A Laure qipao dress

Three years ago I made a qipao (also known as a cheongsam) for R in a brocade fabric. She loved the style and the shiny material, but it was poor quality and didn't wear too well. The front opening was also difficult for R to do up herself, and I remember thinking that next time I made a qipao I would try to redesign it with a back closure. When I saw that An of Straight Grain had released a qipao pattern with a back zipper I was super excited and bought it right away!

This dress was such a pleasure to sew. There are several different options for sleeves, neckline and even dress shape, but I went for the traditional qipao style and opted for the short sleeves. R is never a straight size, so based on her measurements I made size 5 width with size 8 length, and it proved to be spot-on for size (I sewed up the bodice lining to use as a muslin before cutting into my main dress fabric, and I really recommend doing this to check if the fit is right).

In her blog post announcing the release of the Laure dress, An included a clip from the film In the Mood for Love, in which a woman in a qipao carries an enamel thermos. It just so happens that I have a small collection of Chinese enamel thermoses, so I decided to give a few of them a starring role in my photo shoot - it's not often that they get to actually be useful!

The fabric is from Birch Fabrics' organic 'Acorn Trail' range and I've been hoarding it for a couple of years, waiting for a special project. I adore the colours and the vintage-style rose design, and the cotton is so smooth and soft. For the piping and lining I used a coral-coloured cotton from Spotlight and I have to say, it was not easy finding this matching shade! R's scrunchie is made from a pattern from Kids Clothes Style Book.

I'm so, so happy with this beautiful dress. The simplified qipao design works really well and the shape of the dress retains the traditional fitted shape of the bodice without being too constricting in the lower part. R wore her qipao to a local lunar new year festival today and had no trouble climbing in the playground and doing some hula-hooping - check out this amazing performer!

Next I'm looking forward to trying out the drop-waisted Laure dress with the pussy bow. In the meantime I predict that R's new qipao is going to get a lot of love from her!

A few weeks ago I saw a little girl in the playground wearing a cute dress with a shirred top and a double skirt and decided to copy it using pattern G from Kids Clothes Style Book. This pattern is for a simple sundress with five narrow elastic casings at the top, which were rather frustrating to sew and to fit to R's chest properly - shirring would have been a whole lot easier. I adapted the pattern by adding an elastic casing at the waist and an extra skirt section (with the fabric the wrong way around, if you look closely... I didn't have enough to cut a piece the right way).

One very pretty feature of this pattern is the straps, which tie in a bow at the back - R loves this detail! I do think the straps could be a little narrower, though, as they tend to gather up a bit at the front.

It's got a bit of a puffy look around the chest and I'm not sure if it's been a totally successful experiment, but R really, really adores this dress. The fabric is one of Spotlight's wonderful Japanese lawns - an old one from my stash - and it is very light and breezy to wear, which as just as well since Melbourne summer has arrived with a vengeance!

The four tops

Today's post bundles together four tops, so I couldn't resist the musical reference to the Motown greats!

Up first is a top from this Japanese sewing book, which I wanted to try as I was curious about the construction of the sleeves and the insert below them. It's a really nice, simple style with buttons down the back (I used snaps instead). The fabric is a light cotton from my stash with a seersucker-like wave to it. In the bottom set of photos you can see the side view of the sleeve and also the side slits - a lovely detail, I think.

Next up is a peplum top from the magazine Cotton Friend: Kids. This cute little number features an elasticised back with crossover straps. I used a linen-lookalike cotton from Spotlight. The pattern was really confusing and I still can't work out why I ended up with an extra (unused) pattern piece - most perplexing! In the end I just looked at the photos and figured it out from there.

This Oliver + S school bus t-shirt sat around my sewing space for some months due to indecision about which colour neckband to use. Finally guilt got the better of me and I just grabbed some grey ribbing and finished it. I made the stupid mistake of not shortening the neckband enough and consequently the fit around the neck isn't great. I should really re-do it - but will I ever get around to it, I wonder? The fabric is a knit from Spotlight.

Lastly, I couldn't resist this cute strawberry print - so summery! I really wish I could find something similar in a swimwear fabric. The pattern is the girl's singlet from Small Dreamfactory - a lovely FREE pattern that goes from 9 months to size 14. As I did with the one I made last summer, I crossed the straps at the back and added a little width to the front and gathered it.

But wait - that's not all! I put a photo of these up on Instagram on the weekend, but here they are in more detail: my two fruit bags from Cotton Friend: Kids. The pineapple is kind of a backpack with drawstrings; the strawberry is a little drawstring pouch. They were fun to sew and R pounced on them as soon as they were done, destroying my plan to give one away as a gift. I guess I might have to sew some more, then...

And that's all from me for today, except for this one last pic: R was adamant that there had to be a photo of her eating the strawberry, so here it is!

A denim skirt and a terry top

A few weeks ago I made the great trek across Melbourne to go the The Fabric Store's sale and walked out with the most stunning French terry in a magnificent, almost fluorescent, shade of orangey-red on the outside and yet another hard-to-describe shade of yellowy-orange on the inside. Not the sort of colours I usually go for, but I fell in love and had to have it.

I used it to make pattern Q from Kids' Clothes Style Book: a loose-fitting raglan-sleeved top with three-quarter sleeves and a high-low hem. Of course I had to make the most of the beautiful inside of the fabric, so I used it to make flat piping for the raglan seams and rolled up the sleeves to make cuffs.

The skirt is BurdaStyle's girls' metallic skirt, which I made in denim. Simple enough to sew, provided you don't mind making up your own instructions as the ones provided are exceptionally brief (directions for sewing the fly were particularly unhelpful). I followed 'instructions' religiously when cutting the waistband but I'm sure it's meant to be significantly wider as it turned out too narrow for a decent-sized button, and it looks different from that shown in the pattern photograph. I would have redone it, but didn't have enough fabric as I was already using leftover scraps from a previous project. I wound up using a bar fastener in lieu of a button and also adding buttonhole elastic to the back section of the waist to ensure a good fit (a wise move, as it turned out).

R snatched the skirt from me the moment it was finished, which surprised me a bit, given that it lacks colour, glitter, decoration and cat motifs. The whole outfit looks quite grown-up compared to some most of her other clothes, but happily she's still a bubble-blowing little girl whose favourite food is fairy bread and who teaches a class of Beanie Boos in her bedroom every day after school.

Dress with box pleats

Another winter dress for R, if only to give the Arrietty outfit a break (it was worn five days in a row last week!). This is dress V from Kids' Clothes Style Book, a really cute pattern book from the same designer as Kids' Clothes Sewing Lesson Book. Both books include patterns for boys and girls, and both have a practical but stylish vibe - lots of basics, but with little details that make them special. This is one of the dressier designs, but still very wearable.

The dress has beautiful box pleats, in-seam pockets and three-quarter sleeves. Unusually for a Japanese pattern, it also has a zip at the back. Thanks to the zip fastening it's quite a fitted dress. I sewed size 110 with size 120 length and the fit is perfect.

I made the dress in a super-soft pinwale corduroy and lined it fully with the kind of slippery, synthetic lining stuff that I usually avoid because I can't stand dealing with its fluffy, fraying edges - but I thought R would appreciate the slinky, non-sticking quality of the lining. The pattern is designed just to have facings, so adding the lining provided me with no end of problem-solving opportunities, the first of which was figuring out what to do about the pleats. Having tackled this conundrum (I treated the outer and lining as one and pleated them together) I battled through several more, eventually managing to achieve a reasonably successful lining, although it's a bit dodgy around the zip area.

R put the new dress through its paces, climbing a tree, throwing a hoop and scooting - all as I was trying to get some photos. It was freezing today and so our shoot was short and sweet. I totally failed to get a photo of the lining, but if you just imagine some silky greyish stuff with embarrassingly childish hand-stitching around the zip, you'll get the idea. And if anyone has any suggestions for tights-friendly alternatives to Spotlight-style slippery lining, I'll be very interested!

KCW: Japanese culottes and a Japanese top

Started well before Kid's Clothes Week, then put on the backburner, here's a little outfit I made for R: a pair of culottes with a piped yoke (and side pockets, yay) and a simple knit top with an interesting shoulder detail. The culottes are from my newest Japanese pattern book Kids Clothes Style Book and I made them in the same beautiful Three Cats shweshwe fabric that I used for R's kimono slippers. I'm really happy with the style and the fit of this cute little skort, and it works well with tights underneath in our cool Autumn weather.

The top is pattern 8 from Fu-Ko Basics and, while it's hard to tell from the illustration contained in the book, it has an unusual design with the back piece extending over the shoulders to form an interesting seam detail at the front (which I totally failed to photograph properly). The back hem is a little lower than the front hem, which is another nice feature. For this top I used a not-too-stretchy cotton knit from Spotlight; good thing I bought heaps of it on clearance as my first top ended up too wide at the neck and I had to throw it out and start again. This top is intended to have a wide neckline, but taking a few centimetres off the neck width ended up being a very helpful adjustment.

It rained solidly all day today and the light indoors was rather gloomy, so photographing this outfit wasn't much fun. But never mind, R likes her new clothes and happily wore them for the rest of the day. Now to work on a much-needed winter coat!