Pirate of the Playground

A while back I posted about the "Pirate Girl" outfit I made for Miss G - she's all about being adventurous and brave and pirates pretty much fit the bill for that. And because Mr. T is so close in age to her, he usually wants to do whatever she does. So when I bought the pirate girl iron-on from Bunte Fabrics before it closed, I also bought a pirate boy and promised T that he could have a "Pirate Boy" outfit. I made the pants in August, not long before Aonghus was born. The shirt got finished in September and I figured I ought to blog them now before I forget to document them!

First up, the pants. I found this super cute medium-weight striped twill at JoAnn's a couple of years ago. At the time I'd thought of doing some cropped summer overalls for T. but I didn't get around to it. Then this year when I was planning his summer SWAP, I decided to make these part of it - sort of. They didn't really go with the general color scheme but he always has a blue or red t-shirt of some kind, so they'd fit into his wardrobe without necessarily needing the pirate shirt. The pants are from Ottobre 2/2005 and they are #23. I chose this pattern because the magazine actually showed the pants made up in a stripe fabric and it immediately reminded me of the twill that I already had. I wasn't sure about adding the knee patches, but decided to do it and used some dark denim from my stash. I used it for the faux pocket-flaps on the back, too. The pocket lining is a navy cotton with white stars. I used red topstitching thread for these pants so that it would pop against the navy knee patches. And although the pattern calls for rivets at the knees like commercially-made jeans have, I don't know where to find those locally or online, so I just did bar tacks at the corners.

The length of the pants makes them a perfect transition garment, for those early fall days when it starts out cooler but warms up enough by afternoon for the kids to want shorts. The elastic waist and faux-fly make them easy to put on and take off, which is nice when you're in a hurry to get into your bathing suit! This pattern is easy to make up but has enough details to make it more than just basic shorts. I'm definitely using it again in the summer.

The pirate boy shirt is Imke from the SCKL book. This version uses the straight-cut sleeve and the rounded, sporty hood. Gwyneth's has the pointy hood with the tassel. I used a red and white stripe cotton-lycra knit for the hood and lower sleeves and a medium weight navy cotton solid. It may have some lycra in it but I got it as a remnant so I don't recall. I didn't have enough of the stripe to do 2-layer sleeves, so these are single-layer sleeves made to look like 2-layer ones.

 On the right sleeve we have the skull and crossbones iron-on and pirate kid ribbon from Banberry Place; the left sleeve features a double ribbon trim, with blue and red star ribbon from Farbenmix on top of a navy grosgrain ribbon with red pick-stitching. Embellished, but not too girly.

Sleeve detail - right.

Sleeve detail - left.

As I said before, I made this shirt because I had the iron-on pirate boy. It looked great the first time T. wore the shirt, but then it lost a foot! Apparently the glue wasn't fully activated. Anyway, here's the look of the shirt-front, minus a pirate foot:

I'm trying to figure out a way to add a new foot that doesn't look too weird, so I'll post an update if/when I get to that.

Ahoy, Matey!

So, my girl is not the girliest of girls. She likes pirates. I think she has a secret desire to be like Pippi Longstocking. Back in 2010, I made Miss G a pirate girl outfit for her birthday present. She's since outgrown that one and was begging me for a new one. Since the whole thing was based around a velour iron-on that I'd found at Bunte Fabrics it would have been a bit difficult, but for the fact that before Yvonne closed her shop, I managed to score another one, plus a boy version.

Left sleeve.

Right sleeve.

The shirt is basically the same as last time -  I used the Imke pattern from Sewing Clothes Kids Love and I made it in a faux 2-layer style, with the pointy version of the hood. The short-sleeves and the body of the shirt are a black rib knit and the sleeves and hood are red and white cotton-lycra - both left over from the previous shirt. Like last time, I managed to get a red velour pirate skull iron-on (plus one to go with the boy pirate for Mr. T) and that goes on the right short sleeve; the long sleeve has 2 layers of ribbon - the bottom layer is black grosgrain with white pick stitching and the top layer is light blue with red stars. The star one is from Farbenmix. On the left long sleeve is a stripe of pirate boys and girls ribbon that I got from Banberry Place; the short sleeve has iron-on stars of various sizes in a red holographic vinyl. The hood has a tassel of several different ribbons, including the stars ribbon and the pirates ribbon.

