A Quick Skirt for Elizabeth

Posted by Claire on Nov 22 2011

I’ve been sick this past week.

Hack up a lung with the cold without end, comatose with a Nyquil drip, sporting ratty pajamas with no thought for a shower sick. Tis the season and all that. DH gave it to me and now David is lying on the sofa, laid low with the same nefarious bug just as I start to recover.

But before my lost weekend, I did manage to whip up this cute little skirt for our friend, Elizabeth, age 4, who has a ‘thing’ for owls. I don’t generally make clothes for random friends but when I saw this cute owl print a couple of weeks ago, I knew she would love it. Ooh, did she ever!

The pattern is “Dancer“, another one of my friend Laura’s excellent e-patterns. The fit is nice and the sewn in shorts mean the climbing bar holds no more threats 🙂

I paired the retro print with a simple brown polka dot for the underskirt and used some bright pink print from my stash for the waist tie and binding.

I made a few invisible changes because I prefer a different method of binding than Laura recommended and I did the belt loops a little differently, too, inserting them into the waistband but otherwise, it’s identical to the pattern.

A nice, easy sewing project that I finished up in a morning. Elizabeth loved it (I will try and get a picture of her wearing it – the whole being sick thing kind of impeded me!). My only regret is that her poor mother is going to be doing a lot of laundry in the coming weeks. Her daughter’s already announced her intentions of wearing it to school every day. 🙂

Free Smocking Plate: Holiday Nutcracker

Posted by Claire on Nov 16 2011

Boy smocking is always a challenge, especially when it comes to the holidays.

The rules are as follows: nothing too ‘old fashioned’ ; nothing too ‘cutesy’ ; nothing too ‘fey’.

Hopefully, this nutcracker soldier offers you a way to incorporate smocking into your holiday sewing without sentencing your little one to years of intensive therapy 🙂

This would make a fantastic insert in a sweatshirt or for younger boys, a whole phalanx of nutcrackers, marching in lockstep across a pair of overalls or a romper would be lovely. And it doesn’t have to be limited to children’s clothing. This would look lovely on a pillow, a tree skirt or anywhere you might need a bit of holiday spirit.

I’ve given the colours in DMC but you could make it your own by using metallic or specialty threads for an extra bit of shine. You can download the smocking plate by clicking here.

I myself am not doing any holiday sewing (I made two holiday dresses for Ellie last winter) and they still fit this year so rather than overwhelm her little closet, I’m holding off until next year, when she’ll need some new duds. I am going to do a couple of quick embroidered shirts for the boys but beyond that, I’m planning on taking it easy over the holidays.

I hope you enjoy this smocking plate. As always, feel free to share this project with your friends, but please credit my website and don’t resell or repost it.

Ruby’s Day Dress

Posted by Claire on Nov 15 2011

I often take my children to the Hamilton Children’s Museum. We’ve been going since they were very little. It’s a wonderful, hands-place where they can play and explore to their hearts content. Earlier this year, one of the exhibits was about archeology. They had a giant sandbox with dinosaur bones glued to the bottom. And pottery shards that had to be reassembled. Fun stuff when you’re a kid.

So what does a sandbox have to do with sewing?

Well, on display was a beautiful little silk day dress that was donated to the museum by a life long Hamilton resident. I was immediately attracted to it and asked the museum curator if I might come back to have a look at it.

Meet Ruby, age two.

(Forgive the quality of this photo – it was mounted behind protective glass)

From what the currator knew, Ruby was born in 1919. She was two in the photo, making this dress ninety years old. Her godmother made it for her. It’s made of silk, with fine cotton lace, silk ribbon and silk embroidery thread. With the exception of the side seams, which are machine sewn, everything is done by hand.

The t-shape is very typical of the 1910s and 1920s. The arrival of WW1 and changing views of childrearing made the really fussy white gowns of the Victorian era look old-fashioned. Simplicity and comfort were in. But that doesn’t negate the exquisite skill with which this dress was made, either.

The dress is made of one piece of fabric – there are no shoulder or armscye seams. Shaping is accomplished with a pair of deep 3/4″ tucks that run over each shoulder.

What is very unusual however is that feather stitch is used both decoratively and functionally – the tucks, the hem, the neckline and the sleeves are all embellished and secured using feather stitch.

The quadruple feather stitch is very finely worked. The row of feather stitching on the sleeve band is less than 1/2″ wide – each stitch is less than an 1/8″. I suspect the sewer basted the sleeves and tucks and then worked the embroidery, before removing the tacking stitches.

In order to accomodate the big toddler head, two tabs have been added at the shoulder. The tabs were worked separately and then whip stitched to the shoulder. Afterwards, the lace was whipped to the tab and the neckline in one piece. Look at the lovely square button.

Here is the tab opened.

Here is a closeup of the tab. The lace is cotton and very delicate. It is not quite 3/8″ wide. The buttonholes are handworked. The tab is a little less than 2″ long and 1 5/8″ wide.

Here you can see how the opening is finished. It’s very simple – a small row of running stitch is all that is done to finish the raw edge that is hidden by the tab.

