Tag Archives: kids’ clothing

November 15, 2010 · 9:31 am

A sneaky peak

at the progress from the weekend.

Coat, left; lining, right

The sleeves are attached (and still dangerously narrow 😦 ); the lining and facing is sewn (this is the first time I’ve done a lining with a facing at the back of the neck. It was not particularly difficult. I drafted fold-over cuffs for the end of the sleeve… we’ll see how those go on; I used the same idea as the ones for Syo’s coat.

I did some thing to the roll of the collar that I will describe as pad-stitching’s bastard cousin, which did succeed in giving it some shape (at least so far), and only shows a little.

Tyo picked out some silver metal buttons. They’re lovely, although silver buttons really wasn’t what I was envisioning for this coat. She likes them, though.

Label!

But most importantly, I remembered to sew the label to the neck facing already, so I don’t have to hand-stitch it on at the end! 🙂

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November 14, 2010 · 12:16 am

It seemed like a good idea at the time, or, an assortment of idiosyncratic construction decisions

 

Catchstitched interlining

I guess I really am a sucker for hand-sewing. If only because I catch much less flack from the family if I’m hand-sewing in the living-room with the rest of them all evening, instead of lurking in the kitchen with my sewing machine.

 

Warning: what follows is not a description of how one SHOULD make a coat. I am not particularly convinced that all (any) of the construction details I am about to report actually improve the resulting coat in any way, and several of them may have serious unforeseen drawbacks. I accept this. 😉

Friday I got the rest of the coat—lining and interlining—cut out. Hooray! I could not find any more of my space suit interlining at the fabric store, so I had to settle for some (much cheaper) non-foil-backed stuff. I had just enough left from making my coat to cut the two back pieces from the foil-backed stuff, which I figure should be fine since the fronts are double-breasted anyway.

I trimmed the seam-allowances from the interlining. Then, for reasons I am no longer totally clear on, I decided

Underlining

that rather than floating free between shell and lining, it should be sandwiched between shell and interlining. I promptly proceeded to catchstitch the back pieces in place, so they wouldn’t shift despite not being caught in the seams.

Then I said “bugger that,” and skipped the catch-stitching step for the front and side-front pieces. My occasional inability to keep the interlining out of the seams should hold them in place, not like they have anywhere to go.

This fabric is a dream to sew with. It’s squishy, easy to ease, and you can catch stitches on the underside beautifully without worry of them showing on the right side of the fabric. Mmm. I also love my flannel underlining.

1cm seam-allowances may be awesome on jeans, but they’re tricky on a coat. Allowing for turn of cloth, once you go to press the seam open, there’s very little allowance at all. I proceeded to stitch all the seam-allowances open after pressing (hence the marathon of hand-stitching and why my fingers are still sore.)

BUT, LOOK!!!

Tyo refused to brush her hair for the photos, hence her headless state. Also she was making faces.

OMG, is that a coat?

She has POCKETS!

Well, almost.

Yay, smooth back!

For interest’s sake, I re-took Tyo’s measurements (rather than relying on my last set from oh, back in the summer) and compared them to the m-sewing sizing charts. The results may highlight some of the fitting issues we had.

Hips: 81 cm. Her hips are a size 12.

Waist: 58. Her waist is a size 8.

Bust: 63 cm. Her chest is, ah, a size 6.

The coat I made is about a size 11, for measurements bust: 73cm, waist: 63cm, hip: 79cm.  I still think the coat is cut a bit snug for my liking (I added significantly more than 2cm to the ease in the hips), but the disproportion between shoulders and hips is all Tyo.  If Sewaholic Patterns ever puts out a children’s line, Tyo can be their first customer.

Next: assemble sleeves, sew lining, decide whether to add another layer of interlining (this time where the interlining *actually* belongs) as the non-foil stuff is kinda thin, and try to avoid doing any more hand-stitching until at least tonight.

