Sleeveless top and yoke panel skirt

I treated myself to the newly-released English version of Linen, Wool, Cotton Kids. It has some beautiful-looking clothes, and although summer is now over I decided to allow myself to be impractical and sew up the lovely open-backed sleeveless top to go with the yoke panel skirt.

I used swiss dot for the top and changed the pattern to make it fully lined. This was a fairly simple alteration to make, but in the process of figuring things out I stupidly managed to sew the front of the swiss dot wrong-side-out, so it's lost much of its dottiness. The back looks perfect though!

I made the skirt in Cloud 9 organic cotton in a fabric from their 'Wildwood' range that I absolutely adore (the others in the range are nice, too - tempting, tempting). I added piping at the yoke and obediently made matching fabric-covered buttons as instructed. Unfortunately the waist wound up way too big for R, and as it's a fitted yoke with a button fastening there's no elastic one can tighten. So I had to adjust the button placement and disregard the specially designed placket. This makes the skirt slightly bunchy on one side, but it's barely noticeable and I think it's a lovely style that I'll be making again - perhaps with an elastic back, though.

R picked Moriarty up as I was photographing her and I couldn't resist including this pic!

I hope we have a few more warm weekend days so R can wear her not-so-dotty top before the cooler weather sets in.

Twirly girl

Poor R has so many clothes, but nothing to wear to dance class. Until a few months ago she wore her beloved pompom tutu but it got torn, and the waiting time for repairs in this household rivals the elective surgery list in Victorian public hospitals - I'm somewhat lazy when it comes to mending. R needed something twirly, something that wouldn't get too crumpled in her dance bag, and that wouldn't take me long to sew (because I have too many other projects on the go and wasn't especially enthusiastic about this one).

Well, if I'd known that circle skirts were so quick to make I would have whipped one up a lot sooner. I used Dana's tutorial and it is very easy to follow. With just a bit of basic mathematics, no side seams and - if you use slinky synthetic stuff like I did - no hemming, it's the quickest skirt around. You don't even need to make an elastic casing, because the waist is just a nice wide piece of elastic that you sew the fabric straight on to. Go ahead and do horrid crooked sewing with lots of thread snarls like I did; it will still look great.

Check out the twirl on this one! Now that I know how little time circle skirts take to make, R can have them in as many colours and patterns as she likes.