Back to sewing! First up, Nelle goes to sea!

After a lovely summer of travelling around, with my girls, visiting family, it is nice to be home and back into a routine. That includes sewing!  School has already started for my nine year old, and I have made some things for her to wear out of some beautiful Free Spirit Karavan Knits. I will share that later. 

First up for sharing, I am excited to finally try the Brownie Goose Nelle pattern.  Amy, of Brownie Goose, is a sewing friend from Facebook and I have been waiting for the perfect thing to use for this feminine little dress.  I found it in the Out to Sea Fabrics from Sarah Jane.  I particularly love the Ship Flowers in Navy.   This was an easy pattern to sew and the directions are great. I highly recommend it.  I plan on making more of these!  I hope my cutie pie wears this tomorrow for her first day of kindergarten!  It is a bit cool here in the Pacific Northwest so she added a white tee underneath.

 

Yes, indeed, I also made a doll version! The pattern does not come with a doll version but I succeeded in figuring it out myself. I shrunk the pattern to 25% of scale. On my Mac, I did this by going to page setup and substituting 25% where it used to say 100%.  This turned out to be too small so I tried again with 35%.  Cutting out the pattern pieces and holding them up to Baby Pearl helped me figure this out.  I used the 6 mos size from the 35% scale pattern.  This worked great, except it was a tad too short.  No worries!  My 5 year old suggested an underskirt. Voila! This was a kinda fun thing to do except for the bias tape under the arms.  That was really really not fun at all!  If I do this pattern again for this doll, I will figure something else out. My tired hands!

Adjusting a pattern to fit an nonstandard size

 Welcome to post #2 in the Making your own patterns series.  In this post, I will show you how to take a pattern and adjust it to fit a body that is not standard sizing.  You might have a person who is a size 12 in the waist but 8 in height.  She might need a 10 in length of bodice but 8 in length of skirt.  So, what do you do? Here you go!!

 First of all, take very good measurements.  Measure chest circumference, waist circumference, from shoulder to waist, hip circumference, and waist to where you want hem to end. If your item has an empire or dropped waist, take that into account when you are measuring.  Draw it out if it helps you.  I prefer just to write it down, but drawing it out helps others a lot! 

This might be hard to see, but here is the size chart for the Portabellopixie Claire pattern I use when I make a peasant dress.  It only goes up to size 8.  If you look closely, you can see that the waist sizes increase by increments of one half inch or three quarters of an inch. So I was able to size the pattern up pretty easily by taking good measurements.   The person I am sewing for has a 30" chest and needs the dress to be 32" from shoulder to hem.  This dress has a slightly empire waist and her waist measurement is also 30".  Because this is a dress with elastic around neckline, her shoulder width will not matter much.  The dress should still fit. 

 So, if you look closely at this picture,  you can see I added the appropriate increments to increase the pattern to a size 12 to accommodate her chest circumference.  I am keeping her shoulder to waist measurement in my head at the moment.

Another view.

Closeup

 

Fast forward to the sleeves, front ruffle and sash being all done! Back and front are sewn together. This girl measures 10 inches from shoulder to waist and I have made sure it fill fit that by adjusting as I sew.  In this case, I took a bit off the waist of the bodice before adding the sash, in order for it to be 10 inches from shoulder to waist.  Voila!

 

This girl is 30 inches around and this waist will measure 32 inches. Since it has a sash she can tie in back to make it fit better, this should fit perfectly!!

 

Now, for the elastic for the bodice neckline and sleeves.  As you can see below, there is one half inch between sizes for neckline elastic and one quarter inch between sizes for sleeve elastic.  So, it was easy to add up to what would be a size 12.  Because I would rather this be slightly loose than snug, I went with size 12 for elastic sizing, as that is also her waist size.

 

  

Elastic is all cut and ready to go.

Now, on to creating the skirt.  In this case, it is one piece with an attached ruffle.  This Children at Play Parade Print measures 14 inches so I needed another 7 inches or so to get to the 21-22 inches I need for the skirt.  I want the finished dress to measure 32 inches from shoulder to hem, and the bodice is 10 inches, so I need 21-22 inches.  And that is how I cut my fabric!  

All done!