PS. This post would’ve been up Saturday morning, but my camera cable evaporated sometime Friday evening. Despite a thorough house-clean Saturday (my Dad was in town and came to dinner), it has not resurfaced. However, fortunately for me, the card reader decided to read the camera memory stick today—Sony uses an odd format and 90% of the time the computer doesn’t recognize it… but once in a while it does. So, you get a post! Yay for random computer cooperation!


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November 10, 2010 · 9:33 pm

How many ways to bind a buttonhole?

Tyo’s coat is going to have bound buttonholes. There’s only four, surely I can manage that, right? I know the Lady Grey was supposed to be my gentle entry into the world of bound buttonholes, but, frankly, Tyo needs a winter coat more than I need a gorgeous-but-semi-practical-between-seasons jacket right now.

The plan was to make the lips of the buttonholes out of the lining fabric (a sturdy flannel-backed satin) rather than out of the bulky, soft, and flexible fashion fabric. This plan lasted until I actually did some trials, of which I’ll be speaking of shortly. But first… there remains the issue of METHOD.

There is a plethora of bound-buttonhole tutorials out there; I will list only a few

  • Gertie’s
  • Sherry’s
  • Two on Burdastyle, this one which is most like the one in my Reader’s Digest Complete Guide to Sewing, and this one, which is more like (but not exactly like) Sherry’s.
  • Patty the Snug Bug recently reviewed Gertie’s technique and another one from her own sewing books, which is basically the same idea I used for my single welt pockets, but with a welt on each side.
  • No doubt there’s any number of other ones—that’s just what I remember seeing off the top of my head. If you have a favourite (or one of your own), please chime in! 🙂

A lot of VERY bad bound buttonholes

So, this afternoon, I sat down and experimented.

Now, as we all know, bound buttonholes, like welt pockets, are all about precision. Precision is one of those things I, ah, struggle with in sewing. I’m getting better, mind you—my cut pieces of fabric now almost always resemble the pattern they were cut with, I’m much better about getting my grain right, and I press as I sew quite religiously (which gets me a lot of exercise since I sew in the kitchen and press in the basement).

So you will not be entirely surprised to see that exhibit A, to the left, is, well, less than impressive. In part, the satin just wasn’t really working for me—it highlights the flaws, as it were, a little too crisply. (The satin for the final ones would have been the same fabric in black, but I have a ton of scraps left over from my winter coat lining, so I was using some of those. I did manage to achieve passable results with Sherry’s method, but still not to the point where I would be willing to put it in a finished garment (top centre in red wool, bottom left in silver satin). The slippery, fray-y nature of the satin didn’t help, either. Similarly with Gertie’s method. None of the others are even worth talking about (for this fabric and my current skills ;)… there are many sewists out there far more talented and precise than I!)

I had a bit more luck with using the fashion-fabric itself for the lips. It’s a bit more forgiving of my flaws. I was worried that it would be REALLY BULKY. It is. But, it looks softer. However, Sherry’s method is extra-bulky,  so it didn’t work so well with this method, either (centre top… which still looks better than any of the satin-bound ones, I suppose)). Gertie’s, however, did… with the caveat that it’s almost entirely hand-sewn. Only the initial rectangle was sewn by machine (bottom right two buttonholes, one in red, one in black).

This is pretty much par for the course for me. Precision=hand-sewing. I don’t really mind hand-sewing, fortunately (after hand-beading bellydance accessories, anything else is a piece of cake). Still, it would be nice someday to be able to be precise and speedy. Like, say, Sherry ;).

Ah, well. I showed Tyo the buttonholes and she likes the black contrast lips, so I expect we’ll go that route.

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November 1, 2010 · 8:24 am

Dear Tyo, I foresee…

… a lifetime of narrow-shoulder, wide-hip alterations. You’d better learn to sew.

