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, or the Girls' Pinafore 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. Many 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!

A Little 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 own pattern. (If you need a size 2-3, then by all means use the Ikatbag pattern.) You'll find my free tutorial and pattern at the bottom of this page.

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.