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Soon there will be pictures of my favourite projects here to help you navigate to the best bits. In the meantime, use the tabs or the search box. There are specific tabs for making babies' and children's dresses, and things, with legs (shorts, trousers, pants, PJs etc), plus a more general Make Baby /Child Clothes tab for other sorts of garments (e.g. skirts) and mixed (e.g. PJs with pants and a top). 

This year's summer shorts - Superheroes mark 1 - Oliver+S pattern review

This post is going to be part pattern review and part tutorial. And part - how to get kids shorts out of two fat quarters. 

I started with the aim of using the Oliver+S Sunny Day shorts pattern (a free PDF) and reviewing it. But I found I had so much more to say than what a good pattern this is, and how grateful I am to the author, that it's also become something of a tutorial on how to get the best out of it.

An A-line dress with a bodice yoke and layers

This is yet another variation on the basic A-line dress - the most versatile dress style there is, in my humble opinion! This one has a bodice yoke, and a deep frill. You could do more layers, or course. 

Here's how to make something like this delightful little rabbit dress.

Wrap dress for girls - a Tulip Hem dress for 5 and 7 years - with thanks to BloomsnBugs

Two to three years ago, I was busy making Tulip Hem dresses from the Blooms and Bugs pattern, designed for c. 3 year olds. (Big thanks to the BloomsnBugs blog!) See my earlier post. But I haven't made any since then, because I haven't had three-year-olds to make dresses for. The Tulip Hem dress is a pretty design, with a wrap over front. Here's one I made earlier for Jane when she was 3.

Although BloomsnBugs fasten theirs with buttons, I used strings (a pair inside and out) to allow for growth widthwise. 

Read on to see how to make one in a larger size (with a new free pattern).

My free PDF patterns - tutorial

On my blog, I've provided a number of free PDF patterns. I'm not a professional designer, these are all things I've made successfully for my grand-children. So I don't have sophisticated layers, or A0 printing, or 12 sizes on each pattern - they are fairly simple. But you may want a few tips for how to use them.

They are intended for printing at home, on either A4 paper or letter paper. You should download them and print them from your computer, for example using Adobe Acrobat, rather than printing them out directly from the internet - that way you can control the printing size. They should all be printed 'Actual Size' i.e. no scaling. They should also be printed single-sided if there is more than one page. (I've made that mistake before, when I forgot the printer had last printed a double-sided document.)

All include seam allowance as described in the relevant tutorial. On most patterns, this is 3/8" or 1 cm. But check the tutorials.

There are four different types, which will need to be used in slightly different ways.

1) On some patterns, such as the Girls' Wrap Dress, the pattern runs to a few pages (but not dozens!) They all include a test square, generally on Page 1, so I suggest you print just that page first to check it is printing correctly. These patterns have letters to indicate which pages join together. But the pattern is all contained within a border. You can either trim off all the borders after printing and put the sheets edge to edge to join them, or (my preference) just trim one of two adjacent borders, and move the trimmed piece so that the edge overlaps the untrimmed sheet. (You may need to trim, say, a side and a top border from some pages.) This shows (on another draft pattern) how the pages overlap and the letters, A, B, C etc match up. The letters may be in circles or diamonds.

Use sticky tape or stick glue to attach them together. Then you can trace the size you want, or cut round the size you want, ready to use to cut out your fabric. Note the markings:

• Straight grain - the pattern piece should be placed on the straight grain i.e. parallel to the selvedge
• Place on fold - the fabric should be folded so you put this line against the fold - do not cut along this line.
• The small circles in the corners of pattern pieces mark the seam allowance. (On multi-size patterns, having the complete seam allowance drawn in could be very confusing!)
• The small triangles on the edges of each pattern piece are so that you can match them when sewing seams.

2) Like the Girls' Wrap Dress, some other patterns also include a test square for sizing, and should be attached together after printing, in the same way. However, I made a decision on patterns like the A-line dress, not to draw out the entire pattern for you to print, as it would run to many pages. Some of these might be more or less blank, or just have one line on them - a waste of printing ink!. So on the A-line dress, I've provided you with (most of) the bodice on just 4 printed sheets, and given measurements so you can extend the side seams to the appropriate length. 