Ribbon tassel on the hood.

The previous pirate girl outfit had a skirt, made from black denim with embroidered skull-and-crossbones motifs in white. This time I opted for pants. I'd been wanting to make the Farbenmix Nonita pants pattern for a while - how can you not love a pant called 'piratenhosen' (pirate pants) by its' maker? I knew I didn't have enough of the denim from the skirt, so I found some stretch red denim and used that for the main fabric, with the embroidered black denim as accents. I like how they turned out, though the denim is pretty stiff; hopefully it'll get softer as it gets worn in. I really like the look of some of the topstitching done by others on these pants, so I tried to go for a similar look. I'm not entirely happy with the look but that's probably because I had to use doubled thread, since I didn't have white topstitching thread. Also, I don't know if I'd use the thicker thread for the more complicated stitch patterns on such a heavy fabric again. They probably would have been fine with a single thread.

Pirate pants- front.

Pocket on left leg and ribbon detail on cuff.

The other thing I had a problem with was fit, but my girl is so skinny that I'm kind of not surprised that the waist is a bit big on her. This is often the case with the Euro patterns when I make them for her. There's always a good amount of ease and sometimes I have to compensate for that. After one or two wears we decided to undo the waistband a tiny bit and redo the elastic. The fit is much better now. The buttons were the coolest part, since I discovered them by accident at JoAnn's. The pirate skulls appear to be printed on them, but I'm hoping they won't rub off in the wash.

Topstitching detail, skull and crossbones buttons, pirate ribbon and Farbenmix label.

 The pants look super cute with the cuffs rolled up, since that exposes the pirate denim on the underside. And they look great with boots, sneakers, clogs or pretty much any other shoe. Miss G. likes to wear her pirate print clogs with them. I kind of want to use this pattern to make pants for my son's pirate boy outfit, but I'm not sure the fit would be good for his body. I do think it will be fun to make another pair of these for G. in a lighter weight cotton for summer. First, though, I need to finish some other projects!

The "Patisserie" Dress

So around the beginning of the year, a friend posted on her FB page that she would hand make something for the first 5 people who commented on her post, and the catch was that you had to repost the offer. I commented because my friend, Christine, is always a crafty person and is also an amazing photographer. When we were in college she did pressed flowers for a bunch of us who were close friends with her and I still have mine, framed, in my sewing room.

When I reposted, I got replies from 4 friends quite quickly but was surprised that I didn't hear from my friend, Lindsey, since she's a fan of my sewing work. I made a baby quilt for her younger daughter last summer and she loves it. When I saw that she hadn't replied to the post about a free handmade something, I messaged her to see if she'd seen it. She hadn't, but she jumped at the chance and when I asked if she wanted something for the baby, she said that the quilt was enough but could I make something for her older daughter, BB, who is my Gwyneth's good friend. BB is a girly girl and I immediately started thinking about dresses - something she could wear in the summer but also in spring and fall with maybe a shirt underneath. I showed her the Feliz dress in the SCKL book and she loved it.  BB's favorite colors are pink and purple so I poked around on the Fashion Fabrics Club website to see what was available and came up with a pastel plaid chambray, a purple chambray, a pink striped shirting and some coordinating voiles. But when the fabrics came, I stopped being so enthusiastic about them. Normally I use some kind of a print as the main fabric and I'd planned to use the plaid as the lower ruffle on the under-dress, as well as some of the ruffles on the back and make the body of the under-dress from the striped pink shirting. I stopped liking that and decided that the way to go was with the plaid as the body of the under-dress. But then I started thinking about needing a smaller print to tie everything together - the plaid is good but bigger than I'd anticipated. I dug through my stash and somehow came up with a 1-yd. piece of pink abstract print of dots/egg shapes that had all the colors from the other fabrics. I can use this for the sash and as one of the ruffle fabrics. The purple chambray is the over-dress. But how to tie it all together?

The most famous French macarons. These colors inspired the theme of the dress.