Girls' Coat muslin I

I may have mentioned before that my sweet little Tyo has the build of all the women in her Dad’s family (and diametrically opposed to the women in mine, I’ll add): she is an incipient pear. Narrow shoulders and BOOTY. This has been apparent since she was, oh, two, but it’s only getting worse as the years go by. Let’s just say I could picture rap videos in her future. And a lot of quality time with the shotgun in her Dad’s.

So, I have to say, the muslin for the coat went together like a dream. The pattern is (surprisingly?) sophisticated, with separate lining pieces for everything. The overall shape looks good, all the seams (that I tested) match up beautifully; the sleeve-cap is drafted with a beautifully small amount of ease, just enough to curve it nicely without giving it any tendency at all to pucker (admittedly, the wonderful old flannel sheet I was using for the muslin was a dream to sew, too, so that didn’t hurt)

Side view

And, as you can see, it’s just a wee bit too small. Everywhere except in the shoulders, which are perfect. (The sleeves are long enough only because I lengthened those pattern pieces BEFORE cutting it out, as I could see they were going to be too short. Unfortunately paper-printout doesn’t lend itself to tissue fitting.)

Now, I can’t be 100% sure this is a problem with the original sizing, as it’s entirely possible my crude efforts at tiling let to some re-sizing of the printout and there’s no handy-dandy scale square to allow me to be sure (actually, according to the tiling program my printout is .01 feet smaller… which I didn’t think could throw it off by this amount, but anyway). But the fact remains that there is definitely not enough ease in the pattern AS I PRINTED IT OUT. Well, there would be if it were a dress. For a coat… not so much.

If it were just the skirt pieces that were the problem, I would just spread them. In fact, before I got the sleeves on, when

Rear view... split to let the side-seams hang straight. >_<

she first tried on the body and it became obvious that the skirt of the jacket didn’t have enough ease for her lovely bottom, I was all set to slash and spread the skirt of the back pieces, just enough to give her a couple of extra inches in the derriere region. But with the sleeves in place, it became evident that some extra ease was required there, as well.

So I’m torn, folks. What’s the best way to proceed? Re-print in a larger size? Slash-and-spread to widen sleeves, armscye, and the lower part of the coat, preserving the fit in the shoulder?

There’s only one part of the pattern that has confused me a little. Along the front princess seam there are two

Front pattern piece: princess seam with ?vent

expansions (places where the seam allowance goes from about 1 cm to 4 cm. The top one is for the placement of the pocket, but below that the seam allowance returns to normal for about an inch, and then widens again I’m not sure what’s meant to go there, as it doesn’t appear to be any different from the rest of the seam on the illustration (or the limited instructions available on m-sewing.)

It does resemble nothing so much as a vent or pleat, though I’ve never seen one in this precise location on a coat. What do you think? Ignore? Make as a vent or pleat? I should add that the lining doesn’t have an opening here and the seam between the CF facing and the lining does not coincide with this princess seam, either. So maybe that eliminates the vent option but still allows the pleat? I dunno. Anyway, if anyone has any suggestions or revelations, I’d love to hear them. Or I can just ignore it ;).

Probably I should go up a size, right? Bigger is always better with kids. (D’oh!)

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October 31, 2010 · 8:10 am

A coat for Tyo?

So I may have mentioned already that I bought some (other) fabric last week. In fact, it was a bit of a binge-week, fabricwise (gotta love payday), but this is the EXPENSIVE fabric. Not the random metres snagged at the thrift-store, but real, honest-to-goodness expensive bought fabric.

Boiled "wool" camry

As a self-justification (can you tell how guilty I’m feeling about this?) I had a 50% off coupon for Fabricland (up to 5m of fabric) that expired at the end of October. My plan was to finally splurge on some wool melton ($16.50/m sounds much more palatable than $33/m, yes?). Red and a little bit of black. But there was this other fabric, a “boiled wool camry” (all “wools” at Fabricland, incuding the melton, are, in fact, wool blends, as far as I can tell). Its basic price was a little cheaper ($24/m), and it had a really interesting texture to the surface that the melton lacks. It had caught my eye before. It’s also a knit, which is interesting; it has a little give but isn’t what I would call stretchy.

