2020 Christmas dresses Part 1 - The first two, using Simplicity 9379

As in previous years, I made Christmas dresses for all the girls. Sadly, we were not able to spend Christmas together due to lockdown. But at least they had something to wear for our Zoom calls! First, here are the two dresses I made using Simplicity 9379. for Rose (5) and Fleur (7). You can read about the other dresses in this post - the assymetric dress, and in this one, the red A-line dress. 

More towelling wraps

Over the past few years, I've made simple towelling cover-ups for my grand-daughters - just something they can wear over a wet swimming costume to play around the pool. If that's what you want, you might like to check out these other posts for how to make really simple and quick cover-ups. 

New beach cover-ups for hot summer

Summer cover-ups and beach wraps

How to make a summer cover-up

However, you'll note those are all 'summer' cover-ups. When I started this post, two of my grand-daughters had restarted their swimming after lockdown, in an open air pool. But by this time it was winter, down to about 11 degrees centigrade, and with the changing rooms not open, the only choice was to change or wrap up on the pool side in a biting wind.

Something urgently was needed, and I threw together these two new hooded towelling wraps to cover them up, with the idea being that they could get changed underneath them. Here's one cheeky monkey in her towelling robe. It does button up at the neck, but she wanted to play rather than model.

Swim Robes - Pattern review and additional tutorial

Needing some quick swim cover-ups for two of my grand-daughters, I had made some simple ones out of towelling (see this post) . However, they weren't really going to be warm enough for the coldest part of winter, what with having to change outdoors. And in timely fashion, I found a Facebook post from Laura Bolwell of Designed for Daisy, with information about a pattern and tutorial she had designed for a three-layer swim robe. Her pattern was very reasonably priced on Etsy, so I hastened off to buy it, and set about making not just two robes for those two granddaughters, but 4, for all 4 of them.

As a reviewer on Etsy pointed out, this is not a project for complete beginners, but in the course of making 4, I learned some tricks to make it easier, so I'm sharing what I learned here. Note that this review and my tutorial will only help you if you have bought Laura's pattern and tutorial.

Some great ideas for children learning to sew (or adults!)

I am so often asked for ideas for things that can be made by children, or indeed, adults, who want to learn to sew, that I thought I should write up some of them. Here, I will be focusing on children, but many of the projects I suggest are equally appropriate for adults. There are one or two ideas here for things that can be hand-stitched - well, almost anything can, it may just take longer! But I would almost always suggest that children learn first to do some hand-stitching before attempting to use a sewing machine. That way, they will learn some techniques which will always stand them in good stead.

Of course children can be different ages and in different circumstances when the situation arises. It's different teaching a five-year-old from a ten-year-old. However, I'm not going to offer any advice about what age is appropriate for a child to use a sewing machine, or what machine to use - you know your child best. I personally think simple is better to start with. You might want to get a guard for the machine, though, especially if the child is young.

Constructing a sewn item can also teach several skills: mathematics, to calculate sizes and seams etc; design; following written or video instructions; taking care of safety; and of course fine motor skills. And there can be so much satifaction at producing a usable, wearable, or fun item.

So read on for some ideas that may work for you, whether you are teaching a young relative to sew, or students at a school.

Easy Skirts - Part 3 Flared and part circular skirts

 I've already told you about two other types of skirts that are pretty easy to make, without a pattern, i.e. gathered skirts, and circular skirts. This is a fully circular skirt. 

This is a type of flared skirt - it is a smaller fraction of a circle, rather than a complete circle.

There are several reasons why you might opt for a part circle. So in this post, I'll explore those, and show you an easy way to make them.

Easy Skirts - Part 2 - Circular skirts.

In my first post about easy skirts for girls, I wrote about gathered skirts. I think they are the simplest to make, use very little fabric, and don't need a pattern. But there are other types of skirt which are also pretty easy to make, and many of them can loosely come under a heading of circular and flared skirts. The main difference is that gathered skirts are usually made of a simple rectangle of fabric, so that there is as much fabric at the waistline as at the bottom hem. This can sometimes make them seem a bit bulky at the top. In contrast, a fully circular skirt will be a complete circle (often likened to a doughnut) so it has a wide hem and not too much fabric at the top. But you can also make skirts I'm calling 'flared' as a sort of catchall. They are some fraction of a circle, three-quarters, half, or even just a quarter. They will all have more fabric at the hem than at the waistine.

This is a gathered skirt:

This is a fully circular skirt:

And these two are flared skirts. I'll cover flared skirts in part three.

Many such skirts can also be made without an expensive pattern, if you are prepared to make a few measurements and draw a pattern for yourself. But you can also get patterns if that's what you prefer to work with.

Sew a Little Seam Movie Night PJs pattern review

I had this jersey fabric with large dinosaurs* that had been picked out by my grand-daughter for a pair of pyjamas for her birthday. So all I needed now was a pattern! I had two PDF patterns, both freebies, and I wasn't sure which to use. So I asked a question in a Facebook group I belong to, the Baby and Kids PDF Sewing Patterns Group: "Opinions please - Ellie and Mac Grow with Me pyjamas, or Sew A Little Seam Movie Night pyjamas - for an size 8-10 year old and a 3-4 year old? And why?"

* It's called Stof of Denmark Avalana Organic Jersey – Dinosaurs

I fully expected to get views in favour of both, but in fact the responses were almost all for the Sew a Liitle Seam Movie Night pyjamas, so that made my decision a lot easier! And below, you can find out how I got on, and whether I agreed with those views.

Sweatshirt Tunic from Life Sew Savory - a review and a fun idea

 I'd been looking at ways of using up some of the multiple colours of fleece scraps in my stash, and just in time, along came Emily Thompson of Life Sew Savory's with her great Sweatshirt Tunic pattern. I'd had an idea for some time of doing something like a rainbow because I had so many colours, and hence the sunburst was born. I think the Life Sew Savory pattern works really well.

You can find out how to make it here (or anything with a sunburst  design).