues last time around were presumably user error. And, most distressingly, the collar is too big. This was not such an issue last time; I just shortened one side. The difference isn’t noticeable.

This time, I had lace sandwiched between the upper and under collar, so that its edges would just peek out when it was folded right-side out. No shortening that. I managed to get the undercollar side sewn on (with a few tucks… fortunately, it’s made oft the same seersucker as the pocket linings, so it was much more amenable to easing than the denim would be) and I’ll sew the denim upper side in by hand, which should let me fudge it. Pooey. Possibly this is also user error—I’m not the best at collars—but I haven’t had this much trouble with the other collars I’ve done this year, which is actually at least eight. Eight collars! Wow, I’m a pro!

Anyway, bedliness beckons. Here’s hoping tomorrow brings smooth sailing, or at least smoother sewing. Once I get this one done, I can make something for ME!!!

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July 20, 2010 · 6:03 pm

FML

Do YOU see what's wrong?

I would be less ticked if I hadn’t broken my seam ripper last week, and forgotten to get a new one when I picked up thread this morning.

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July 20, 2010 · 8:52 am

Isn’t it amazing

2nd kids' jean jacket, under way.

how having the right tools at hand makes all the difference? You may (or may not) recall how nuts I went trying to install these pretty pearl snaps on my older daughter’s jean jacket. I never did get any put in that actually functioned. The one at the link above looks cute but doesn’t stay snapped to save its life. I couldn’t get any other ones to even attach properly.

So, last weekend, I put on my big-girl panties and bought the little tool (along with a bunch more snaps, since they had a colour they hadn’t had before, that I liked better… I know, I know). And last night I cut out and got started on the construction for the younger daughter’s jean jacket.

So far, it’s going well. I like the lace around the pocket flap; hopefully I’ll remember to put it in a couple of other seams so it doesn’t look totally weird. I get to use up more of that damn seersucker fabric (featured here and here) for the pockets and bias binding. Actually it’s a perfectly good fabric, I just didn’t realize how far 2m would go when it’s not really suitable for anything but clothes for little girls. I made the bias binding much wider this time (a whole 5 cm!) and it’s much easier to sew evenly. I think I’m slowly getting a bit better at cutting bias binding. The amount I have to trim off kills me, though. It’s almost as wide as the entire binding I used in the first jean jacket.

There is one problem, however. When I was purchasing this denim, I didn’t have the envelope with me. I had written down about 1.5 m for each jacket—actually 1 5/8 yards, but of course fabric is sold by the metre. I figured this was a good, if slightly generous, conversion. I forgot that this was the yardage for 45″ wide fabric, and the denim I got is more like 60″. I bought 3m.

Each of these jackets took less than a metre of fabric. I have at least a metre and a half of sparkly denim left over.

I guess I’m going to be sewing more kids’ jeans.

Just not right now.

And, on that note, I should really get to work. Also, I’m out of white thread.

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July 18, 2010 · 1:16 pm

A quick Sunday afternoon project

Quick shirred sundress for a Very Little Girl

I needed a break from the Knit Shirt of Doom (yes, the Boy is whining about it), and I’ve been meaning to give shirring a try. I want to make myself a shirred tunic top out of the same white crinkle voile as the Boy’s shirt. But I’ve never shirred anything before, certainly not on this machine. And, as is usually the case when I have no idea how something’s going to work, I opted to try the method out on a kid’s garment first.

Now, with shirring, you have to hand-wind the elastic thread around a bobbin; then you sew parallel rows with regular thread in the top and the elastic thread in the bobbin of your machine. Opinions are divided over whether you should stretch the elastic thread as you wind it or not. I suspect it has everything to do with your machine and its bobbin tension. My machine seems to have a fairly high bobbin tension (some day I’ll figure out how to adjust that, too), so I opted for no, or at least very little, stretching as I wound.