Close up

 

Back view

 

Don't be afraid to play around with sizing on pdf patterns.  Paper patterns will be harder to adjust since the sizing is less standardized.  But, pdf patterns are usually pretty easy to adjust if you measure very carefully and write it all down, even draw it out.  You can do it! There is no such thing as a standard human body, anyway, so this really helps you sew in a more tailored way.

Happy sewing!

Heartbreaking

This cute little girl used to wear everything I made for her but this one she doesn't like!  I love the Children at Play fabric so much and so does she, but she doesn't like the parade.  Sob.  I made the whole dress from Sarah Jane's lovely Children at Play fabric, except the bodice is Moda Sophie.  So, up for sale it goes.  Sigh.

Is there anything better than baby Ottobre?

I have been busy the last few weeks but unable to blog about what I have been doing because it has all been sewing for a friend!  I didn't want to ruin the surprise. However, now that her baby shower has come and gone, I can tell you about it!  

Baby Ottobre!  Oh my, what lovely patterns I had to choose from!  Several years of Ottos yielded a huge array of choices.   I decided against one-piece rompers or sleepers because I figured she would get a lot of those from other people.  Since this is a Spring baby, I decided to pick a Spring issue.  I went with issue 3/2009.  

Meet Cecile, Cassia, Toffee, Hermione, and Lola!  These were all done in fabrics from Chez Ami and Michael Miller.

Here is Toffee tunic #1 with Cassia shorts #1 and Hermione, the cutest hat in the entire world!   These were all made with Sarah Jane Children at Play fabrics, for Michael Miller.

This hat pattern was not easy.  It is not a beginner's sewing project but after much patience and more than a few seams ripped and redone, here she is in all her glory.

 I modified the pattern to add a strap so it would stay on a tiny head. 

And, yes, it is reversible!  These are all Children at Play fabrics by Sarah Jane for Michael Miller.  Love this line!

Brim can be worn up or down!

Here is Toffee tunic #2 with Cassia shorts #2.  More Sarah Jane fabrics. 

 

Here is Cecile blouse #1 and Lola leggings #1 made from Chez Ami cotton lycra. I modified the pattern to use fold-over elastic for the neckline. 

 Same process for Cecile #2 and Lola #2.  Also, CA fabrics. The blouse, however, is jersey this time.

The idea was to make everything mix and matchable to stretch out how often they can be worn.  Mama-to-be was very happy and I am hopeful these will get worn! I told her I will make her a stuffed doll when her little girl outgrows all of this, just so the baby can then play with the dolly, who can wear these tops and dresses!  

Sewing for fun

This week, I got back into the swing of sewing for fun.  One thing I got to do this week is test out a new pattern. I cannot tell you anymore, but here is a sneak peak:

As soon as I can, I will share the full picture and details!  But, this was a fun pattern to sew.

In other news, Jennifer Paganelli's Crazy Love has begun to hit the shops!  By this evening, it was already almost sold out at several shops but I managed to find some of what I want at Marie Madeline Studio.  These colors are so vibrant and fun!  I can't wait to sew with them.

On the sewing horizon, I am looking in my collection of Ottobre magazines for darling baby girl clothing for a friend.  Of course, it goes without saying that I will mining my Sarah Jane Children at play stash.  Here's a top idea.  Isn't it darling!

It feels good to be back in the sewing swing of things.  The whole family is sick so it makes it easy to sew while the kids watch movies or craft or play.  For now, my neck pain is ok. I am just not committing to anything. That way, I don't have to make any deadlines.

Loving Children at Play

I ordered some Sarah Jane Children at Play fabric when it first came out and have been looking at it ever since.  I love it!  It is so cute and colorful, but so not very fall at all.  Therefore, it sat in my cupboard for a while until I finally couldn't stand seeing what others were doing with it and made this dress.  My four year old picked out which fabrics she wanted to use and where they would go, with assistance from me.  I used McCalls 5835 pattern, with a lot of adjustments and alterations.  This is one horribly written pattern, yet I like it for the pieces.  I made adjustments to the bodice as follows in this tutorial.   And, for this particular dress, I added 1/3 to the width of the skirt by adding a blue panel in the middle front and back.  Further, I took the ruffle and doubled it's length.   And I left off the sleeves, per you know who's request.  So, here is the result.  It is 39 degrees in this picture, but sunny, so she thought it would be a perfect dress to play outside.  Go figure!  At least, it twirled nicely!