Suzanne’s Kindergarten Dresses

I think I need a 12-step program.  Farmhouse Fabrics just confirmed my second order of the week for Children’s Corner patterns.  I need help!

Friends of  Sew Classic for Children on Facebook  flood that page with ideas, photos and inspiration from Children’s Corner patterns.  I try to limit my purchases but this group gets me so excited.  Lezette Thomason posts daily and includes little lessons.   I already have way too many patterns and way too little sewing time to keep up with them.  And yet I go on.

Meanwhile, every few days another spectacular outfit for her granddaughter’s  kindergarten wardrobe emerges my dear friend Suzanne Sawko’s sewing room.   She has patterns aplenty herself, but somehow, she sews most of them up.

Her Classy Casual short set was posted last week.  Now we see this brown beauty, as well as the blue dress shown further down.  Both were made from this Burda Style pattern. (Pattern–that is the connection to the first paragraph.)

Burda Style Shirt-Dress 04/2012 #146

Suzanne pulled all the fabrics from her sizable stash.  Notice all the charming vintage prints used for facing, covered buttons and the flower.  While we were at a quilting workshop in North Carolina almost 20 years ago she filled a huge sack with fabrics from the  Aunt Gracie’s Scrap Bag collection.   A big fan of the fabrics and designs of the ’30’s, Suzanne has used these fabrics in dozens of garments and quilts. On this dress they add just enough warm color and charm to bring the almost drab brown linen to life.

The Scrap Bag fabric finish at the sleeve edge is a pattern modification.  What a nice touch.

The flower at the neckline serves an unusual purpose.  When the dress was almost finished, Suzanne noticed that one front was slightly higher than the other.  So she folded that corner down exposing the print facing then whipped up a fabric flower.  It is pinned there as if that corner were a lapel.  What a clever, designer-touch  fix!!

The brown linen was salvaged from a huge old tablecloth which was riddled with stains and holes.  Years earlier, a  friend of my mother gifted Suzanne and me with a box of old textiles, including this tablecloth.   In spite of its many flaws, the linen was of excellent quality.

With careful and time consuming pattern layout, Suzanne cut around the flaws for this size 5 dress.  These are the scraps.

I wish you could see the dress in person.  It’s a smorgasborg of details, including her granddaughter’s name embroidered in very small letters down one side seam.

She made a second dress of lightweight denim.

Cutting the bodice with the stripes running horizontally and the skirt stripes running vertically gives added interest.

Again,  an Aunt Gracie ’30’s reproduction print was used for the facings.

I  want that pattern.  Now, I ask myself, do I really need it? Will I get it sewn up?  Sigh…

What are the latest patterns you have purchase and why?