BB is interested in all things French and I thought that the perfect way to embellish the plain fabric of the  over-dress was to embroider it. Suddenly a lightbulb came on for me - Huups.de has an embroidery set called 'Bonjour Paris', of a French girl with her dog, an Eiffel Tower, a pastry shop and the phrase "Paris, Je t'aime" (I love you, Paris).  And it's done by my favorite embroidery designer, Nic, of Luzia Pimpinella. If I changed up the color scheme from the original design of the embroidery to go with the dress colors, I could make a whole scene of the girl going to the pastry shop. Okay, technically the shop says 'confiserie', which means 'confectionary' and really refers to a place that makes desserts of various kinds (cakes, pastries, tartes, chocolates, ice cream) and not just a pastry shop. But, if you add some ribbons with cakes, cupcakes and ice cream cones in those same tones of French macarons and you get a pastry shop dress! So now I'm inspired. And also, hungry. However, the macarons can wait.


So the end product:

As you can see, the apron/overdress is the focal point. I wanted the "Paris, Je t'aime" to stand out so that the theme would be kind of obvious, so I went with a lighter color. White seemed too stark, hence the light pink. And the jade green for the Eiffel Tower letter 'A' is a good way to introduce that color, plus it links to the straps; I was afraid that doing the straps in the green would look odd but they bring a nice bit of contrast. And they look adorable with the dark pink rick-rack at the edges - that part reminds me of the lace paper doilies that some pastry shops use.

I wanted to set up the street scene at the bottom in such a way that there was an Eiffel Tower in the background, but I realized that it was going to be too heavy after I finished the pastry shop, simply due to the amount of embroidery on a dress this size. So I moved the Eiffel Tower to the back of one of the side panels, which kind of gives the feel that Paris is all around and ties the theme to the back of the dress.

The back of the dress involved adding ruffles and ribbon - normally not something that is too difficult, just time-consuming. That and with this dress it has to be done before sewing the dress pieces together, so it seems like it's taking forever to finish. Surprisingly, this was more difficult than I anticipated, since I had to figure out how to incorporate the ribbons in a way that made sense and didn't look like I'd just thrown a bunch of ribbon at the dress.

The wide cake ribbon posed a problem due to its width, but I made it work, though I ended up using far less of it than I anticipated. At first I'd thought I would simply serge the raw edges of the ruffles and, after gathering them, sew them so that the serged edge would be under the ruffle, the topstitched so that it wouldn't show. I soon realized that the green voile was far too thin for that and that the plaid ruffles would have been too heavy done that way. Instead, I stitched the ruffles with the raw edges facing up, then added ribbons on top of the raw edges.

This not only serves as a way to finish/conceal the raw edge but also adds a nice surprise underneath. That's what I did with the cake ribbon, though I only used it on the green ruffles, since using it on all of the ruffles would have been a little too much. Even cakes should be taken in moderation.

To make the other ribbons stand out, I chose the lavender with the ice cream cones for the yellow seersucker ruffles and used the yellow ribbon with the cupcakes on the purple chambray ruffles. You know, contrast colors and all that. The purple chambray is topped with pale pink ribbon and the yellow seersucker got a yellow one, though I wish I'd had a darker pink on hand and maybe a greenish color for the yellow, just to make it more interesting.

I'd contemplated using the multicolored abstract dot print as the bottom ruffle but it seemed to work against the plaid of the dress, so instead I used an embroidered pink voile, very similar in color to the rick-rack that I used on the straps and on the jade green ruffles. 

When I brought the dress to her, BB. immediately tried it on and declared it her new favorite dress, which is always a good feeling. I so enjoy making things for people and it really makes me happy when they like it this much. I made a size 122/128, which is a little roomy on her right now but that means she'll be able to wear it that much longer. When I left her she was still spinning in it every now and then, just to see it twirl.

Tutti Frutti

A quick little post about a shirt I made for Gwyn for Christmas. This is the Imke shirt from "Sewing Clothes Kids Love", with the pieced bodice. I actually threw this together after I bought her a pair of pants for a Christmas gift and felt like it needed something to go with it. So I dove into the stash and found these 2 fabrics, both purchased from Fabric Fairy about a year ago. These are really nice weight cotton-lycra knits and I think they're from Flapdoodles, but I could be wrong. The ribbing at the neck is orange and red Campan knit by Hilco that is leftover from a piece that I scored on ebay and used to make the dinosaur shirt for Tallon. I felt like it needed a little contrast and the orange was just the right pop against the aqua background.

Of course, I couldn't just leave it un-embellished - this was for my girl who loves all the extras and likes to go through my stash of iron-ons, patches, ribbon, etc. to pick out the right stuff. I felt like the fruits needed to be somewhere else besides the bodice, so I cut out some of the shapes and fused them to felt, then stitched around them to be on the safe side. Then I cut out the felt and sewed the shapes to the sleeves as though they were patches - 3 on the left sleeve and 1 on the right.

