Another Skirt and Top

In my last post, I wrote about Fleur's new skirt and top. Fleur's little sister Rose couldn't be left out, so I made her a new skirt and top this summer as well. She's 2 and a half, but the top pattern was age 4, so it was nice and loose for summer. 

Again, the skirt was a simple gathered skirt. It looks a bit long in these pictures, in fact both the skirts do. This is mainly due to the fact that these two little girls had not had lunch yet, and so their waists were a little skinnier than normal! So the skirts had slid down a bit below their waists. I offered to tighten the elastic, but their Mummy said no, just wait till they've eaten!

For details of the free pattern I used, and how I went about making these, read on.

This skirt was some thin pink cotton recycled from a valance. It was made from a rectangle using two measurements

1. Rose's waist measurement times two
2. The measurement from her waist down to the back of her knee, plus an inch and a half extra for the waistband, and an inch or so for the hem. (Normally, I'd use a deeper hem to allow for growth, but what was left for the valance didn't give me enough to do this.)

I sewed the centre back seam, and the hem (about 3/8" and 5/8" folded down), and did the same with some lining material. (The cotton was quite thin - I don't always line skirts,) I attached the lining and skirt loosely together at the top. However, as you can see below, I put the lining a little below the top of the cotton fabric, about half an inch, so that I didn't have unnecessary thickness in the waistband.

The waistband was formed by first folding that extra 1/2" over the lining to the inside, and then folding both layers over again by an inch. I stitched all the way round about 1/8" from the edge, except for a two inch gap for threading elastic through. I threaded through 19" of 3/4" elastic, overlapped by an inch, and sewed up the gap. 

In the picture below you can see the finished skirt, showing the lining.

Now the top. I had an adult T shirt which had a very pretty design on it, but the neck bindings were going, and the armpits had worn faster than the rest.

It seemed to me that I must be able to get a child's T shirt out of the good parts. I had the size 4 version of the Climbing the Willow basic bodice pattern I used for the earlier top for Fleur. (Fleur's was size 5.) This is intended as a bodice for a dress, so to make it into a top, I needed to extend it below the waist, using a strip of paper to mark the cutting line. Like this:

There were two tricky bits. One was that the design had some beading, which looked as though it would get in the way of neck bindings and armhole seams, and the other was that the position of the design was off centre, so if I made the most of the design, I would lose a shoulder strap.

You can perhaps see above, that with the left hand half of the bodice laid out trying to get above the beading, flipping it vertically to get the right hand side (equivalent to cutting on the centre fold) would end up without a shoulder strap. So I had to be inventive. There was still plenty of interesting green and pink pattern left on the part below the cut out top, so I used this to make a shoulder strap.

 Then I used as piece of pink trim that I had to cover the join, making a special feature of this little fancy bit.

The back, sleeves, and neck trim were made of other good pieces of the adult T shirt.

And here's the whole outfit.  

I struggle to get pictures of this little one - 2 and a half, and a little dynamo - standing still enough to have her photo taken in her new outift. So this is the best you are going to get!