Kids Clothes Week - Day 6 - the morning after

Another successful couple of days (blogging every day was never going to happen for me).

The end of day 6 saw a number of projects finished! Here's the "morning after" shot with a little pile of neatly folded completed pieces!

The rose cord pinafore was fitted and finished! The pattern is Ottobre 4/2012 #29. Its a great dress, it was really quick to put together - if you don't run out of topstitch thread... I think I'll be making more of these. It looks very cute on too, although I don't have pics of it on. I have a LS tee and matching legging to make too so this will be an entire outfit, but they'll be left for another week.

"Mum, why are you sticky taping my dress to the cupboard?"

"Well dear, everyone seems to be doing it these days"...

Good question.

The bodice is lined with really nice green drill. I love the little sneak peaks you'll get of it when she's wearing it.

The pockets too. I drew grey lines to guide my stitching line for the pockets. That'll come off in the wash. Hopefully.

Then I finished two winter tops for the boy. This one we started together at the beginning of the KCW week, we painted the spots on a skivvy. Then I removed the skivvy neck and replaced it with green ribbing to match the spots.

Someone was pretty happy with it. Particularly as now it goes with his favourite camo pants I made here. 

I finished this top in a grey and purple stripe. The pattern is Ottobre 1/2013 #20. I like how the ribbing goes along the shoulder seams, it looks good. The fabric (can't remember where I bought it from) was atrocious to sew and consequently the bottom hem looks awful. I couldn't stitch it with my twin needles as it kept missing stitches and getting caught. Zig zag was the only thing that worked and I quite like the finished look of a zig zag, but it still doesn't look great, perhaps I should unpick and finish the seam off without using a contrast colour.

I also finished a jumper that I started making a few weeks ago. Its Ottobre 6/2012 #14. I love how this jumper turned out (sort of - see below) and the neck is very cool. More ukulele/guitars for a ukulele lovin' boy.

Although I love the style, and the pattern was surprisingly easy to follow, I stuffed up quite a few things in the making, ending up with the "interesting" feature stitch lines...

I think it was meant for a t shirt knit fabric as when I finished it and it was way too tight. It was a slim fit, but certainly didn't fit my slim boy. So I added a piece to the width, running from the sleeve to the bottom hem. Not super stylish, but it worked.

Somehow I managed to sew the front to the back, overlocked and topstitched before I finished. Oops. Instead of unpicking I cut an extra seem in on the back shoulder to fit it properly saround the neck (its a bit confusing, I got very confused). Now it fits him nicely and sits well so at least it'll get worn.

So its been a successful Kids Clothes Week for me, not sure if there'll be any action tonight, but I'm pretty happy with my completed pieces to date!

Kids Clothes Week ~ Day 4 ~ the morning after

The hangover from KCW day 4. On the sewing desk.

Didn't get around to blogging yesterday's picture. I managed to squeeze in an hour sewing but the morning after shot never happened...

But It didn't look too much different from this. I stalled on finishing the rose print pinafore as I've run out of my top stitching colour - a trip to the shops today. Its there nearly finished, showing off the lovely green lining. How unfortunate you won't see it much when its on. Hoping for some finished photos of this project tomorrow.

Otherwise I've started some knit projects. A couple of pairs of leggings for the girl, and a stripey LS tee for the boy. Lots of fun ahead attaching binding (fingers crossed it comes up well - I'm a bit hit and miss with binding...) and twin needle stitching.

Here's to KCW Day 5!!

Kids Clothes Week ~ Day 2 ~ the morning after

The hangover from Day 2 of KCW shows a little less constructive a day 1. I think there was about an hour spent (maybe a little more). This was what my sewing desk looked like when I got up in the morning after KCW Day 2.

 

Not that much different from yesterday, but yes there was progress on the rose cord pinafore dress.

But the big achievement was the snowflake dress was finished! Hooray.

The dress is from Ottobre 6/2011 #13 Vilmariina dress. I've had the snowflake fabric for ages and I think it comes up really nicely in this dress. Wasn't overly happy with how I placed the edge print at the hem of the dress, but its not that dire.

The view from the back

The front yoke was done with tucks. I think the fabric I chose for the yoke is a bit too white contrasty, I might try and dye it somehow. I sewed the half circle cut out from the neck to add colour to a bare bit of the fabric, but its note quite enough. I've also just had some labels made up which are good too as now hubby and Nanna can work out which is front and back on items I've made! Obviously I haven't got around to trimming all the loose threads yet...

The dress has lovely puffed sleeves which are pulled in at the upper arm with elasticised shirring, and then again at the wrist with the contrast fabric.

Now to get started on KCW Day 3!

Kids Clothes Week ~ Day 1 ~ The morning after.

So I've decided to partake in the Kids Clothes Week, I've followed this for years, but this is the first time I've been game to join in.

Although they're doing Spring over there, I'll be preparing for the Australian Winter season here. Actually, I've been preparing for this for a few weeks. I've had curtains on the go for the past little while, but have been tracing and cutting patterns when I've found a spare moment, so I actually have a bit of a pile ready to start sewing.

So I decided to approach this with a series of "hangover" shots, or pics taken the next morning (in natural light) to see what's been achieved the night before, on a day by day basis. Provided I'm able to sew every night (hopefully so) AND blog every day (much less likely). However last night I was lucky enough to fit in more than an hour and this was my sewing desk hangover after KCW Day 1.

Snowflake dress nearly, nearly, nearly finished.

A rose cord pinafore dress semi started (this was cut out way earlier, and I only managed to edge a couple of pieces ready for next stage of sewing). I tried to be a bit more efficient in sewing by starting this project with the same pink cotton as I was using for the highlight sewing on the snowflake dress, but it didn't really help much. Sewing two patterns at once? That's asking for trouble.

And then I retired to the couch to spend some quality time with the hubby. And snuck in cutting out another pair of pants ready to sew (cheeky cheeky and I did get some sideways looks).
So all up, I was pretty happy with my KCW Day 1 effort. It took a whole day to get the blog post up, but at least I did it!

Then there was a bit of crafting that went on during the day too as part of a "engaging creatively with children and achieving something at the same time" activity. I kept a sticker sheet from a while ago, that the kids had peeled the stickers off. Thought it would made a good print stencil. So we stuck it on a LS tee like this.

I added a border of contact to protect the rest of the tee from accidents (this shiny bit), and let the boy paint!

 He had fun, I helped him with colour selection and we painted away together.

 Then we pulled away the stencil and...

Yeh it worked! (although I forgot to spin the pic before I uploaded it so its sideways). The tee is actually a skivvy (which I'm not keen on, so now I want to cut the neck off, add some ribbing and it will be ready for wear.

A very productive day all round!