I added some Farbenmix ribbon "Helga and Friends" to the right sleeve before I sewed on the fruit patch; I only used it on one sleeve because I don't always like things to be balanced, design-wise. It makes it more interesting. On the left sleeve I used a yellow and orange flower patch that I had in my stash and, of course, there is the obligatory Farbenmix label on the right sleeve. I love how this turned out and so does Miss G.

Insa and Redondo for Gwyn

She calls this her "Spring Skirt".

No clever title this time, just the facts. These are 2 skirts I made for Gwyneth a while back and hadn't blogged yet. The Insa skirt is from Sewing Clothes Kids Love, although I confess I already had the pattern and just hadn't used it yet. I'd made one for Maeve last year and she loved it and had planned to do one for Gwyn but just hadn't gotten around to it. Obviously, I didn't use the same fabrics, although I did use a polka dot for Gwyn's underskirt just like I did with Maeve's. And both of those fabrics came from Banberry Place - Gwyn's is the aqua poplin with spring-green dots. The top layer is an awesome ebay find - the famous Oilily suitcase fabric! This stuff is so soft. It really feels like your favorite sheets or shirt that have been washed a million times. I used the same polka dot poplin for the waistband because I felt that introducing another fabric with the busyness of the suitcase fabric would have been too much.



Embellishing is always fun, since I can dig into my stash and put all kinds of things to use and this skirt was no exception. I inherited a ton of ric-rac and other trims from my grandmother and my mom's godmother and I like to use them because they tend to be 100% cotton, as opposed to the polyester kind that is so prevalent now. I made use of a vintage yellow medium ric-rac at the hem of the overskirt and stitched a green dotted ribbon on top of that. I say medium but it's actually more of a large size, I guess. On the underskirt we have new (polyester) rose ric-rac in a smaller size with a wonderful floral woven ribbon I had sitting in my stash for a few years, waiting for the right project. It has all the colors in the skirt, with the exception of the red in the overskirt, and the floral shapes kind of echo the floral shapes in the overskirt fabric. To top it off I found 2 flower appliqués - one large aqua and one small yellow, which I sewed near the underskirt hem. Lastly, I made a cute little tag with my favorite Farbenmix ribbon, which has a flower that perfectly matches the red small flowers in the overskirt.


The Redondo skirt was originally made for Valentine's Day. These are just quilting cottons - I forget what the name of the main print is, "Love Letters" or something like that and I don't remember the manufacturer, although it might be a Kaufman print. Don't quote me on it. The flounces are made from everyone's favorite Michael Miller Ta-dot in pink with red dots.


I love how the skirt looks like a big flower when you spread it out this way. I love this pattern and really want to use it more, since this was only the second time I'd done it. It was also the first time I did the flounces, as opposed to the inserted ruffle. I decided to be brave and use Nancy's method for the flounces, using the inner curve of the skirt gore as the shape for the flounce and it turned out really well. There are a few places where it puckered when I was sewing and didn't see it until after I was totally finished but I chalk that up to being in a hurry to finish it for Valentine's Day, which was the whole reason I made it. I actually sewed this in 2 days, though I only actually worked on it an hour or so each night. The hems for the flounces and for the skirt itself were all made with a rolled hem on my serger, using wooly nylon in the loopers to ensure that the raw edges were completely covered. You can do a rolled hem without the wooly nylon but I never think it looks as good, no matter how much I shorten the stitch length. You can see a close-up of the rolled edge here. Gwyn wore this on Valentine's Day with a red shirt that had a sparkly pink heart and the words "Daddy's Girl" on it. Lucky for me she didn't stop wanting to wear it after Valentine's Day and when it got too warm for long sleeves she replaced that shirt with a pink one that says "Love Bug" and has a ladybug on it. I love that her go-to clothes are almost always things I've made.

Sew what's new?

Yeah, that's a cheesy title. And yet there's so much that is new in the way of sewing at my house that I had to go there. Mea culpa.