You can either lay the pattern, once you've cut round or traced the size you want, on another large sheet of paper (I use broadsheet newspapers or spare wrapping paper saved for pattern making), and complete the pattern. Or you can place your pattern piece on the fabric and draw the extension lines directly on to the fabric. I usually prefer to make a complete pattern so I can easily re-use it.

3) Some, especially doll patterns, or very small baby clothing like hats or boleros, fit on one sheet. Most of these are drawn on 1" or 1/2" graph paper so that you can check they have printed the right size. Once printed (and the size checked) you can just cut out the pattern piece.

4) My dining harness pattern, as an example, is quite large. It is also drawn on graph paper, but it has several sheets. There is a layout plan provided (on P3) and each sheet has alphabetical letters to show which pages join to each other. 

However, all the borders (the part of the page which doesn't have graph squares) should be trimmed off, and the pattern then joins edge to edge. The best plan is to put them together with sticky tape. Alternatively, you can just trim one on the joining border and use stick glue or tape to overlap the pages so the pattern edges meet. On one page, note that the pattern piece does not reach the border, so the piece needs to be further trimmed to the line with the letters, so that the letters meet the letters on the piece to which it attaches.

Tutorial for lined or faced bodices - and how to include tabs or strings

I make a lot of tops and dresses for my grand-daughters that call for a lining or a facing. This may be a facing round the armholes and the neckline........

... or one that just covers the neckline .........

.... or it may be a fully-lined bodice, seen here from the outside .....

.... and the inside.

This is often a good way to fashion a front or back opening with tabs or strings as closures. But it may not be self-evident how to incorporate these features neatly. If you haven't done this before, here's how.

Play All Day Dress - free PDF Pattern Review from Its Always Autumn

Fleur hates fussy dresses. It's not so long since she refused to wear a dress at all, even for church. But  she started school a year ago, and the uniform is a dress or skirt - all the girls wear them, and she has no choice. And strangely, she will now on occasion accept wearing a dress, But no frills. Not pink. Nothing 'itchy'. So far, she accepted this tartan dress for Christmas, and this black and white dress in the spring. But that only gives her a limited number of dresses, and she's attending a four day Hindu wedding. So she needed a couple more. Here's the first. She chose the fabric herself. And the simple as can be design was one she could accept.

More stuff made with fat quarters

A couple of years ago, I set myself the challenge of seeing what I could get in the baby clothing line with each garment coming from a single fat quarter. Now the children are older, I don't think that's possible any more, apart from maybe some more mittens and hats. But occasionally our fabric store has a special deal on fat quarters and I can pick some up inexpensively, so I buy more than one. (Fat quarters normally cost more per metre than regular fabric.)

Here are just a few of the things I've made using 1, 2, 3, or 4 fat quarters in the past two years!

pinafore dress

This summer, Rose, 4, said she would like a pinafore dress to wear with T shirts. I had made one in a tartan pleated style for her cousin eighteen months earlier, using an adaptation of the Ikatbag shortalls pattern, but that pattern was too small for Rose now. I needed to make it in a 5-6. So Rose's grey and floral pinafore dress below was from my pattern based loosely on the Ikatbag pattern. (If you need a size 2-3, then by all means use the Ikatbag pattern.)

Girl Patterns - Baby Girls - Page 1, 3 months to crawling

This two-page post reviews some of my favourite free PDF patterns for baby girls, from about 3 months old to toddler age. If you specifically want clothes for baby boys, see this post. I'll be doing posts for older girls later.

I've been making baby and children's clothes for the past 5 and a half years, when I first became a grandmother. I hadn't made many since my own children were babies, and the difference between then and now is that there are many people now who provide free PDF patterns on the internet. (Though I still had a handful of paper patterns from 30 years ago.) So I've devoted my blog to searching out and reviewing free PDF patterns for babies and children.

