Japanese pattern ensemble (and an improved skirt)

A comfy and practical little ensemble: a yoke-panel skirt in soft denim (pattern N from Linen Wool Cotton Kids) and the 'back ribbon tunic' - more of a top, really - from A Sunny Spot/Girls' Fashionable & Pretty Clothes, made in some sort of knit I found earlier this year at the Apollo Bay op shop.

The first time I sewed this skirt pattern it turned out way too big around the waist and I had to move the buttons right off the placket to get the thing to fit. It's a beautiful style, though, so I was keen to remake it with a few alterations. For a start, I added flat piping made from some striped jersey and cut the inside yoke from the same fabric. Most importantly, I added elastic to the waist. In case anyone else is after some ideas about how to do this, here's what I did:

• Before stitching down the inside yoke, I sewed a strip of waistband elastic to the seam allowance inside the left side of the 'outer yoke'.
• I folded the 'inside yoke' down and sewed a channel into the back part of the yoke while holding the elastic carefully inside it, making sure not to stitch it down.
• I used an unpicker to open up a 1" hole in the right side-seam of the inside yoke, then threaded the elastic out through that hole.
• I pulled the elastic out quite a bit, then cut it down and sewed some buttonhole elastic, double-folded, to the end
• I hand-stitched the inside yoke to the gathered section of the skirt and added a button for the buttonhole elastic to fasten on to.   

(Please ignore the weird reflection on the middle button - I can assure you it looks exactly like the other two!)

Because the skirt has a side opening, the elastic can only be tightened on the non-opening side, but I find that this works perfectly well, and I will definitely be adapting any future 'yoke panel skirts' in the same way. The photo on the right shows what the back of the skirt looks like:

The top was much more straightforward. I used the denimy skirt fabric for the neckline binding/tie but did away with the hem facing - that is to say, I sewed it in, then decided it made the hemline too stiff and unpicked the whole thing. FUN. I ended up hemming the top with a double needle, which made it hang much better. Oh, and I made the sleeves full-length instead of just-above-the-elbow.

To prevent R from making hideous, sullen faces while modelling, I issued a tower-building challenge. She did pretty well.

...Then they fell down.

It was kind of funny watching R look for pockets in the skirt. It took her a while to figure out that there aren't any!

The whole outfit was made with fabrics I already had lying around. I didn't even have to buy buttons! Surely this virtuous sewing behaviour entitles me to a fabric-buying binge in the near future...?

KCW: a woollen coat dress

Thanks to two birthdays, a guitar concert, a sick child and a busy last week of school, Kids Clothes Week hasn't been working out very well for me this time. This is going to be my one-and-only contribution to the pool: a coat-dress (pattern O) from Linen, Wool, Cotton Kids. Although the book specifies linen for the dress, the design really lends itself to something warm and cosy, so I used a pure wool fabric from Kim Anh, with some black linen for the facings. It's a sweet and simple design, with tucks at the front and back and a nice long row of buttons at the front (where my daughter says buttons should ALWAYS be). Seven buttonholes, seven buttons... I totally failed at spacing them evenly and had to re-do a few. Unpicking buttonholes is so unpleasant, don't you think? Good thing I bought myself a brand new unpicker along with the fabric. And although the dress looked a bit scrunched up between the buttons in these photos, I promise it hangs beautifully off-camera!

I made a few alterations, one of them inadvertent: I was forced to cut the back bodice in two pieces due to not having bought enough fabric (it's fortunate that R has long hair so nobody will ever notice the mismatched pieces). And since R's waist measurement has remained unchanged for years (the only things that grow on this child are arms, legs and hair) I added cuffs to the sleeves so they can be lengthened as she grows. Unfortunately I managed to make the dress rather short - I was aiming for just above the knee but I have a knack of stuffing these things up - so it might be more of a tunic by next year. It does have a decent hem on it, though, so I guess I should unpick it and hem it with facing or something... but I'm probably too lazy to bother at this point.

R is unwell today and wasn't exactly enthused about modelling, so I had to rope in my lovely feline assistant. Please note that no cats were harmed in the taking of these photos; Morry just loves getting into suitcases!

Sailor top

I didn't set out to sew exclusively from Linen, Wool, Cotton Kids, but it does seem to be working out that way. This is the sailor-collar pullover (pattern T) and I'm not done yet - I have at least one more garment from this wonderful book in the works.

This is really not the kind of thing I expect R to get much wear out of, but since it looked like a quick and easy sew, and since I already had the perfect pale blue linen for it, I just went ahead and made it anyway. I added piping to the collar (using finely striped linen leftover from this jacket) and - having wasted far too much time attempting to find the perfect buttons - made matching buttons from the same fabric. Piping really makes the collar stand out nicely, I think.

R was in fine form for today's modelling assignment, thanks to a free Rainbow Loom from Spotlight, which provided rather handsome compensation for ten minutes of her time. After a few poses she started doing a weird kind of chicken dance, collapsed into giggles and that was the end of that.

I'm pretty happy with this top, even if linen isn't quite the thing in our chilly winter weather. Coming up next: something cosier. From the same book, of course.

Cousins in capes

A few weeks ago I sewed capes from this book for R and her little cousin M. As my sister and her family live out in the country, I had to wait (impatiently) to see them and to give M her new cape. Happily, they came to stay with us this weekend, and at long I was able to see the cape on its owner.

