Okay, I made this pattern last July but as I am busy sewing sun lounger cushion covers at the moment I thought I would blog an old make, especially as it still gets worn a lot (although the shorts are a bit snug now!).
The Pattern is the Oliver & S Puppet Show Tunic, Dress and Shorts pattern. The size runs from 2T to 5 and I chose to make the 3T for my then 3 year old. I bought the fabric from ebay after hunting for it for quite a while. I had a metre of the main fabric and half a metre of the coordinating print which I used for the collar, facings and cuffs. The short fabric is a strange denim print cotton which came from my parents. I think it was bought to make curtains which never materialised (sorry, pun intended!!).
I trimmed the collar and bodice with ric rac because, RIC RAC! I think it looks great and I use it on loads of the Child's clothes. It is quicker to use than piping and I love the effect of a bit of contrasting colour and texture. In this case it help camouflage the poor child whose head got decapitated by bad pattern matching! I tried really hard to match the front of the dress and got two heads out of three in situ. Oh well, two out of three ain't bad! I didn't even try to pattern match the back as I didn't have enough fabric.
This pattern, like all the Oliver & S patterns I have sewed with, has excellent instructions and is very clear. Everything fit together really well and I didn't have any problems making it. However, it was fairly time consuming which has put me off making a second version of this which I would really love to do soon before the Child outgrows the pattern. I hand finished the hem and back opening, which could have been done on the machine but I did stitch the inside bodice facing down on the machine because there was only so much hand sewing I was willing to do on a child's garment!
While I had the fabric out I quickly made a matching dress for Edwina. The pattern I used is the free Oliver & S Popover Sundress which has a matching dress for an 18 inch doll included. The width is fine on Edwina but I had to take quite a lot off the length to compensate for her bear proportions! Making things for bears is not always top on my priorities list but it is a nice way to use up scraps of treasured fabric. I also made some matching hair bows, another free Oliver & S download perfect for scraps. I didn't have any fabric left after all that, I think I made the most of my 1.5 metres of fabric!
This is just too, too cute. I love the matching outfits and all your color choices- the blue and yellow really make the red pop. And her shoes match! Well done.
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