A summer number

I have to confess that I didn't manage to complete all the summer sewing I had planned this week.  J's skirt fell by the wayside as I just didn't have the time to complete all three items of clothing.  I did, however, make P's nightie (she was so please she wore it to bed even though the weather has not really been warm enough yet), and I made myself a blouse (more on that in my next post).  

So last week was really successful - J is too little to remember that she should have an extra skirt.

I didn't have a pattern for P's nightie, so I used some parts of a pattern I did have, and made the rest up.  I used the bodice parts of Butterick 4574 although since this dress was designed with a zipper, I cut the back piece on the fold, and then cut down the back once I had sewn the shoulder seams to ensure it would fit over P's head.  I measured P's body to the right length for the body of nightie, and then added a few centimetres to the width of the front.  This enabled me to gather it a little in the front.  Once I had sewn the side seams, I just attached the body to the bodice parts and voila, a nightie was made.  Because I used the overlocker, this was a really fast sew.

I found this great tutorial for making bias binding, and I made the binding around the neck and arm holes.  The only problem was that I let P choose the material, and it wasn't really suitable to make bias binding out of.  Don't be put off by the idea that making bias binding is really time consuming, because it actually doesn't take all that long, especially if you only do enough for the garment you are actually making (rather than reams and reams of the stuff).

The trick with bias binding is accuracy, its really important to cut as perfectly as you can, because it will make a big difference to the finished product.  Mine was actually a bit of a fail - more for my top than P's, but I'll talk about that in my next post as well.