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This is driving me nuts. For the last couple of seasons I keep seeing these adorable crochet lace jackets for tots and little girls, but I can't find a pattern anywhere. Last year I tried to copy a crochet top bubble jumper that I saw and ended up with something that will fit V *this* summer, when she'll probably want to potty train. Duh! So I'd really rather make a jacket from a pattern than try to figure it out for myself. Why aren't the designers up on this?
I sacrificed listening to Heidi's radio show today (*sniff*) for the greater good (a.k.a. peace in our household): I finally sewed together a stuffed Buggalo for three-year-old Annika. One of Annika's favorite TV shows is Futurama, and her favorite character is Amy Wong. Amy Wong's parents own half of Mars and raise buggalo - buffalo sized bugs - and Amy's favorite pet buggalo is named Betsy. AJ has been begging me for months to make her her favorite pet, and today I finally caved and made a Betsy for Annika.
I sketched out a rough pattern for a leg (x12), a flat belly, a wing (x2), a flat under-head, a half top-head (x2), and a bug bottom (a little triangle to sew between the rear of the wings to suggest a hard bug body underneath). Buggalos are classic black-and-white cow colored with pink underbellies, so we bought black and white fur, pink flannel, and black pleather for the legs.
I cut the pattern for all the top parts bigger, and took a few tucks here and there to shape Betsy and give her some roundness and volume on top. The most annoying part was placing the stuffed legs inside the flat right-sides-together body to sew in place; keeping each set of legs at matching angles when the legs were inside a shapeless fuzzy empty Betsy body was a little challenging.
The end result won't win me any sewing awards - there are definitely a few things I'd do differently next time - but Annika is overjoyed with her new buggalo Betsy.
I knocked out a pullover flared & tiered dress for the twirling dervish today. Now that the weather is chilly, Annika only wants to wear dresses (naturally), and the bigger (longer, swirlier) and more princess-like the better. The fabric store was having a pattern sale so I picked up a few patterns and selected the poofiest one to start with: McCall's M4814.
As I did all the cutting and finished sewing the bodice and most of the tiers before the client came home, not knowing patterns generally run large I played it safe and made the next size up. It'll be a couple years until she grows into it (damn it's big)! She was barely a 4 and I made a generous 5. After turning up the ends I took an additional full inch hem on it just to keep it off the ground. I can pick up a pin to gather the back of the bodice until she grows into it, but the Little Miss is tickled to death with how twirly the skirt is. "It's a beauuuuteeeeful dress, Mommy! Thank you!"
(I thank her, for being such an easy-to-please client.)
Difficulty Rating: 2.5 out of 10 (10 being difficult, 1 being easy)
Toughest Part: Looots of gathering, then matching smaller non-gathered pieces to larger gathered ones. It took some time. No zippers or buttons though!
Total Sewing Time: 2-3 hours (incl. cutting and some hand-sewing on the bodice lining. I'm passing on the rick-rack trim.)
Between the extreme girlieness I have been sewing for AJ and my Scrabulous addiction on Facebook, my dreams have turned into weird pink problem-solving affairs where I'm trapped in yards of gathers and lettered tiles. But I digress!
Here is the latest offering - New Look 6582 - modeled by it's muse. It's so pink. It's so froofy. She loves it. It wasn't that hard to make, and due to the endless tiers of gathers you can be fairly sloppy with the sewing and it's pretty forgiving. She is a size 4, I sewed a size 4, and miraculously everything fit. The waist is big enough that if the skirt survives long enough for it to get tight, I can pop open the waistband and insert longer elastic. Easy peasy, but maybe not necessary given the pattern size goes from 3-8 and was so easy to put together. Once again, the only "difficultly" was evenly easing out the gathered tiers to match up to each other and sew - and truth be told that wasn't very hard.
Sewing time: 2 hours
Difficultly: 2 out of 10 (10 being tough, 1 being easy)
My model shows that the sweater is too large, so now I am knitting a smaller size. *sigh*
