Dress-up Vest for Small Boys

Well, specifically, for one young man who was our houseguest this week. He's 3 years old and loves dressing up. Sadly, our home is full of pink, princess and fairy outfits. So I made him and his 11-month old brother a dress-up vest to take home. It's a safety vest (good for construction, traffic control and fire-safety volunteer work)


that reverses to a cowboy/sheriff/county law-enforcement officer vest:


Not sure the bandana-print fabric is adequately masculine, but what do I know about boys' outfits, right?


I don't know how long he might wear it before he outgrows dress-up pretend play, so I made detachable nametags.


When his little brother inherits the vest, he can slap on his own name and make it his own.


No pattern - just chased the poor boy around our playroom with my measuring tape and a pencil. Then drew up the pattern quick and dug in my stash for what I could use to make it. I made it sneakily while while his family were out visiting friends and when they got home it was bedtime. So no photos of him actually modeling it. The next morning they left for the airport. For the same reason i.e. he wasn't around for a fitting, I left out the closures.

Moral of story: Always have neon yellow nylon packcloth in one's stash. Especially when little boys are visiting.

Educating Girls

Emily starts school tomorrow. Real K-12 school, I mean. With a yellow schoolbus and disciplinary handbook and everything. Jenna started preschool today. Kate and I will get to hang out together while her sisters are away. And I have to go to bed hours earlier than usual (mutter, mutter) just to get everyone where they need to be. A lot of changes.

We attended Jenna's preschool conference last week - Jenna stayed with her teachers and new classmates while Kate, Emily and I sat in a meeting room and listened to the director's briefing. It was funny and sad to have Emily sit beside me. This used to be her school a few months earlier. I used to attend briefings for her school year. Now she was this Graduated Older Sibling with Bragging Rights, sitting and listening to her ex-teacher tell other parents what she had already experienced in person the year(s) before. Surreal.

The director, as she does every year, requested that parents donate recyclable items that the school uses for crafts. Then she said, "...and if you have a big cardboard box, don't throw it away. I WANT it. We make spaceships, houses, anything. I always believe children learn more by making something than by playing with something bought that looks like it."

YES!!!!!!!!!!

I wanted to jump out of my seat, run to her and hug her. This is why we love this preschool. But she is going to have to fight me for my cardboard boxes, I'm afraid. I'm not donating them to anyone. They're minemineminemineminemine.

We sent a baby picture of Jenna along with her to school today. A print photo. Who has these nowadays, when everything is .jpg files? I had to dig around in our very meager print-photo stash. Found one - and cried. My little Jenna is in school! Yes, hurrah, but.... waaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!

Oh I am so lousy with transition!

But I am excited that the two older girls get to be with new friends they can learn with. I used to be a classroom teacher, and even though my students were much older than Emily and Jenna are, I loved watching how much they could teach and learn from each other. After the baby-photo-weeping-drama, we packed Emily's school supplies in a paper bag to bring to school. Emily was incredibly excited, and then she asked in a small voice, "will you be with me in school, Mum? Will you ride the school bus with me?"

How not to cry? How?

But I remembered my old students and told her she was going to make new friends, and some of them would be able to do things she couldn't, and some of them wouldn't be able to do any of the things she could. And they could teach each other and learn from each other. But they all needed to give each other permission. So we're going practice asking, "May I help you with that?" and "Could you please teach me that?" And that was why I was so excited for her to go to school. Peer learning is a powerful, powerful source of education - oh the things other families know that we don't! Sort of like Blogland, isn't it?

There is, of course, the horrible risk that she could also learn horrible things from horrible friends, but we hope that we have taught her enough to not choose the Path of Horribleness.

Sorry this is turning out to be a weird parenting-type post. It will only happen once a year, I promise - and only just before the kids start a new school year. One last thing on educating girls (and boys) - recently, my husband introduced me to the Khan Academy - a very, very cool site of teaching videos. Has physics!!!!!!!! Check out the list. Love it, so thought I'd share.

So anyway, we now have two girls in school. Exciting year ahead! I'll still have all three home by lunchtime so we can continue gallivanting around to parks and museums and fabric stores all week if we want to. Some things will stay the same. But for those first few new-school mornings, they 'll have a Happy Girl in their backpack pockets. And their momma's proud smile (before she collapses in a sentimental weeping mess as the school bus leaves, I mean) in their wake.

Tea Party - Behind the Scenes

So Emily is having a tea party birthday bash this year. Every year I toy with the idea of renting a jumper and combining birthdays and letting the kids entertain themselves. What fun - and everyone loves a jumper, right?

But the girls so like the lead up to the party, and they want to make everything for it. It takes a little more time, but they get so excited about being involved, so we take the plunge and do one of those self-organized parties. I read about self-organized, handmade parties all over the internet and I get the general sense that the responses to them run the spectrum from "Wow, I want to copy that!" to "That's way over-the-top. Whom are they trying to impress?"

So here I am, about to be similarly judged and you know what - I couldn't care less what the outcome is and what you all think. I'm in it for the crafts and the cardboard! Whoooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anyway, Emily is now old enough to be delegated her own tasks, which is fun to watch.

These are bracelets she made for prizes for everyone
(no wait, her grandma and I helped with some of these):

And this is a necklace she made for the Big Prize:

I'm not sharing these photos to say, "look what my daughter did - do I have a beading prodigy or what?!" (Answer = yes). I'd like to tell you a little story that made me very proud. Our initial plan (mine) was to give all the participants an Emily-made necklace as a prize for playing a game, and giving the winner of that game a toy we'd buy - a little tea set or something like that. Emily was very excited about getting to choose which toy to buy. After a few days, she came up to me and said, "Mum, I think if we gave a toy as the big prize, the other kids would feel sad that they didn't get a toy too. I think we should give the winner a (handmade) necklace, and give all the other kids (handmade) bracelets."

Moments like these make my day, I have to tell you. We have our fair share of selfish me-me-me-me outbursts in our home, but I am moved by empathy like that, in a six-year-old or anyone, really.

OK, that's enough touchy-feely stuff.

We also made a pinata. Nothing like a pinata to bash up at a dainty tea party, eh? Too much "please-thank-you-would-you-mind-passing-the-sugar-oh-what-a-lovely-hat" otherwise. There's etiquette in pinata-bludgeoning too - taking turns, asking politely for the club, not whacking the other kids in the face, thanking the person ahead for leaving some loot for you - it's all good manners.

Today we stuck on the spout, handle and little lid knob. It turned out to be a very Aladdin-esque teapot! We'll paint it next week. I like that even Kate helped make the pinata, and that she will get to help paint it (and herself, probably).



Here's a funny unrelated photo I thought I'd throw in. You all seemed to like the desperate pictorial party countdown chart I drew up for Emily in the earlier post, so I figured you might appreciate this one. Emily made this packing list herself, for our weekend trip out of town. She drew all the stuff she wanted to pack - she knew what the little pictures were, even if I didn't.


The bottom row, though, is our family. She made sure to pack us.

I'll keep taking pictures as we make more stuff for the party. Maybe it's funner to do a big reveal on the day itself but I think the prep is the best part - the girls and I get to work together to create a big mess!

Ruby and Shimmer - Finished

Remember this?


You all asked for photos, so here they are!

My parents-in-law celebrated their 40th (ruby) wedding
anniversary last weekend. It was a fun party. My mother-
in-law asked me to sew her a blouse for the event, so I did.
We didn't get many pictures of her wearing it, indoors
or out, but here's one of her (third from the left) with
my father-in-law on her left (I was not asked to sew
any part of his outfit). The other couple are dear
family friends (I don't know where they got their clothes).


My mother-in-law is a classy lady,
so I gave her some embroidery on the cuffs


and collar.


I was tempted to also embroider the button placket
but Mum (my mother) said "no, that's too much."
And she was right.

It was a very good learning experience, drafting for
another female adult. It took numerous fittings simply
because I was so inept (and nervous) in the beginning -
I always find it slightly awkward to take another
person's measurements who isn't my child.

My favorite part of this blouse is the back - the fit is
very, very nice - it sits just right. Unfortunately, my
mother-in-law never poses with her friends, with
her back to the camera, so you will have to
take my word for it.

Updates

Back from a hectic weekend to a home full of houseguests. Yesterday I only got to sit down at about 930pm. Literally. The husband and I looked at each other and asked ourselves, "what was that?" It felt as if our day was a black hole - it happened but we had no recollection of it. I'm getting some snippets of memory back today - I remember going to some kind of preconference with Jenna at her preschool, promising some mother a playdate (who was it? who was it?), buying bread, picking up an immunization form, baking cookies, laundering sheets, replacing sheets, turning out closets, throwing out ALL our cardboard structures (wail!), throwing something meat-ish in the crock pot, spraying OFF on children's (hopefully mine, in faith), running baths, drawing something for someone to color, wiping up a red spot of something on the kitchen floor. I hope it wasn't blood. I think it was melted popsicle. Please let it have been melted popsicle.

A normal-sounding day for a lot of you fabulous multitasking moms and dads out there. But sort of a crazy day for us unused to this sort of discombobulation. Still, we are enjoying our houseguests very much, so it is a very good tradeoff!

But anyway, just wanted to shove my nose in here, between drafting posts to say hi and sorry that all your emails and comments and requests and packages of gifts and packages arrived and fell right into our black hole as well. I got them all, and I am slowly getting sifting through everything.

And then my lovely friend Jen sent an email to say her drafting post was all ready to go. Lifesaver! At least the blog will go on, even if the rest of life is stuck in the slow lane. LiEr signing off now and heading to the closet for nutella and tea. Go read Jen's post!

Drafting Part VIII - Necklines, Facings and The Sleeveless Armscye

Hello back from the weekend, everyone! We're in the middle of our series on drafting now, so let's do a recap for those just joining us. We've talked about drafting and measuring, and made our front and back slopers. Then Jen from My Measuring Tape took us through sleeve drafting, sleeve fitting and sleeve adaptation. In this brilliant next post, Jen will discuss necklines! But there's more - read on and learn

• why facings are as much a part of drafting as they are of sewing,
• how to adapt the basic sloper for different necklines and
• how to concurrently adapt the sloper armsyce for sleeveless patterns.

Here's Jen!

To me, necklines are the unsung heroes in drafting and clothing design. A neckline is a very simple thing to change up, and each modification can very dramatically, or subtly, create a whole new look to the same dress/blouse pattern. As I said, a neckline is a very easy thing to change. You just draw a new style line, literally. Following from the sloper draft shown by LiEr in the early posts, your basic bodice block has a round-neck, or jewel, neckline. You can change this to any number of different necklines by the end of this tutorial, I think!

But before we talk about how to change a neckline, I need to explain to you about facings. A neckline facing is a piece of fabric that is sewn to neckline edge in order to retain the shape and to create a neat finish at the neckline. There are other ways to finish the neckline edge, like binding and overlocking (as a decorative element also). But to me, using a facing guarantees a very clean finish and neckline shape.

How to make a facing

1. On the front bodice pattern, draw a line, following the shape of the neckline, about 1.5" to 2" wide of the original neckline.

2. Do the same on the back bodice.

3. There you have your facing pattern. Trace onto another piece of paper and cut out the facing.

4. When cutting out the facing from fabric, add a seam allowance on the neckline and shoulder seams exactly the same amount as on the bodice neckline and bodice shoulder seams. There is no need to add seam allowance to the bottom of the facing. Just serge or overlock with a zig-zag stitch to contain the raw edge there.

5. When making up the facing, attach the facing pieces at the shoulder seams first, before attaching the facing to the bodice neckline.

6. If you intend the dress/blouse to be sleeveless, then you should bring the shoulder point in by about 3/8" (before making the facing). Redraw the armscye.*

*Note- you need to bring in the shoulder point to accommodate a sleeveless blouse/dress so that the garment hangs properly on your shoulders. Have you ever tried to hang a sleeveless dress or blouse on a hanger that doesn't stick out far enough beyond the armholes? The dress or blouse tends to slide off the hanger on one side doesn't it? This is because there isn't enough width on the hanger to properly balance the weight of the garment pulling down from the hanger. This very same principle applies when wearing a garment that is even just slightly too wide for your shoulders. The garment will pull down more on one shoulder than the other. Theoretically, a custom-drafted shoulder width on your sloper shouldn't be too wide, but based on the hanger principle, your true shoulder width (between the two shoulder points) isn't wide enough to balance the weight of the garment hanging from your shoulders. Since you can't increase your shoulder width without going for extensive surgery, it only makes sense that you should therefore reduce the shoulder length on the garment itself. This problem doesn't occur in a sleeved garment because the sleeves themselves act as balancing counter-weights, pulling the garment down from both shoulder points as well as from the lengths of the shoulders. So why don't we just draft the sleeved sloper with an already-reduced shoulder length, you ask? We don't because then the garment will look obviously too narrow across the upper chest, with sleeves that will look like it is straining over the ball of your shoulders and also pulling the fabric horizontally in both directions across the upper chest.

7. You then incorporate an armscye facing with the neck facing to create a single facing which will accommodate both the sleeveless armscye and the neckline.
8. Do the same for the back.

9. Add seam allowances (SA) to the facings as described above. Also add SA to the armscye as well.

Now let's move on to drafting various necklines.


Boat-neck
1. On the front sloper, mark a point about 1" up from the shoulder point on the shoulder seam.

2. From this point, draw a gentle curve to meet with the Center Front (CF) point of the neckline.

3. On the back bodice, mark a point about 1" up from the shoulder point on the shoulder seam. Then mark a point 1" (or less or more, depending on your design) down from the jewel neckline on the Center Back (CB). Connect the 2 points with a gentle curve.

4. Make the facing for the front (and back), following the line of the boat neck. Remember to double up at CF for the front and make 2 separate pieces for the back. Add the SA to the facings.

5. If you intend the dress/blouse to be sleeveless, then you should bring the shoulder point in by about 3/8" (before making the facing).

6. From this point, draw a smooth curve to a point about two-thirds of the way down, on the armscye. Do the same for the back.

7. Make a single facing for the neckline and armscye.

V-neck

1. On the front sloper, mark a point about 1.5" down from the bottom of the neckline at the CF.

2. Next, measure and mark a point 3/8"-1/2" down from the side neck point.

3. Connect the 2 points.

Note: if you skip step 2, you might end up with a line that cuts across the original jewel line...

...creating a very tight fit at that point around the neck, and make a mess of the fit on the upper torso. So please move the side neck point (step 2) when drafting a v-neck. You can reduce the distance to 1/4" at a time if you prefer.

4. Cut out the new neckline.

5. Draw in the facing.

6. The back neckline can remain as a jewel neckline or you can make a V-neck similar to the front, or with a longer/shorter depth at CB. Make the back facing in the same way but in 2 pieces to accommodate a CB opening.


Tank

1. Move the shoulder point in 3/8" and redraw the armscye.

2. From the new shoulder point, mark a point 1" (or less/more depending on your design) up on the shoulder seam.

3. Mark a point 2" (or less/more) from the bottom of the jewel neckline on the CF. Draw a reference line across the bodice from this point.

4. From the point marked in step 2, you can either draw a vertical line (A) straight down or an angled one (B) to meet with the reference line. The angle of the line depends on your own taste/preference/design.

5. Curve out the corner created.

6. Make a facing by drawing a horizontal line straight across the front bodice, about 2 inches below the bottom of the armscye.

7. Repeat all steps for the back. You can increase or decrease the back neckline depth according to preference.



Do you see a duplicatable pattern emerging?

You can really create a LOT of different necklines quickly and with very little fuss. To me, the facings are the key. Yes, binding the raw edges work, but you won't get a sharp, clean finish if you want more interesting shapes to your neckline.

Like these, for example:

LiEr: Brilliant post, Jen! The basics of neckline adaptation with all the important principles so you can take off from here to make your own patterns - scoop necks, square necks, keyholes, limited only by your imagination!

A small sewing tip: There are times when, despite your best efforts to stay-stitch unfaced necklines (eee, I disprefer), understitch facings, or otherwise stabilize your necklines, you might find that your necklines gape a little. This could be the result of several factors including but not limited to

• original sloper draft was too roomy in the upper chest
• neckline was cut too low and/or too wide for your particular body shape/degree of endowment
  
• too much messing about with the neckline prior to facing it
• general bad luck, poor room fengshui or someone hexed your sewing space

There are many ways to cure this, including burning the garment and starting over and taking in the shoulder seams (but this means possibly adjusting many other places as well, like darts, armscye, waist etc). If the gape in the neckline is small, a quick fix is pintucks. I've used this with a recent scoop neckline that ended up needing to be taken in by 1/2". It was not a lot, but too much to be left unchanged. So instead of making a huge 1/4' wide dart in the middle and sticking a hideous applique over it, I split it into 4 evenly-spaced pintucks and made a design of it. I'll show a photo of it at some point in some post to come!

Last word on necklines: we're choosing not to do a section on collars and leaving it at just adaptable necklines. One reason is that many children's dresses are good with just interesting necklines. Also there are already many tutorials out on the internet on drafting a basic shirt collar, or collar with stand, or peter pan collar. It's a very simple process - so just google discerningly and you should be able to find what you're looking for.