Shorts & bloomers

Here are some more shorts for Heather. I based them on the Candy pants pattern, but I think they're a bit wide and the cuff is boyish, although the gathered pockets keep them on the girly side. I made the casing too wide for the elastic - oops.



Bloomers to go with the dress I made recently.



Makeshift tag from a scrap of microfleece. I think my girls think that clothing tags exist purely for the purpose of indicating the inside back of a garment!

Candy pants #2

Here is Helen wearing her pair. Thankfully, although she insisted on the same fabrics as Heather's pants, she wanted different appliques, so they are easy to tell apart.
This is a 98 with the 110 length, which I think was a mistake. It's just too baggy a style to have as long pants, at least on an older child. However, I think they would look good just under the knee or a bit shorter.
The rise is a bit long too, especially at the front - easy to change next time.

Candy pants

I finished the pants last night and Heather wore them today - she seemed to like them, and insists that the flower applique is actually a cloud, and so they are now her "cloud pants". Her big sister loved them (with some jealousy in there too) and insisted on a pair for herself, so I made a good start on those today.

The length looks ok here, but is a little odd with shoes - too short for pants, too long to be capris. I will probably make any future pairs a little shorter.

Kids clothes week challenge

Last week I stumbled upon Elsie Marley's Kids Clothes Week Challenge, a few days before it started. I love the idea, but life being pretty crazy right now, and with not a lot of time to plan for it, I decided not to sign up. However, it is still motivating me to get some things done. Another motivation is that a certain little girl in our house is just about ready to be out of nappies, but I want to have some extra pants and a stash of side snap undies on hand before we make the switch. It's school holidays, so an ideal time as we don't have to be out of the house as much.
Here are a couple of things:

Side snap undies
My own pattern. Still tweaking it, which I seem to do every time I dig it out. Once the pattern is right, there will be a production line for these. I've made these before with leg/waist bands and also turned and topstitched, but not with coverstitched binding. The binding was surprisingly easy to do, although you can see in the picture I was still trying to figure out the ideal position to place the binding attachment. I also made a pair a few days ago, but they were still in the wash when I photographed this one.


These are a test pair, so I didn't pay too much attention to placement. Outer is embroidered cotton interlock which has been sitting in my stash for a few years. I bought it for baby clothes, but realised afterwards that the embroidery would be irritating and is also too widely spaced. Inner is plain cotton interlock, and binding is poly/cotton ribbing.
Yeah, didn't bother changing overlocker threads either.


WIP: A new pants pattern
Pattern #9 "Candy" pants from Ottobre 1/2008.
If the seams look puckered, they are. Something's off with the overlocker tension and I will be very glad to pick up my newly serviced BabyLock next week. I can live with the puckering since it's a test pair, and they can just be outside play pants. Otherwise, it's coming together pretty well and I'm reasonably happy with the applique, something I've done very little of.
I picked up this fabric from Spotlight the other day - a lovely, light, denim-look cotton (is that still chambray if it's dark like this?). I think it will be very versatile for warm weather clothes.

Last parcel for the EB kids' clothing swap!

Yesterday I received a parcel from Melissa (MeLFunKTioN) with a lovely outfit for Heather. The body of the peasant top/dress is fully lined and the whole thing is just really cute and well made. There are matching pants and Melissa also included a full metre of the main fabric. Thank you, Melissa!

A birthday dress

I made a late decision to make Heather a dress for her birthday. I intended to use purple/ish fabric, but the purple options at the local fabric shop didn't speak to me as much as this fabric, and I didn't have time to look elsewhere. Being a rush job, the pattern is very simple and the sewing is far from perfect, but I think she looks cute in it. As you can see, there is plenty of growing room too, so it should fit her right through summer. I used the tutorial at inditutes for the top (I used the straight sided option rather than A line), except I used my own method for applying elastic to the sleeves. Sewing hack that I am, the rest was made up as I went along.

Red

Jade has opened the parcel I sent for Emily and has some great modelling shots on her blog. One belt has red and white stripes, and the other is made from the same polka dot fabric as the main part of the dress. The hat is slightly modified from a free online tutorial, and I made three scrunchies with left over fabric. Here are a few photos I took before I sent the parcel:

The emergency button dress

I promised Helen a new dress for preschool photo day (she needs summer dresses anyway) and took her fabric shopping. Despite her usual assertion that red is her favourite colour, and my attempts to sway her to something less, um, loud, she picked a hot pink fabric with white pin stripes.
I picked an Ottobre blouse pattern and lengthened it to make a dress. It was all humming along nicely, and last night it was almost finished, bar the buttons and button holes. I thought that photo day was Wednesday, but this morning at preschool drop-off, I realised that photo day was today! I panicked a bit about the potential meltdown that might happen when Helen realised she wasn't wearing her new dress for the photos, but the teacher assured me that the photographer wasn't arriving until 10.30. It was worth a shot.
I went straight to the shops to buy buttons (had to wait for the shop to open!), then straight home to the sewing machine. I hastily marked out the spacing and sewed the button holes, then started sewing on the buttons. Having run out of time, I used safety pins to attach the last three buttons and raced back to preschool. Thankfully they had decided to photograph the other class first, and Helen got to wear her new dress. Later, she modelled for me at home (sorry about the wrinkles, it was stuffed into her bag a few times today):

Modelling shots, take two

Here is Helen, the intended recipient, wearing the outfit by Dani.


As you can see, she's really happy with it!

Oops

The lovely outfit Dani sewed is actually for Helen, who is taller than Heather but otherwise not much bigger, and I guessed wrongly that it was for Heather. My apologies, Dani. I will get some modelling shots as soon as I can.

Lovely! Heather's outfit by Dani

Today is opening day for the EB kids' clothing swap!
Dani made this cute little outfit for Heather (who is almost 2). She did a great job - so many perfect details like gathered patch pockets on the shorts, topstitching and hand stitched facings and hems.Dani also included two pieces of fabric and some choclates in the parcel - you can guess what had happened to the chocolates before I even got the camera out!


Susan has opened her parcel for Kaiden, so I can show pictures of what I made for him:

Western shirt from a Surefit pattern and shorts from Ottobre 5/2006 (#19 Corduroy pants).


The vest is also from Ottobre 5/2006, but I simplified it and changed the shape of the front edge to make it more like the vest that Woody wears in Toy Story.



Rear views:

Finished!

I sent my parcels today. Here are sneak peeks of each: