A garment a month - Geranium Top

My garment for the month of August was the Geranium top (pattern by Made by Rae). 

 

Now, I know that this isn’t a garment for me, but it is still a garment and I did learn some new things so I am still counting it as a win.

 

Last month we had book week here, so the girls for school had to dress up as book characters. In the past it has always been dress up as any character from a book, but this year Ms Moo had to dress as a character from the particular book they were reading in class: A House of Her Own, which is a lovely little story, but I’ll be honest – doesn’t have a lot of scope for variety in costumes. The main character is a little girl called Audrey who wears a red spotty dress, green shorts and a big hat.

 

In the tradition of all parents, everywhere, I started making the costume at 8pm the night before we needed it. I had been sure that I had red and white spotted material and green material in my stash. Yes, I did, but not enough to make anything...sigh. With some clever improvisation I managed to make a top with a red spotted yoke and a green skirt. My dear daughter was less impressed...Five year olds, they are so literal. But she came around to loving it by the end of the day.

 

So the pattern – it was easy to follow. I made the View A top with flutter sleeves and the View B skirt and it was all pretty straight forward. I managed to have the entire thing finished by 1AM from taping the pattern PDF together to sewing the last button on, which in my view is pretty quick. I did have some issues with the skirt being too big for the yoke and had to add some extra pleats, but I am pretty sure that was user error because it was pretty late by the time I got to that stage.

 

Making the flutter sleeves was a new experience for me. I am not sure how the edges will wear in the wash since they are just finished with a zig zag stitch, but the basting worked like a dream and I am keen to try the gathers on my Sailor top which is up next in my garment a month challenge. 

 

I also need to work out how to do button holes properly on my machine. They were a bit wonky. Nothing a bit of Fray Stoppa won’t fix though.

 

The low point of making the top was when I was zig zagging the edges of the sleeves, I was concentrating so hard on sewing around the curve that I actually sewed right through my finger. Do you know, I had always wondered how it was actually possible to do that? But it isn’t actually that hard as I found out. (STOP READING IF YOU ARE EASILY GROSSED OUT). The worst part was that the needle broke and was stuck in my finger and I had to pull it out. And making the sleeves is right at the start so I still had to push on. And I had to get a tetanus shot. On the plus side, the needle was so super sharp (titanium coated) that it pretty much resealed itself and healed up really fast. Swings and roundabouts.

 

Anyway, there are definitely more geranium dress / tops on my horizon for my littles. I am going to try all the ways. I have visions of Lizzy House unicorns on Christmas Frocks.