Sadie's Sewing Adventures, Continued

My niece, Sadie, has continued to be completely enamored with sewing, and I see her pretty much every weekend now to continue to work on her projects.

Her most recent accomplishment is McCall 5627:


She completed View C, the long tunic with a band at the bottom. She wanted a long shirt to wear over leggings, and this one fit the bill fairly well. Here is her completed product:


This project, I stepped back and had her take the lead in interpreting the instructions, rather than me reading them and then explaining in my own words what to do. While the other way was producing garments at a fairly quick rate, she wasn't learning to rely on her interpretation of the instructions.

So this project actually took three sessions to complete. On the first day, she cut the pattern out. The second time we met, she completed the body of the shirt, and yesterday she finished the sleeves and lower band.

As she was essentially on her own for much of the project, we did have a few mishaps, including ironing the wrong side of the fusible interfacing, and missing a few notches in adding her markings to the pieces. But ultimately she was able to complete the vast majority of the shirt on her own.

Here are the places that she ran into trouble:

1. She had trouble interpreting where pattern pieces "belonged" when they weren't part of the shirt. For example, when the instructions said "sew together at shoulders," it was hard for her to determine just where the "shoulders" were when the pieces were disassembled.
   
2. There were also some words that she had just never heard before, like pivot and casing. We had to stop and talk about what those unfamiliar words meant.
3. She had some problems in adding the inside of the yoke, because you have to turn and pivot at all four corners of the neckline, then clip the seam allowances, and turn it to the inside. This all requires precision, something we are a bit short on right now.
4. There was a LOT of hand sewing on this shirt, and she has trouble with that. She pulls the needle so far, the thread comes out of the eye, she has trouble making regular stitches, and can't really control how deep she pushes the needle into the layers of fabric, and her stitches are visible from the other side in many places.

None of these issues are problems with the pattern. In fact, the pattern was excellent and the instructions very good for a beginner. The things that she had problems with are things that all beginners struggle with.

Some things that she did that were surprising were:

1. She set a sleeve all by herself. I did one sleeve for her to watch me do it, and then she did the other.
2. She is very good at distributing gathers. All sorts of gathers are on this tunic, and she caught on really quickly about how to pull the threads and distribute the gathers.
3. Her seams are really straight with regular seam allowances, which I think is exceptional for not only a beginner, but a child.
4. She doesn't have to be prompted to iron her seams, she remembered that lesson from our very first meeting and she regularly stops her sewing to iron her seams.

Overall, I am extremely happy with Sadie's work, and she is excited at the idea that she did this one "almost all by herself." She already has the fabric picked out for View A!