And, this past week, it was on sale for $10/m.

That’s more than %50 off.

So I bought it instead. My precious 50%-off coupon will, it appears, expire, unused. 5m of red wool, 1 of black. The idea was to create something similar to my long-destroyed HBC blanket coat, with pieced-in or applique’d stripes, either for my long-neglected Lady Grey or even a rehash of my Winter Coat pattern (with the standard collar and lapel this time)

But…

But…

I’ve mentioned before that Tyo is in need of a new winter coat this year. And I’ve toyed with the idea of making one (provided I could throw it together quickly enough. But I didn’t think I had a good pattern handy, and am still worried  about whether my construciton techniques will be warm enough to get me through the winter.

Probably I should’ve spent that $60 on a coat for Tyo. Hence the guilt.

Girls' double-breasted coat

Then, yesterday, I stumbled again across this pattern. Cute, no? I originally downloaded it in September off the Lekala website when they were offering free downloads (in limited sizes); it came in a kid’s size 120, a bit small for Tyo.

But, many of the Lekala patterns are available, albeit in limited/fixed sizes, from M-sewing.com. So it occurred to me to check over there.

Now, I have to admit I’m pretty suspicious of these pattern companies. The few reviews of Lekala patterns have agreed that the instructions are useless and some of the measurements perhaps dodgy. More, I just don’t GET it. I don’t know where they come from, why a Russian site and an English-language one are offering the same patterns (albeit with a different sizing system), one for free and one charging. I guess basically, I don’t know where the money is, so I’m wary.

That being said, there are some pretty cute patterns on the sites, and I’m pretty sure I can throw a coat together without instructions at this point. I showed this one to Tyo and she said she loved it. Especially if it were in red. With, say, a black collar.

So I was able to download the coat off the m-sewing site in child’s size 134, which is Tyo’s

M-sewing pattern image

Burda/Ottobre size, and the measurements SEEM compatible (I should probably measure her again, however, to be sure). The other problem with the m-sewing (but not the Lekala) downloads is that the PDF isn’t tiled for printing at home. Apparently newer versions of Adobe Acrobat will tile it for you, but my archaic version won’t, and the built-in tiling software in my printer is limited to set sizes. I could print it at a copy-shop, but that would require spending actual money (as opposed to money on ink and paper, which doesn’t for some reason count), which I’m disinclined to do on a pattern I don’t trust. So I spent some time messing around with some equally archaic software, “poster printer“, and have what I HOPE is a reasonably-close printout.

Next step, of course, will be muslining. I figure whatever fabric I use for my muslin I’ll re-use for underlining, thus alleviating a) waste, and b) warmth worries. Unless of course it’s a total wadder, in which case, well, I get to use my red fabric for ME. Although with 5m of the red I really should have enough for a coat for Tyo AND one for me, even if I can’t use the Lady Grey pattern.

Of course one other big question remains: will I have time to get this done in November?

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September 26, 2010 · 5:34 pm

Mellow yellow

Syo's Yellow Sundress

Back around my birthday, when I was feeling splurgy, I let Syo pick out a metre of fabric from the bargain section at Fabricland. She chose a soft, super-stretchy, lycra-y border-print in yellow stripes trimmed in flowers. We got home, and she picked out a pattern, New Look 6195, a kids’ sundress Ip icked up at Value Village. I settled down and traced out a size 7 (length 8)… and there the project sat, although the fabric got plenty of use as a blanket, veil, fairy wings, shawl, cloak, cocoon, and pretty much anything else a creative seven-year-old could do with it.

Dancing

This afternoon, however, Tyo had a friend over, while Syo did not. This (like most of their interactions) was threatening to bring on World War III, so I suggested we make up the dress. This was possibly even better than pissing off her sister, so Syo agreed.

