Father and son tunics from 2 metres of fabric

I won't lie. I feel pretty darn clever about this one.

I haven't made my husband any garb in yonks. He doesn't really seem to mind but it makes me feel bad that he misses out. So on our anniversary back in September we found ourselves in spotlight and we chose some really nice rust coloured linen. With his red hair it was going to look great. I got 2 metres and was planning on doing the fold-in-quarters-trace-a-t-shirt method of tunic making. The fabric was 60" wide so he was only ever going to get 3/4 length sleeves (which he didn't mind), but it also meant the bottom hem would be ridiculously huge if I used the full amount of fabric by turning the triangle around to make a gore.

So I started thinking, I wonder if I can make Jonathon (1 year old) a tunic out of this too? I grabbed a size 2 t-shirt (I want it to last!)  and tried to fit them both on the fabric without making Dan's tunic too short. In the end I fitted it in the gore section which meant the small tunic has additional front and back seams but there was absolutely ZERO fabric wasted!

T-shirt tunic making method. Fabric is folded in half one way, and then in half the other way so there are four layers of fabric. A t-shirt is folded in half and placed on the side with the single fold (the top will have two folds) and traced around

Pieces cut out

Flip the gore of the small tunic around. Zero wastage

I stood back and marveled at my own genius for a few minutes and joked to Dan that as Jonathon's tunics get bigger,  Dan's will need to get smaller!

Jonathon's got overlocked and sewn up straight away since I needed it wearable for a picnic the next day. It still needed to be hemmed and the neckline finished but he looked adorable.  And it should (read: BETTER!) last him at least a year.

Pieces overlocked

Gores pinned in place

Seams ironed flat

Keyhole neck marked. You can see the line at the bottom of the front piece marking where the heyhole neck ends. I cut the semicircle out and gently unpick the stitching back to this mark, then tie the threads off. If there was no front seam you would just cut a straight line down,

Neckhole cut and overlocked. Side seams sewn

"Finished" tunic. Still needs all the hems done and the underarm seams need to be clipped so they lie flat (you can see them bunching in this photo)

Yungsta wearing his new tunic to our medieval family picnic the next day.

So now for the daddy version.

Construction for this type of tunic is ridiculously simple. Literally sew up the sides, cut out the neckhole and finish the raw edges.

Dan chose this blue trim for his tunic so I had lots (not) of fun pinning that on the neckline. This is usually an odious task but it's so much worse with a really wide trim as you have to ease in the fullness around the the circular neck hole. I do it by making lots of little tucks all the way around and then have to sew them flat too. It takes much longer than it ought to in my opinion. Adding trim on nice straight seams though is nice and quick. And handy hint time - if you fold the seam allowance towards the outside of the garment rather than the inside and then pin and sew the trim over the top you enclose the raw edge. I find it feels much nicer against your skin too, particularly if you leave a gap of a few millimetres between the foldededge and the start of the trim as quite often trims can he quite hard and scratchy.

Pinning trim in place. Notice how the hem is folded towards the outside of the tunic and the raw edge is concealed underneath the trim once it is sewn down.

Pinning the trim around the neckline and adding tucks as I go. With a narrower trim it is sometimes possible to avoid tucks by using an iron to stretch one side of the trim out.

Neckline trim pinned in place. With a keyhole neckline you need to mitre the corners by folding the trim at a 45 degree angle

Pinning trim on the sleeves. Detail view of how hem allowance is concealed

Completed tunic with trim at neck, sleeves and hem

 Then I went back and hemmed Jonathon's tunic. I also added trim at the neckline of his too. I used the small piece of trim I had left over from my daughter's Tudor coat dress. There wasn't quite enough to do the entire neckline so there is a gap at the back. I don't really care. He will still look cute. And if/when I but some more of the trim to do the blue side of her coat dress I can use the extra to fill in the gap.

Grace modelling her brothers tunic. She is 3 and it still fits so he should get a fair bit of wear out of it.

Back view. You can see the edges of the trim finish just over the shoulders

So there you have it. Matching father and son tunics out of 2 metres of fabric with absolutely zero wastage!

Aren't they adorable?

p.s. The fabric was 60" wide. My husband is 191cm tall and a size M. The sleeves on his tunic are quite wide and could be narrowed to make the childs tunic longer if necessary. My son is a size 1 but his tunic is a 2-3. The 2 metre thing won't work for everyone...

Tudor coat dress for a toddler

My 3 year old daughter is such a girly girl. It's probably our own doing but gosh she looks cute in pink with her blond ringlets. So when I saw some bright pink wool on a half price clearance at spotlight I knew I had to make her something out of it. I have been wanting to make myself the fitted gown out of The Tudor Tailor since I first saw it but just haven't gotten around to it yet. So I thought what better way to try out the pattern than by making it in miniature? Less expensive if I totally stuff it up, right?

Fitted Gown featured in The Tudor Tailor book

Now going back to before Rowany Festival this year when I was in a garb making craze trying to churn stuff out for my kids, I found out the hard way that toddlers aren't just smaller sized adults. Their little bodies are totally differently shaped and proportioned and they have huge heads. After spending two hours trying to scale down a florentine bodice pattern and wondering what I was doing wrong I sought help from the mighty interwebs and the best advice I found was "grab a t-shirt that fits and trace around it". At first I thought it sounded a bit lazy but it really did make things so much easier.

This time around I was wiser and so I actually grabbed her favourite jacket and basically used the same pattern but removed the hood and made it longer. And added a few extra inches on each side so it lasts a bit longer (hopefully anyway).

I only bought two metres of the fabric (it was still $20/m) so I was pretty limited when it came to the sleeves. Instead of the cute puffed and paned sleeves she ended up with plain 3/4 length ones. The collar was also pieced together by necessity but I don't feel too bad about that since I know they did that in period anyway.

Pink Wool

Back

Front

After I cut out all the pink wool and started sewing it up I realised I had forgotten to overlock all the pieces. I'm a bit OCD about fraying raw edges. I also refuse to spend hours felling the seams on a toddler's dress which will be lucky to be worn thrice. So I decided to line the whole thing with some navy blue cotton I had leftover from long ago. 

Navy blue cotton broadcloth

It looks super cute against the pink. I had a bit of a mishap trying to work out how to sew the sleeves of the outer fabric and lining together. Not sure how I managed it but there was nowhere for your hand to come out when it was the right way out but there was when it was the wrong way. I'm still a bit confused about the whole thing. In the end I turned it around the right way, tucked the raw ends in and used a blind hem to sew them together. I did the same thing on the bottom hem too. This way I ended up with a reversible coat dress!

Pink side out

Blue side out

And don't forget the trim! I bought this trim at rowany festival earlier this year from Anwyn at Sign of the Lambtree with the intention of using it on some sort of kids garb. I think the colours work together really well. Again I only bought 2m (instead of my standard 10) so I didn't have enough to put it on the blue side but hopefully I can get more. She also made me an offer where if I email her a picture of the trim I purchased on a piece of garb for her to display on her website I get a discount next time which is pretty awesome!

Close up of trim pinned in place

I'm not very happy with how the collar turned out. It doesn't sit nicely and it's definitely something I'll fiddle with next time. I think the neckline is too close to the shoulders rather than being fitted around the neck. Grace doesn't mind though. 

Collar

I still haven't decided on a type of fastening. Mostly she just wears it open or we can use a nappy pin. I need to find something that will still enable it to be reversible. It's coming into summer here though so I'm not sure how often it will even get worn between now and next year's rowany festival.