I have a separate series of posts for newborn patterns, for boys and girls. Regular readers of my blog will know that I generally try to dissuade people from making the smallest 0-3 month sizes - they may never fit, or may be outgrown faster than you can change a nappy. . But I know many people want to make them anyway. If that's you, off you go to my other post, and come back here when you want to make baby girl clothes in larger sizes.

Note that at the time of writing, all these patterns were free. Pattern designers are often generous enough to offer some taster patterns, which is a great way to decide if you like the patterns from these designers before you move on to paid-for patterns. Please ensure that you acknowledge them, as I always do, if you want to use the patterns or write about them. Not all of them want their patterns used commercially (for example if you are selling items you make for a profit.)

How happy I am when the clothes get worn!

How I love it when the clothes I make for my grand-children are worn from choice! Of course, when they are young, they don't get much choice over what they will wear, but as they get older, they are particular. For instance, one of my grand-daughters from 2 to 5 refused to wear a dress,  whereas one of her cousins refused at the same age to wear anything BUT a dress.

So if they don't like something I've made - they won't wear it! And I'm delighted when I see them choosing Grandma's clothes. Here are Fleur, then 4, and Rose, 3. They are visiting their other grandpa thousands of miles from home. Fleur is in her newest Grandma-made shorts, and Rose has stolen Fleur's from last year, because she's always loved them and now they fit her. 

Monkey Bar Skirt/Shorts pattern review

I'd been meaning to try the Hey June Monkey Bar Skirt for some time, and I finally got round to it this summer. It's everything I hoped it would be.  I'm now two down, and others planned. Here are the first two.

The idea of this skirt / shorts is that little girls can (as little girls do) hang upside down on a monkey bar, without revealing their underwear. I made some minor modifications to suit us, but other than that I followed the Hey June tutorial. To find her free pattern and find out what I did with it, read on!

Making curved or flared frills, skirts, shorts and sleeves using the Slash and Spread method

When I first started on this post, I'd intended just to cover adding a curved frill to the bottom of an A-line dress. But I've realised that the method, called slash and spread, is the same for any time you want to make a flared or curved pattern, so I'm killing a few birds with one stone. However, I will cover a curved frill, because that may be how you arrived at this post!

I will also cover:

• making a twirly skirt pattern
• using the same approach for flared shorts or culottes
• a hack for flutter sleeves
• and a cowl neck.

How to make a cowl top - the easy way

For the birthday of one of my daughters, I had ear-marked some stretch silk jersey, and found the cowl hack I'd used earlier.

I adapted a simple tunic or blouse pattern to make into a cowl top, it's easy to do, and I think looks effective. She's happy with the top and wore it to work the very same day. I did make her a belt to wear with it, but she liked it as it was without.To find out how easy it is to adapt a pattern into a cowl neck pattern, read on.

Some fabric I didn't like - and how to avoid it!

Do you ever get a project that's bad from start to finish? This was one of them. So my only purpose in blogging about it is to help you avoid the same mistake. The mistake was buying this fabric in the first place! I had bought quantities of some fabric I thought was very pretty on the internet - in two colourways. And as soon as I started using it, I hated it! But I'd committed to make two of my grand-daughters dresses out of the wretched stuff, so I persevered. And finally, the end result was OK - for a while. Pretty, aren't they?

So if you have also given in to - I don't know what to call it - the urge to buy something without thinking it through - you may have sympathy with me. If you have also fallen into a desire to buy this type of fabric - then you can find out below what I've learnt.

Yes, this is the fabric. It looks very pretty. It's stretchy, and it has little frills of fabric all over it. I bought this kingfisher coloured version, and one in deep pink - you could perhaps call it magenta, or raspberry, similar to the pink flowers in this kingfisher version. So what's not to like?   If you want to find out, read on!

Free Tank Top Patterns for Kids

I'm always very grateful when pattern designers release a few patterns free. If nothing else, it enables you to decide which designers to follow. I don't want to start by shelling out for a pattern that doesn't work! Some people are not designers at all, in the sense that they don't sell their patterns; they are, like me, doting Grandmas or Mums (or Moms, in the US), who like making children's clothes, and to share what they can.