The interior is as interesting as the exterior, IMHO.

Looking at the neckline, we would assume that they are finished with narrow bands of bias. That’s certainly how a modern sewer would work them. They’re not. The front and back neckline allowances are cut as part of the overall dress, folded to the wrong side and held in place with more feather stitching. It is because they are narrow (3/8″) and worked by hand that it is possible to shape the straight-of-grain fabric to the curve.

And what’s your guess on the seam finish along the sides? Teeny-weeny french seam, right? ‘Cause that’s what heirloom sewing is all about, right?

Wrong.

The side seams were basted RS together (see the basting threads in the photo above) and then machine stitched. Then, working from the wrong side, the raw edges were folded in, basted again and edge stitched. It is not a particularly narrow seam (it varies from 1/4″ – 3/8″) and there is distortion through the tight underarm curve as the fabric stretches around it. And the sewer left in the basting stitches!

Here you can see the interior of the sleeve and the order of work: feather stitched cuff, under arm seam with basting threads still intact, then whipped lace.

The 3″ hem is, to modern eyes, quite messy. Tucks were taken almost at random to permit the necessary shaping. From the outside, the tucks are invisible. You can see that the feather stitching is the only stitching holding the hem in place.

Finally, the dress was finished with 1/4″ peach silk ribbon. The ribbon is tacked to the dress and has a small floral motif woven in to it. There are 10 loops, each 1″ long, plus the tails.

I hope you enjoyed this close up look at this charming vintage dress. There are a couple of patterns that are very similar that could be used as the starting point for recreating this gown. Wendy Schoen’s Sweet Serentity or her Monogrammed Baby Dress would both work, although you would have to add deeper tucks over the shoulders and draft your own tab pattern.

Grace Knott Smocking to Close

Posted by Claire on Nov 09 2011

Holy Smokes! Grace Knott is closing its doors after 81 years?

Say it ain’t so. It’s a Canadian institution. I wore GK designs. My great aunt smocked GK designs on the dresses she made in the 1940s and 1950s.

They were one of the best smocking supply places around and because they were Canadian, I never had to deal with exorbitant shipping or tariffs. I’m gutted.

They’re offering a series of sales to close out the shop – there are some great classic Ellen McCarn and Little Memories plates as well as lots of other supplies. I’m going to order me some pleater needles. Lots and lots of pleater needles.

But still, I’m sad. Generations of people learned to smock thanks to Grace Knott. Seems so sad that generations more won’t.

A Wool Coat for David

Posted by Claire on Oct 13 2011

I decided to join Elsie Marley’s Kids Clothing Week Challenge this year. A lot of people (more productive, organized people, clearly!) have been cranking out outfits at a tremendous pace. There are so many lovely outfits in the flickr group, too. However, rather than try and kill myself, I thought I would use the week to complete a project I had started and that needed a push to finish. I think that’s in the spirit of things, even if the boys’ clothing count doesn’t go up much.

Elsie Marley

This is a wool coat with faux-shearling trim and a quilted lining for David.

I think it’s safe to say, he won’t freeze in the coming months. It has a heft to it that only a real wool coat has, even in a child’s size. You pick it up and it feels substantial. As I’d mentioned in this post, he chose the fabrics and he really, really loves it.

My sewing room looks like it had a run in with a sheep with alopecia. Lots and lots of fuzzy bits on the floor in other words, thanks to that fun fur.

The pattern is “Polaris” from the Winter 2008 Ottobre and like always, went together like a dream, with tons and tons of lovely detailing to make it really special.

The pockets were somewhat challenging, only because of the bulk of the fabric but I steamed and I pounded them into submission. (I took them down to the work bench and hammered them flat. Bam! Bam! Bam! Excellent release of aggressive tendencies, sewing with wool is.)

I embroidered a small star on the left sleeve. It is technically an applique design but I wanted something subtle, so I skipped the applique and used the wool fabric as the contrast to the metallic embroidery thread.

All of the seams are topstitched. I used my regular trick of 100% cotton quilting thread and it worked very well. Nice definition but no shredding or tension issues.

There were a lot of buttons and they had to be sewn on by hand, due to the bulk of the fabric. Twelve buttons later, they were done. They’re a nice metallic with a bit of texture in the interior but I really lucked out in finding them in two complimentary sizes. The big buttons are perfect along the front of the coat. The small buttons work perfectly on the cuffs and button flaps.

The buttons however were the only thing I did by hand. Everything else, even the lining, was sewn in completely by machine.

For the first time, I successfully bagged my lining entirely by machine. It looked like an octopus that had come out on the loosing end of a run in with an outboard motor for a while. All weird arms and inside bits. But I persevered and thanks to the wonderful bagging tutorial by Kathleen F at Fashion-Incubator, it came out looking as beautiful and professional as anything I’ve ever lined.

If I was giving this pattern a difficulty ranking, I’d say it’s a 7 or an 8. It’s not that the sewing itself is difficult but there are a lot of pieces to match, the fabrics require attention and some special handling to make them behave and there are a lot of small incremental steps that need to be done during the assembly that make this better suited for a confident sewer than a total beginner.