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?
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?