I've made a few tank tops in my time - perhaps not as many as other people, because some of my grand-daughters (or their mothers) like to keep their shoulders covered. But in the course of doing this, I've found a few patterns that have worked for me.

 Here's my most recent effort - the straps are not  really as lop-sided as they look!

To find my favourite free PDF tank top patterns, read on.

Making a little tank top from a bigger one!

I have had in my wardrobe for a couple of years a D&G tank top that I really loved - but I've gone off wearing tank tops myself. So I thought I'd make it even smaller and make a nice tank top for one of my grand-daughters. 

It's not difficult to make small clothes from larger ones. In fact, it's very easy from a large man's T shirt. Making them from a garment that is already not very large is more or a challenge, but it can be done, and you can find out how below.

The Versatile A-line dress

There are so many things you can do with a basic A-line dress. I'll be showing you how to modify a basic A-line pattern to make different styles of dress in my next few posts. All of these dresses are variations which can easily be made. 

To find out how, read on.

Different ways of closing a back neckline

My A-line dress has a top back neck opening, that is faced, and meets edge to edge. There are lots of ways you can close it. Here are some alternatives.

Note that only the first can be done at the end of making the dress or bodice, and this is the method used in the A-line dress basic tutorial. Any of the others have to be done while or before attaching any facing or linings.

Button and thread loop

This method can be done as the final step of making a dress or top. In order to sew on a button, though, you need more than layer of fabric to attach it to. So I'll assume you have a facing or neck binding to which a button can be attached.

I like to attach the button/s first, so that I can accurately size the loop. If you have just two layers of thin fabric, (i.e. no interfacing), it's a good idea to sew or press a small piece of interfacing in between the bodice and the interfacing to give the button some support (and perhaps lessen the risk of it ripping off).

I usually make a thread loop with a few strands of thread sized to fit the button, with button hole stitching around the threads. The picture below comes from Ysolda.com, a lovely site with mainly knitting patterns, but she also gives a very clear explanation of this method.

There are two You tube videos that give two alternative methods of creating the loop. One is the one I've described briefly above, the several strands oversewn by button hole stitch. The second is this chain stitch version. This doesn't have commentary, but it is clear what is being done, except that I don't see her check that size against the button before finishing the stitching. However, it is a neat and easy way to make a loop button hole. Plus Melly Sews also has a clear explanation, here.......


Here's one I made in chain stitch using cord elastic.

Button and elastic loop

I have some nice variegated rainbow-coloured cord elastic that I often use to make button loops. Here, I've taken a fuchsia pink piece of it to make a loop on this dress. In this case, I did sew the loop on before attaching the button, as it needs to be encased between the facing and the bodice. (You could attach it afterwards, but it's not as neat.) I'd intended it to be on the other side, but I got it wrong!

Sewing over the elastic to hold it in place can be tricky, so I usually first hand-sew a few stitches through and round the elastic to hold it in place, before using the machine. You can find out how I suggest attaching loops into the facing, below.

Button and fabric  loop

These next three pictures all have sewn fabric loops with buttons. In general, these work best with larger buttons, and can only really be done with a fairly thin fabric. In fact, I used the lining fabric to make the loops in all three cases, rather than the main fabric. The first two have the loops trapped between the lining or facing and the outer fabric, so they were attached while attaching the lining or facing. In the third example, the loop was attached later, as it was a last minute decision to put a button and loop at the top of the zipper. I think I attached it between between the top part of the zipper and the outer fabric.

To make fabric button loops, I usually start with a piece of thin fabric cut on the bias. (You may not need to cut on the bias if your material has some stretch or give in it.) I make it  about 3/4"-1" wide, 2-3" long - longer is better, as you can always cut some off but you can't add to it later! First, fold and press it in half lengthways. Then open out the fold, and press the sides into the centre fold, and press again. In other words, you now have a strip about 1/8"-1/4" wide, with the raw edges folded into the middle. Sew along the open edge with a narrow zig zag stitch so as to maintain a little stretch in the loop.