Now, as usual, I am incapable of actually following the instructions (or good sense). The pattern was for a woven. Syo’s fabric is stretchy. VERY stretchy. On top of that, it is one of those pesky border-prints with the border on, y’know, the side. So the only thing to do was have the pieces go crosswise on the fabric. Creating, y’know, maximum vertical stretch. Exactly what you want in a dress.

Nonetheless, we bravely laid it out (man did it shrink a lot in the dryer, too, this took some ingenuity), cut our pieces, ironed interfacing on to the front facing, made the straps (Syo turned them inside out herself. It’s much easier to do in a knit, isn’t it?), and got to work.

It’s a cute sundress pattern. Simple. Not quite sure what purpose

Twirling

the back seam serves… it has a little shape but really, given the overall A-line of the dress, why bother? They have a very nice technique for sewing the side seams and facing all in one move, which gives you a nice finish and means that there’s absolute no chance to adjust the fit of the elastic before it’s sewn in completely. Which, of course, was too loose being designed for a woven (and probably with too much ease in the original pattern, too) and probably a little big for my rather petite seven-year-old at the best of times.

And then, there is the facing.

Now, I’ve heard facings are a bad idea in knits. As a result, I’ve never done them. This time, I decided to follow the pattern. Well, as you can see, the facing is a problem: it’s showing through like crazy. It was also turning out a bit, though you can’t see this in my rather blurry photos. I have since top-stitched it down at 5/8″ in (to match the elastic casing in the back). This should take care of the roll-over, and I will probably trim the bottom of the facing to match

Front with topstitching

It’s a fairly slapdash effort. Aside from the fudged facing, the elastic back was (inevitably) too long so I took a two inch tuck in it at the centre back, which is kinda bulky but can theoretically be released in a year or two when she grows into it. I left the selvedge at the hem, which has a bit of a lettuce-leaf look that I like. If it doesn’t work out, I may actually lettuce-leaf it at some point, but for now it’s fine. I eyeballed the ties, and it shows, but only if you look close ;). The seams are also a bit puckered, but hopefully that’ll soften up with a wash. The back hem tends to sag quite a bit, I think partly due to the halter cut itself, but certainly not helped along by the heavy, drapy fabric.

Nonetheless, her Sevenness is mighty thrilled. She might even get a chance to wear it, as the forecast is

Sundress back, showing tuck in elastic and the Facing of Doom

looking above-seasonal for the first time since August. We may even make it above 20 for much of the week!

In Self-Stitched September news, the weather has me HAPPY. Syo took the pictures, so they’re not full body, but I promise you those are my blue Jalie capris. Yay! I am getting so darned sick of the two other pairs… 😉

Mmmmmm

Top: Mannequim cowl top
Bottoms: Jalie 2908 capris

Sun, sweet sun

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August 31, 2010 · 11:39 am

Newsflash

Skull Applique for the Monster's bag

I still suck at freehand machine embroidery.

Actually, I probably still suck at all embroidery (I haven’t tried any hand embroidery for a few years, but last time I definitely sucked. Oddly, it was on another piece using this same blue/black coating, too)

The Monster, AKA the ten-year-old, has been working away on her bag. Well, occasionally. When she’s not off camping or having sleepovers or watching her dad play video-games in the evening. Yesterday she managed to topstitch the strap and flap. Today I worked on the applique. I suck at applique.

I feel the need to mention, briefly, my introduction to machine embroidery. Not computerized machine embroidery, which I still have experienced only from afar, but the freehand kind. It begins with my mom’s sewing machine, a gorgeous Pfaff dating from the late sixties. This is the machine I learned on, and in its day, it was the shizznitt. It was an Embroidery Machine. It has settings for about a bajillion different embroidered stitches, all variations of the zig-zag, but every variation you could think of! Scallops, crenelations, triangles, blocks… the list is endless (or at least very long), and there is a large, circular plastic chart you turn to show the stitch you want and all the settings to get it. Width, needle position, number of stitches to motif, all completely adjustable. And the controls were actually far more intuitive than the ones on my much simpler modern Janome. Anyway, in addition to the chart, there was the manual, with extensive examples of things you could do with the embroidery stitches. Monogrammed letters, eyelet lace… I can’t even remember all of their suggestions. It was staggering. Everything was gorgeous.

