A blouse for R

I have no idea why R chose to hold a spade for this photo..

There are a couple of Japanese pattern books I've been coveting for ages, but things are a bit tight financially and I have displayed an amazing amount of restraint (so far) by not buying them. Happily, both the books have recently appeared in our local library and are currently in my possession, where they will remain for at least three weeks - at which point I'll probably have to buy them for myself anyway because they're so fantastic.

I chose a blouse pattern from the fabulous Girls Style Book but had no idea what size to trace for R. She's very petite - so wouldn't a Japanese pattern fit her better than, say, an American one? Turns out that would have been a very bad assumption to make. I did a bit of research and found this great French website where you can click on various Japanese pattern books and see (and read about, if you speak French) what different people have sewn from them. I soon established that the sizes in Girls Style Book are huge, which is good to know as I would have been very annoyed had I sewn up a gigantic, tent-like garment.

In keeping with my no-budget approach to sewing (which will probably not last the week, given that I now have two books full of great patterns), I used some fabric my mum gave me a couple of years ago. And although I wasn't that keen on the fabric at first, I have grown to like it a lot.

So here it is, pattern L made in size 2 with size 4 length for my 5-year-old daughter. Simple to sew and very sweet.