Maternity dress finished! And a few other projects

First off, I finally decided what to do to finish of my black dress. I shortened it by a few inches and used more of the teal to do an outside casing over the elastic under the bust. I think I like it a lot more now!




We recently put our boys in a bunk bed. I had initially done Ian's half of the room in the IKEA "Barnslig" theme with duvet cover and animal prints for the wall. So we bought another duvet for Benny, and I had a piece of their fabric in that line, so I did a valance with some polka dot cotton to contrast. Still have to hang the pictures again.



And I whipped up a Charlie Tee for Project First Day. Super easy to understand pattern! A couple years ago I picked up a pile of men's tees in huge sizes on clearance, and as I can't find cute knits locally, I just upcycled one of them. I used existing hems with the fake layer for the sleeves and back, but had to cut the front higher on the tee to keep the screenprint, so did a new hem reusing the contrast fake layer from the original tee.

Upcycled Men's Dress Shirt...

...to boy's dress shirt!!

This was my husband's favourite button-down shirt, but his wide shoulders strained the seams so they started pulling apart. It's a very soft, drapey fabric. I used the Pox Couture Kid's Summer Shirt pattern. I placed the collar pattern on the existing collar, and made a centre back seam as it would have been too long otherwise. Placed the shirt fronts on the original button and buttonhole plackets, minus the seam allowances. Unpicked and used the original yoke and back. If I do this again, I'd upcycle a shirt with an existing pleat at the centre back already, then I could just use the whole back.


The pattern is fabulous! Amazingly detailed instructions with line drawings, just 4 pages, the pattern pieces are very professionally done, with seam allowances marked on each piece. Lots of great tips in the pattern for construction of a couture garment. The fit is great too, not as boxy as a lot of the Big 3 patterns I saw. I did the 2T size for Benny, who just turned 2. He was almost exactly the measurements the pattern listed.

Still has the printed care tag in the back!