Anyway, first in the list of what's new is a NEW MACHINE!!!! Yes, the Kenmore was giving me way to many problems - skipping stitches, buttonhole issues, snarling the thread every 10th stitch, etc. It was a hot mess - literally. So after listening to me moan and complain about how difficult it was to just sew a darn seam, Scott told me to go get a new machine and gave me a budget of $500. Now, $500 is a good chunk of change but it won't get you the top of the line in a machine, so my dream machine was out of the question. However, it can get you a very nice little machine and the Janome dealership in Gaithersburg easily helped me find something within my budget. It's electronic, so it's a bit different for me, but it sews really nicely and makes a fantastic automatic buttonhole. Another nice plus is that it has tons of decorative stitches that I can use for a faux coverstitch look. Very cool, indeed.



Next, all of the things I've been sewing with this gorgeous new machine.



First up are a pair of pants and a shirt for T-bird. The shirt was actually sewn on the old Kenmore, except for the sleeve hems. This is the "Little Mr." shirt from the Spring 2009 issue of Ottobre, sewn from a super cute Liberty of London lawn. I couldn't resist the car print and since I got a full meter I'll have plenty left for another project some other time. I also bought this in the blue colorway, with all of the cars in shades of blue.




To go with the shirt are the "Kaarna" pants from the Winter 2009 Ottobre. The pattern calls for them to be lined, but I really liked the knit waistband, since it's so similar to the 'baggies' pants that Mini Boden sells. I've made them before in corduroy with the lining and I could see that they could just as easily be made without the lining by simply finishing all the pieces with my serger.


So here they are, in a green and black cross-woven chambray that I got from fabric.com. I thought about going with a lighter color for the knit waist but ended up with black. I used a black twill tape for the drawstring at the waist rather than make one from the chambray, but I may change that, since it's really kind of flimsier than I want. Another change I made is that I added tabs and buttons so that I can roll them up. I was inspired by a pair of linen pants my sister in law had given me for T-bird when he was born. Since he wears cloth diapers he was able to fit them in the waist before he was long enough in the legs so being able to roll up the pant legs was great. I know from experience that this pattern runs long, so I added the tabs, using the RTW pants as a model. I should have made the tabs longer so I could roll them up more, but they work.



Next up is a skirt I made for Miss Maeve. She was feeling upset that I'd not been able to make her the Manhattan dress from Sewing Clothes Kids Love to match Gwyn's Rachel dress (I needed more of a certain fabric to cut out the last piece and had to scour ebay for it). To console her I made the Insa skirt from SCKL. I'd been planning this skirt for a while, had the Michael Miller Carnival Bloom fabric in the purple colorway already and the kid check in purple (also MM fabric). I'd gotten them both on ebay and ended up having to buy more of the Carnival Bloom in order to make this in Maeve's size. I have a hard time thinking of her as a size 12/146 and some of my fabrics in my stash are too small now.

Anyway, I was successful in scoring more of the fabric and started making the upper layer of the skirt. Then I decided to cut the lower layer and, after much contemplation decided that I needed a different fabric than the check I'd already chosen. It was simply too much purple! Hard to imagine but true. I looked online and decided to buy the green Busilis dot from Banberry Place, along with the pink farbenmix mandala ribbon and some other trims. When they arrived, I discovered that the ribbon was really more of a purple and that the shapes echoed the shapes in the fabric of the top layer, so I decided to add it to the skirt on the bottom layer. To the top layer I've added a ruffle of the purple check and also a purple grosgrain ribbon with aqua polka dots and the bottom layer has 2 additional flower appliqués I found in my stash of goodies.


I always add a Farbenmix tag to the things I make from their patterns and the new ones are blue and red, which Maeve felt didn't go with the skirt colors, so I used the one that comes with the women's patterns now. This one is on the outside of the skirt at the center back (her choice of location).

Apparently it's good for twirling in, too. I have another one on my to-do list - this time for Gwyn and made from an Oilily fabric snagged on ebay. I hope to get to that in the next week or so.


Also on the to-do list: finish 2 new dresses for the girls - the new Destina pattern by Farbenmix, using the Delft and floral prints I got from Yvonne at Bunte Fabrics. Oh, and a pair of capris for me from the 2/2007 issue of Ottobre Woman. Right now the dresses are about 1/3 to 1/2 of the way constructed and the pants are already cut out so that bodes well for finishing them in a week.

I've finished a pair of pajamas for Maeve, too, in the past month but the top needs a little tweaking for fit and then I can photograph them.