As you can see, it worked just fine (or at least well enough). It was a smidge less than a 2:1 gather ratio. The amount of gather is also affected by stitch length, which in turn is affected by how you handle the fabric especially once the scrunching of the other rows of shirring comes into effect. I did about 1/4″ between each of my rows, or rather, the width of one side of my presser foot. I’m getting better at doing parallel rows of stitching, but not that good, especially when one side is trying to ruch up on you. I also ran a 3/8″ elastic through a casing just below the top, to keep the top nice and snug, since that is the part that seems to go first in shirred items, in my experience.

I think this will probably end up a present for the daughter of my kids’ Fairy Gothmother, a lovely and

Skull button flower

intimidating seamstress herself, whose gifts to my children over the years have included a Gothic Princess dress, a spiderweb-print sundress, and numerous other wonders. I’ve always wanted to sew something for her daughter (now two) in return, but have been too intimidated by her awesomeness vs. my own mediocre skillz. Maybe now, though, they’re up to a point where I can attempt to repay the favours?

Doubtful, but anyway… she gave my girls these skull buttons years ago and we never managed to actually put the darling things on anything, and now I can only find the one. But I think it makes a nice centre for a flower, to make the dress a little less plain, right?

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July 14, 2010 · 8:33 pm

Foiled! … and some minor progress

A ruffly halter for my younger niece

Aww, I’d been doing so well at posting daily, too. Ah well. I have good news and bad news. The bad news is twofold. On the one hand, I ran out of tracing paper while trying to trace out a full version of my winter coat. I’ve been using one of those big Ikea rolls of kids’ paper; not ideal, but cheap. However, maybe for this I should deal and get the real pattern tracing paper, that might have wider piece? Either way, it’s not likely to be before this weekend. So much for my resolution to do at least one thing per week on the winter coat. Meh. The other bad news is that I wore my nifty cowl top today, and once again this fabric has like no recovery. I swear it grew a good two inches all around on me today. Also I should’ve ran some elastic inside the cowl itself to help it stay on my shoulders better. Next time. If there is a next time. So not really a problem with the pattern or even my sewing, just the crummy fabric. That’s what you get for $2/metre.

back view of ruffled halter top

On the plus side, I got this twee little ruffled halter from Oliver + S finished for my younger niece. Because I am teh awesome at placing, it used up less than 1m of fabric despite the bias ruffles, so I am thinking of making some shorts (with a ruffle) to go with it. I have a pattern I could use from my store of “vintage” (mostly eighties) kids and babies patterns. Heck, with the fabric I have leftover I could make a whole nother popover dress (not the gathered version, though, which took a bit over 2m of fabric.)

I think I’d enjoy sewing kids clothing much more if I weren’t doing it in such candy-sweet colours. My own fault, I know. My hubby’s best friend is expecting a second baby this summer… I should really make something for them (especially as his wife, who terrifies me with her sewing prowess, has done the same for our girls a couple of times. I finally feel like I might be able to make something worthy of her children. Actually… this exact same halter in black would be awesome for their older daughter… :D) Just what I need. More sewing for kids. At least it’s quick and doesn’t take up much fabric. Just not nearly so satisfying…

I should probably bite the bullet and cut out my hubby’s next shirt, since the pattern’s out and lying on the livingroom floor (no doubt driving him nuts… he’s the neat freak in the family). But I don’t wanna! I wanna sew something else for meeee. Something that’s not out of crappy knit. I have another knit to try, after all. Or I could give the Anna top another try. I really think it would work if I switched back to the original cup piece (I had reduced the size and it was too small, believe it or not. My hubby says my breasts are nowhere near as small as I think they are… I think he’s on glue, of course). There’s still some issues with the back, but I could just add some lacing in back there to make the fit adjustable. I love lacing. :). And then there’s this awesome pattern I’m just salivating over… I think that might be the winner for what to do with my striped denim, except there’s no way I’d have enough to do the flounce. I could do that out of something else, though… another denim, or maybe a cotton eyelet (would that be too country?).

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July 10, 2010 · 11:54 am