It took a whole day to persuade M to be photographed - she's going through that stubborn three-year-old phase (at least, we think it's a phase...). Eventually the gift of a plastic ring did the trick, and it was well worth the wait. The cape is a perfect fit and looks incredibly cute. As for R, she wore her lovely soft cape all weekend while she played with lego, coloured in, scooted, chased cats and played in the park. I began to feel a little jealous of its blanket-like cosiness, and wondered if I could get away with wearing one (I think the answer is no - so I'll just have to go for a woolly shawl instead).

The book calls this garment a 'poncho' but I think of ponchos as things without front openings, so I'm dubbing these 'capes' instead. The capes have snaps down the front and a removable button tab at the top. They are unlined, but I modified the pattern a little to include a hood lining in cotton, which I attached to the facings so it's set in a few inches from the edges. This makes the hoods look much better when they are hanging down.

R's cape is a lovely soft fabric which was sold as wool, but which I suspect has some polyester in it; M's is pure wool. Both are from the wonderful Kim Anh Fabrics in Oakleigh.

Isn't M the cutest? I hope she enjoys wearing her new cape. Now, what should I sew next...?

A fabric exchange

Something a bit different today - with not a bit of sewing involved! I think I've mentioned before that I love kangas, the rectangular printed cloths with borders that are worn by women in East Africa. I adore their bright colours and bold patterns, and the sayings that are an essential feature of the design. When I was growing up, my mum had a beautiful kanga which she liked to use as a tablecloth. The Kiswahili writing on it was fascinatingly exotic, and frustratingly untranslatable in those pre-internet days. Years later in South Africa I managed to buy myself a few kangas here and there, as well as some similar-sized cloths that are worn by Swazi women. And when my husband and I were married, we used a bright green kanga as our wedding canopy (The saying, translated, read: 'Don't be jealous of me, I have been patient', which I thought very appropriate).

I had never met anyone who shared my love of kangas until I came across Sarah's blog, Kabati la Kanga, in which she documents kangas she buys from her current home in Tanzania (in a town at the foot of Kilimanjaro, no less!). After a bit of correspondence, we decided to do a kanga exchange: I would send her a South African 'kanga', and she would send me the real thing from Tanzania.

Well, it was very exciting to receive a parcel a few days ago, covered in lovely Tanzanian stamps and containing not one, not two, but THREE beautiful kangas, all of them doubles (kangas traditionally being sold in pairs).

Sarah provided translations of the mottos, which are, from top to bottom: 'Lord bless us and give us blessings'; 'A house filled with love is not without blessings' and 'Give trouble to others, not me'. I love, love, love all three kangas, but am particularly taken by the red one, given that I collect enamel teapots and love the way they evoke cosiness and domesticity. 

Sarah's parcel hasn't reached her yet, so I can't show what I sent her. Let's just say it was a traditional Swazi cloth and an unusual kanga from my Cape Town days. I hope she enjoys them!

Little gifts

Does doing something two years in a row make it a tradition? I hope so, because taking my mum for a birthday lunch at Federation Square - child-free! -  was so pleasant last year that my sister and I decided to do the same thing again this year. As I live and work in the suburbs, and as work is really my only child-free time, it feels especially exciting to take a train into town (alone!) and to enjoy good food and conversation (without interruptions!). Follow it up with a nice long browse at Kimono House (and perhaps even a small purchase) and you have the makings of a wonderful afternoon.

There's always something interesting to see at Fed Square and on this occasion I was happy to have arrived early as there was a wonderful troupe of what I thought were Chinese dragons (a Chinese friend has since informed me that they were, in fact, lions). They performed a rather exciting dance with plenty of acrobatics.

But onto the handmade portion of Mum's gift. For years she has been raving about a store called Ziguzagu, so I decided to go check it out, buy some silk and make her a forget-me-not jewellery pouch. Well, words can't do justice to the incredible range of traditional and vintage Japanese fabrics this place sells. They are all in wooden crates organised by colour, and the shades are just so beautiful. I could easily have spent all day trying to find the right combination of colours and patterns, but time constraints forced me to be decisive.

Although the silks were a little slippery to work with, I managed to put the pouch together reasonably well (interfacing the outer pouch helped). I've said it before and no doubt I'll say it again: I really love this little pattern. With the leftover bits of silk I made an open wide zipper pouch lined with linen. I think the colours of the silks are very much my mum's style, and I hope that she enjoys her little gifts - and that I remember not to make her exactly the same thing next year!

But here's the funny bit. At the restaurant, seating was on stools, each with a thin, flat cushion. And when we got up at the end of our lunch we discovered that Mum had been sitting on...

...a cushion made of the exact same fabric I'd used for her gift!

KCW: Baby geranium

Just when I thought my Kids Clothes Week sewing was done, my brother-in-law and his girlfriend had a baby girl, for whom, of course, I wanted to sew something. Yes, it's another geranium dress, this time in the mimosa double-gauze that Shino sent me from her Etsy shop. I had just enough left over from R's mimosa dress to make a sweet little dress for beautiful baby E in size 6-12 months, and as this fabric is so baby-soft it seemed the perfect choice. I did the same little trick as last time to make the back skirt opening line up nicely.

And that's it for another Kids Clothes Week. A couple of wild things and a not-at-all-wild thing. I'm not usually that into the themes, but this one had pretty broad appeal, I think. How about you? Do you like sewing to a theme, or do you prefer to do your own thing?