I had a lovely blue polka-dot voile from my stash all picked out until Hazel said that no, actually she didn't like that one and how about this old voile shirt of mine I was going to pick apart at some point? So I agreed to pick it apart right away and make her top from it. It was one that I loved and would still be wearing if I hadn't somehow managed to spray bleach up the front and ended up with a fine scattering of white dots. But I figured that I could disguise that with a bit of fabric pen and organise it so it was on the back of something for Hazel. It worked out pretty well (though I still wish it were mine)
This was the first time I'd ever done shirring and I don't know what I was so scared of! Well I do know - the variety of ways of doing it and number of problems I'd read about on other people's blogs. It seemed too complicated and waaaaay too daunting. When I read the instructions in the magazine I was all "yeah right it's that simple" but dammit it was! At least on my machine. The only quibble is that perhaps it wasn't doing it tight enough, but I knew you could pull on the elastic to tighten it up and I needed to do a lot of that around the neck. I especially love the ruffly sleeves and bottom - it's a rolled hem on the overlocker and then shirred. Yummy.
Sadly, Hazel and I aren't in a very good place vis-a-vis the handmade clothes so she's refusing to wear this or the zigzag dress I made for the first project - so no pictures of her modelling either of them at this point. She's wearing that Fancy Flower Fields tunic though, so I guess it wasn't a total bust. Sigh. I'm trying to remain upbeat about this because I know it comes and goes and I can't make her wear things she honestly doesn't like, but I know she likes this top. She loved it while it was in progress, but now she says it's disappointing. Seriously, she knows the buttons to push! I'm going to take a break on the kid's clothes front I think, let us both recover.