There is an alternative way to make a thin loop for a button loop, which is described on the Sewguide.com web site. This method makes a fabric tube (as you would for much wider straps), sews them RIGHT sides together first, and then reverses them by means of pulling a thin trapped cord. I have done this, though I start with the thin cord inside the tube and attach it to one end, before pulling it through. I also use a much smaller seam allowance then is suggested on the Sewguide site.

Tab with snap fasteners

Tabs can fasten on the outside, as in the above example, making a feature of them.
 Or they can fasten on the inside, and be largely hidden from view, as in this example.

To make the tabs, I start with a small scrap of fabric about 3 1/2" - 4" long by 1 1/2" - 1 3/4" wide. (That would be c. 8.75 cm - 10 cm long by 3.75 cm - 4.5 cm.). I attach iron-on interfacing to the wrong side. Then I fold it in half right sides together so it's roughly square, and sew down the two sides. I then trim the corners, and also trim the side seams to about 1/8" - 1/4". Then I turn it right sides out, using a narrow chop stick to poke out the corner, and give it a good press. The one on the left below is finished, the one on the right has been sewn and trimmed. (Note there is no need to finish the open end as it will be inside the lining or facing.) 

You can then hammer in snap fasteners, sew on press-studs, make button holes, whatever you want.

The method of attaching the tabs is very similar to the method for attaching loops, and is described below.

This pink spotty tab below goes outside the dress, and is made slightly differently. I wanted a curved end, so instead of one folded piece, I used two smaller pieces shaped as I wanted. I sewed round all 3 sides, or rather, two sides and the rounded end. You'll also see that the snap fastener doesn't show on the outside of the tab as it does on the blue floral ones above. For this dress, I made one large tab, with two layers of interfacing inside. I hammered the snap through the two layers of interfacing and the inner layer of the tab, before attaching to the outer layer of the tab.

You could also use tabs like these to make a button hole, with a button attached to the other side. I usually avoid button holes. Although I have been known to make them successfully, I hate making them as the last thing you do on a garment. If you mess it up, the whole garment is ruined. The great thing about making a button hole on a tab (which you would do before attaching it to the garment) is that if it looks a mess, you can throw the tab away and try again - no damage to the dress!

Attaching button loops and tabs into a lining or facing

Most of these options I have included above should be inserted between the outer part of the neck opening and the lining or facing before they are joined together.  Place the tab or loop with the raw edges towards the seam edge, and pin the facing over it. I usually baste it in place, especially with a loop that can easily twist or move, before sewing the seam.

String ties

Another way to close a neckline, especially if the opening isn't too deep, is to have string ties. If you have a bias finished neckline, it's easy just to extend the bias tape a few inches beyond the edges of the opening, and make these few inches into strings. You see on these, I sewed little bobbles on to make a feature of the opening. If you wanted a proper bow, then you'd need to make the extended strings a bit longer than these, I'd say 12" or 30cm. If you don't have a bias trimmed neckline (for example, you have full facing or a lining in the dress), you can make the strings separately - perhaps even use some pretty ribbon - and sew these under the facings or lining.

Zip

And the last way I can suggest for you to close the neckline is to add a short zip. Probably the best way would be to add an invisible zip. Professor Pincushion has a tutorial for doing this with a professional finish. So don't do as I do - do as I say!

For me, this is too complicated. I've already got an ordinary zipper foot, and I'm not about to start buying invisible zipper feet. I learnt this much easier method of installing a conventional zip from my mother. It may not look as neat, but it works for me. I don't think it looks too bad!

I attach the zip before sewing up the sides of the dress; you can see from the above photo the lining isn't in it yet.

Here it is again in the finished dress.

So if you want to find out more about my easy zip-installation method, see here. Then you can choose.

An A-line dress with colour blocking

This is not strictly the best title for this post,, but I wasn't sure quite what to call it. In this post, I'm going to give you some alternative ideas to make an simple A-line pattern more interesting, by splitting the pattern in various ways. There are a number of different ways you can do this, but the principles are the same.