Of course, nowhere in all of that did it say anywhere how hard it was to get them looking that nice.

Needless to say, I don’t think my poor little skull here would be appearing in that book. Or anyone’s book. But the kid is happy enough, so that’s ok by me. In hindsight I should’ve placed it much further down on the flap (I was

And, the strap, adorned with skull ribbon.

actually going for bottom-to-the-side placement, but the kid wanted it centred, and i moved it up too much when I centred it. So if the bag is full half the skull is going to be on the top. Oh, well.

I also used some of the ribbon from this splurge, finally,  sewing it along the strap. This is actually the first time I’ve adorned anything with ribbon. Not super hard (though I wasn’t particularly scientific about it). I still worry about putting it on clothes, though—would it shrink? Hold up in the wash? I am doubtful. On a bag, though… should be fine.

And that, except for hemming some de-cuffed pyjama bottoms for the ten-year-old (apparently they are totally uncool if they have cuffs, but just fine if they don’t), has been my sewing for the past few days. Bleh. Wasn’t I resolving to sew stuff for me?

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August 17, 2010 · 2:54 pm

Buttonhole Elastic

Buttonhole Elastic

Because I’m not accomplishing much of anything today, here’s a random post on that miracle of modern children’s clothing… Buttonhole Elastic!

Now, I first met buttonhole elastic when I was pregnant with my second daughter. It featured prominently in the two pairs of maternity pants (real maternity pants! This was a Big Deal!) that I bought that pregnancy. As first impressions go, this was not a big win. The buttonhole elastic is threaded through the back of the waistband, emerging via a buttonhole somewhere around the front hip, where it attaches to a button. You can adjust which of the many buttonholes along the elastic is buttoned, and thus adjust the waistband.

Really it didn’t work so well. Partly because who really wants a bunchy, elasticized waistband at the back of their jeans, and mostly because you can make the waistband of maternity pants as adjustable as you want but when the waist is wider than the hips, the pants are still going to fall down. (I think the current trend for mat. pants is very long, wide knit panels at the top, reaching up almost to the underbust. I haven’t been pregnant in over seven years so I can’t comment on how any of these work, although it seems a lot nicer than having a jeans button poking through your shirt right at your swollen belly-button.)

But, a few years later I noticed them cropping up in the back of kids’ jeans.

Buttonhole elastic threaded through waistband

And it has found its niche!

Elasticized waistbands and kids go together at the best of times—comfort almost always trumps stylishness (for the younger set, anyway), and considering the range of widths vs. lengths in kids, as well as the rapid changes within an individual child, an adjustable waistband is a wonderfully practical idea. An additional bonus for my booty-licious older daughter is that the drawn-in waistband at the back provides better fit for her J-Lo-esque backside.

So when I first made her the Jalie Jeans, back in May, I purchased a ton of buttonhole elastic and made the buttonholes (and attached the buttons) before sewing on the waistband. Amazingly forethoughtful of me, seriously. And then she tried them on—and they fit pretty much perfectly as-is, so I never bothered installing the elastic.

Re-sized jeans!

Well, fast forward three months and, of course, jeans that were perfectly fitting in the spring are WAY too small. Fortunately, I have two daughters, so all that work is not for naught… but the seven-year-old is still a fair bit smaller.

Finally, the elastic comes into its own! These are size K jeans on a size I body (so two sizes too big)

Alright, she probably won’t be wearing them quite yet, as they are also WAY long. But if she

Rear view---elasticized waistband

wants to, she can 🙂

Now, back to tracing up the Size M pattern for the older daughter…

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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

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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