She Who Sews

I've made two Waterfall Raglan's  now, the first a dress version for Christmas, and the second, this top version.



The fabric for this top was by Hamburger Liebe, which I bought some time ago from Small Wonderland. It has been sat waiting for the opportunity to get sewn up. It was obviously always going to be for Layla, but this top just begged to be made with it.

But our photoshoot wasn't the most successful. Does anyone else recognise this look?



This is the one of the most fake smiles I think I've ever caught on camera! It is a pained attempt at looking happy. It is also the day of the big hair cut, so she wasn't really in the mood for having her hair loose, but I wanted to capture it one last time on camera for prosperity!

We quickly followed this pained smile with two corkers...





What do you do when your child is not in the mood but you really need to get on with photos? Give up or soldier on anyway?

But I digress, back to the Waterfall Raglan. The Christmas dress version that I sewed up turned out a little large, I had a feeling it might. I made a straight size 5 as for her height it was perfect, and I thought the loose style would hide the fact that she's very skinny. Unfortunately what happened was the neckline was too large and the dress slopped about on her shoulders. So this time I decided to grade between the two sizes of her chest and her height, so age 3 and age 5.





As you can see, the graded result wasn't right at all at the neckline. I'm not quite sure exactly what went wrong other than I mis-drew the newly graded lines. I asked on the ever so helpful Chalk and Notch Facebook Group and it was pointed out to me that my neck band seemed a bit wide. In fact, what I had done was not sewn the neckband piece on with a big enough seam allowance. So I went back to the top and spent over an hour un-picking the zig-zag topstitch and the overlocked seam stitch.



Once I had unpicked it all, I trimmed off an extra 1cm from the back of the top, just to take some of the height out of the neckline, then re-sewed on the neckband with the correct seam allowance, and low and behold the top is now perfect (bar a small amount of stretching from all my unpicking)!



I love the bottom ruffle on this top. You can also see in these pictures that the sleeves have a cuff on them. The pattern calls for a straight hemmed sleeve, but I wanted to add a cuff. As it turns out, I had to as I didn't quite have enough length on my half metre piece of fabric for age 5 sleeves. I must remember from now on that neither of my children are that small, so metre pieces it is.



And the way it rises towards the side seams and has a slight high-low effect from front to back is ace!



The pattern comes with the option of a top or dress, short or long sleeves, and even a cute little chest pocket (which I omitted on both my versions). The only thing that has thrown me slightly with this pattern is the slight difference in the height chart. Layla is coming up almost in the age 6 bracket for height, which she hasn't touched yet in any other pattern I've made. If you are mindful of the size chart, then this is a perfect little raglan sleeved top and dress pattern. The next one has already been requested in some unicorn jersey I happened upon.



And finally, this last picture has a vintage vibe about it. The little pink trousers I made for her last year are looking somewhat short on her now. If I make some more trousers with a flared leg that actually fit, and another matching Waterfall Raglan top, she could be the epitome of vintage styling don't you think?

I responded to a testing call put out by a new pattern collective of designers who were asking for baby testers ideally, Petite Stitchery. I put my details down anyway, even though I don't have a baby to test for, and a few days later was delighted to be asked to test for them. As a new company, they had a range of patterns that they wanted testing, and I was given the Rosemary Cropped Sweater.



I must admit, I was a bit dubious about it because it meant sewing with not one layer, but two layers of knit fabric! I was added to the tester group, and went ahead with downloading the pattern in excitement. My little skinny Layla is a bit awkward to test for, she's average height for her age, but is super skinny. So going by the measurement chart (American sizing as the pattern designers are American), that put her in age 2-3 for chest, but Age 4 for height (she had just turned 5 at the time). Sometimes it's hard having a skinny child, you have to adjust every pattern, there is no 'just cutting a size and sewing it'. BUT, the end result is that you get a piece of clothing that fits properly (That is the plan anyway!).



