The Ugly-Suit

So my neice...

Every now and then, when she visits, she likes to "shop the stash." Normally, that is fine with me. I give her the box where I keep the remnants from other projects and she just plays for a while.

But not this time. This time she managed to drag out from the pile of knits the UGLIEST FABRIC IN THE ENTIRE WORLD and announce "This! This, Aunt Missy! I want you to make me something out of this! As my grandmother would say, "That kid...all her taste is in her mouth."

I don't even know where the fabric came from. I think that some company I order fabric from must have put it in a shipment just to get rid of it, knowing full-well that I wouldn't spend the money to send it back ;). The photos truly do not do it justice because not only is it turquoise AND leopard print, it is also COVERED with gold glitter. I had to wash it three times before the glitter stopped coming off on everything it touched. Amazingly, I had a turquoise knit that I had picked up on the bargain table at Hancock's intending to use it for muslins, but it just so happened that it perfectly matched the turquoise in the leopard print monstrosity. It's also shiny, so she adored it on sight.

So, I decided to make for her New Look 6762. She is stuck between girls sizes and misses' sizes, so she is a little tough to fit. Her measurements are 32-28-35. Based on the pattern sizing, it indicates an XS in the shirt and an S in the pants. However, the finished garment measurments indicate that there is zero ease in the shirt, and only about one inch of ease in the pant at the hips. Since the quickest route to "Prosti-Tot" would be to sew a skin-tight, sparkly, leopard-print shirt for my 11-year-old neice, I opted for sewing both items one size larger than indicated. In fact, with the stretch in both the shirt and the pants, I can actually get into them. NOT that I would take any photos of THAT...but hopefully that means that they won't be too revealing on a little girl. I also changed the sleeve length to 3/4 sleeves, since it is the dead of winter, so no reason to make short-sleeve t-shirts.

In the process of constructing the shirts, I found two issues: one, the shoulder darts make pointy little shoulders. Not that Sadie cares. she's 11. And she wears sparkly turquoise leopard print shirts. Pointy shoulders aren't even on her radar! However, if I ever make one for myself, I'll be redrafting the sleeves to remove the dart. The second issue is that the notches on the neckband don't properly correspond to the notches on the neckline of the shirt. So just ignore them. I attached the neckband by quartering it and easing it the way I would any other t-shirt binding. The pants went together with no problems at all.


Overall, I'm very pleased with the way the shirt and pants turned out. I initially bought the pattern as a way to use up knit "leftovers" and the shirt certainly fills that bill nicely! I even made a second version of the shirt with some leftovers from the pants and a shirt I made earlier this year.

After completing the outfit, I folded it up and took the outfit over to my Aunt's house where we were all meeitng for a big family dinner. When I got there, I took Sadie into the bathroom to try the outfit on and the pants were WAAAY too long, which was frustrating, because I had called my mother on the Thursday beforeand asked her to measure Sadie's inseam for me.

On Thursday night my mother calls me and says "Her inseam is 34 inches." I told her "That can't be right, Mom. 34 inches is Jeremy's inseam. That's a MAN's inseam." So my mother gets frustrated and argues with me and says "Well, I measured it twice, and that is her inseam, and she's very tall, so there."

I assumed, OK, she misundersood..she didn't measure her inseam...she measured the outside of her leg, from the waist. So rather than argue with my mother anymore, I just measured 34 inches down the outside of the leg, and hemmed the pants.

Well, needless to say, that was totally wrong, and the pants were too long.

When Sadie was trying them on, I called my mother into the bathroom and said "Mom, Sadie's inseam is NOT 34 inches...point to me where you measured her inseam from!" She points to where Sadie's legs meet, which of course is correct.

I look at my mother and said "You measured from the wrong end of the measuring tape, didn't you?"

She just looks at me and says "You want a glass of wine?"

So, the next day I had a chance to get the pants hemmed...to the proper length this time...and took them over to my grandmother's house, where Sadie and y nephew were visiting.

I was finally able to get a couple photos of Sadie in her outfit. She loved it, and had to, of course, wear it for the rest of the day.