I then sewed the cowl closed with a topstitch all the way round. I didn't like how this caused the fabric to stretch. I used a zig-zag stitch with my walking foot, but it still pulled the fabric as it fed through the machine. Unfortunately, this caused the edge of the cowl to pucker and pull slightly, which is OK, because you can hide it by turning it under.

This little sweater was certainly cropped. Too cropped in fact. It was supposed to hit at belly button height, but my little skinny minny doesn't follow size charts, and silly me didn't mash the sizes properly. So, her little cropped sweater ended up a little short. But she was smiling and thought it was wonderful! She quickly decided it would become her gymnastics warm-up jumper.



This second version came together really quickly, after all, I'd already made any mistakes I was likely to come across. I used the same method again to join the two layers, this meant I didn't have to worry about topstitching sleeve cuffs. And this time, instead of topstitching the cowl turning hole closed, I opted to handstitch instead. This leaves a much, much cleaner edge, and doesn't leave the fabric pulling under a walking foot.


This sweater fitted much better, and seemed to go down really well with Layla, who normally refuses to wear anything vaguely warm! She was actually choosing to wear this jumper voluntarily. I took this as a huge compliment, but of course, it's down to the pattern itself, not just my sewing!

This little outfit has come about slowly, and organically. It started with the cropped sweater, which was my first foray into sewing fully functional garments in knit fabrics. It's fully reversible, and of course, my pink loving girl mostly wears it, you guessed it, pink side out. The Rosemary Sweater was a pattern test I did a few months ago from new designers Petite Stitchery (more on the Rosemary Sweater in a blog post coming soon).


We had a seriously frosty morning the day after I'd finished her new hat. We took full advantage of the low early morning sunshine peeping over the hill into the valley. You can see the frozen ground. She was trying to blow breath clouds into the air, but the camera couldn't pick them up sadly.

The whole outfit is adorable, but she's already virtually outgrown the sweater as you can see by her t-shirt sleeves poking out at her wrists. It won't be long until the skirt is too small too.

Hello lovely sewing world!

I am kicking off my new blog with a review of the Anneliese Dress by MCM Studio Designs. I have recently discovered the world of pattern testing, in amongst the independent PDF pattern designers. I applied to test for this dress when the call came up and was delighted to be picked.




The Anneliese Dress by MCM Studio Designs. The pattern is a fairly simple, classic A-line style dress, with two sleeve options, long or short, and two front detail options, laced or tabbed. I chose the short sleeved version with tab front detail. The pattern ranges from Age 2 - 10 years.

My version was made up in Age 4, lengthened to Age 5. It seems a little snug in some of the pictures because my lovely daughter grew into the Age 5 size within the space of 3 weeks from measuring to the final dress! I used two cotton lawns to make this dress. The main print is pale blue, with pink leaves and buds scattered over it. I bought it last summer from Fabworks. The bright pink is a super fine weave lawn, which creases amazingly easily, but is also extremely soft to the touch. I've had this stashed for over a year. Both are very lightweight and floaty. It would be an excellent summer dress. Perhaps not so great for a wet and cold Cornish winter, but we all have to learn from slightly less than great decisions!


We managed to get a dry day with late afternoon sunshine for our photoshoot. It was a bit too chilly for a short sleeved dress really, but little Miss Layla was a star, and only played up to the cold once! Just after I snapped this outtake photo, she ran off to play with her friends, giggling. I don't think she was really that cold.



The back of the dress is finished with an invisible zip. There is also the option of a regular zip, but as I prefer the clean look of a successfully installed invisible zip, I went with that.


This dress looked superb gently draping over a long pettiskirt. It really set off the centre front panel. This dress would be perfect for winter here in a fine needlecord, to give it more warmth and body.... and of course, I'd have to triple check Layla didn't have another growth spurt, mid sew!

The pattern is currently on sale, half price, through 18th December 2016, or how about I make one up for you?

Let me know in the comments what you think of this sweet little dress.
Thats all for today, thanks for stopping by and reading, Saskia.